Vexercise 2 Drops! Visual Continuity

[lola]

Hello everyone and welcome to Vexercise #2! This one is all about working with visual continuity, using match on action/motion matches and/or graphic matches.

The Details: Produce a 1 minute video edit on your selected source using motion matching (match-on-action) and graphic matches as your primary editing logics. Audio should be music of your own choosing.

Simply speaking, motion matching is connecting motion in one shot/scene to motion in another, to give the effect that the motion and energy flows from one scene to the next. Graphic matching juxtaposes visually similar elements (shapes, even colors) to suggest connections (or metaphors!) between one shot/scene and the next, or maybe between different characters etc. You can also keep one fixed visual element in the scene (like a character or a piece of furniture) while everything else changes, suggesting the progress of time or maybe narrative arcs.

Here are some vids that use visual continuity via motion matching and graphic matching (feel free to rec others in the comments!)

• Yuris in Love(starting at about 1.41)
• Motionography 2012
• Multifandom Mashup 2019 (for All the Graphic Matches)

And a really helpful video essay on different types of match cuts: (bonus with lots of helpful Sherlock examples!) This video is about match cuts in cinema and TV, but I think it's really cool how we can adapt these techniques to vidding/fan video editing.

We'll have a check in on April 5th, and the exercise is due on April 11th! (Though of course feel free to share yours earlier and/or later!)

Note: if your source isn't that movement-y, you may find yourself relying on graphic matches, and that's okay! The idea is to fight your source a little bit... to feel the challenge of it, but to still have fun with it and make something you like! 

Comments

[extrapenguin]

Psst – you're using smart quotes for the link HTML, which breaks them! (Use "" instead of “”.)

[lola]

Blargh. Thanks for the heads up. I thought I was being so careful!

[lola]

I believe they're all fixed now! Thanks again!

[naye]

Any thoughts on the kind of music best for this style? Because of the movement aspect I've been looking for something fairly fast with a beat, but maybe that's too limiting? The examples are great, but if anyone with more experience has suggestions/ideas/takes on this I'm all ears!

[seekingferret]

There's a lot of range of what's possible within this style; match-cuts covers a lot of territory. The song snippet I'm playing with has a mixture of fast and slow and I'm planning to take advantage of that and vary my cutting speeds. Don't forget that slow music also has a beat and you should pay attention to where it is.

My general advice to new vidders about song selection is don't get too married to a song. If you think something will work but when you sit down to work it doesn't seem to be, cut your losses and try something else. I'm not sure if that advice applies here, since there may be value in this as a vidding exercise in keeping at it even if it's not working. So I don't know, pick something based on your intuition and stick with it even if you don't know how to do it and you'll probably learn SOMETHING at least?

[sisabet]

I think 2 different findmeinthealps vids do this super effectively in very different ways

Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time has some of my most favorite motion matches of all time - it doesn’t get old, it’s sustained throughout the entire song and builds energy and is an all around blast:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20327776

Unlike DTMWGT, It Runs In the Family (heed tags it’s a Heredity vid) does not sustain the matching throughout the vid but instead uses it in very important moments and to create a build of continuous dread

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338690

[bonibaru]

I love both of these and thanks for linking them! I also like Superstar and Come On both by here's luck as examples where you can incorporate the elements into a longer work. With Superstar the knives are at times a pivot point around which the story flows and then the intercut fight scenes in Come On was one of my earliest memories of someone really using motion match to its best potential.

[bonibaru]

Also reminder: You're not limited to only 10 six second clips for this exercise :D Go crazy.

[thatyourefuse]

A Hotel Full Of Secrets

In which Wax Audio is my favorite for just, like, SO many reasons.

[lola]

*sob* they're all trapped in the waiting room!
I'm kind of amazed that you cut right to the heart of The Return in a one minute video, weaving all those storylines together through graphic matching and dissolves...
This really makes me want to rewatch the Return, or really the whole series <3

[hexenmeister]

All the faces matching with each other (and mirrors!) give a cool/creepy sense that these people are fading into each other. And time is melting.

[actiaslunaris]

I love the atmosphere you created here, the claustrophobia and eerie feeling of a recursive dream. It makes me want to watch the source!

[seekingferret]

That was satisfying to make:

Save Me

Spoilers for the Grey's Anatomy Season 6 finale, and also graphic violence warnings.

[actiaslunaris]

Ooo! Very cool. It's not a source I've watched, but I loved what you did with the narrative and the matching!

[valoise]

It's kind of amazing the amount of narrative that was packed into only one minute, I think the repeated matching of specific actions was really effective

[extrapenguin]

After five(!) false starts, I finally got something done! I think the lesson for me to learn from this is that no matter how Cool(TM) my idea, I need to start with the music, not the visuals. I also managed to confuse myself about what the hell a match shot was at least a dozen times, but I think I have at least a few match cuts in there now? (That video essay was very helpful, by the way – the thematics of match cuts it talked about got through my block.)

The Past Clings Tight, Guardian + Sirenia - Asphyxia, all about Ye Zun!

[lola]

Oh my Ye Zun feelings!!!!
This was so intense. Wow!

[actiaslunaris]

I love all the subtle ways you linked clips, in addition to the more obvious ones, like the transition at 0:56. The emotion really comes through as well.

[actiaslunaris]

I broke the rules expanded my source by using clips from more than two episodes. I got carried away. Anyway, this is what I was able to do: "Blood Roses" (direct link; AO3; contains blood and violence).

[hannahneko]

ok this is super intense i rly enjoyed it! i dont know this show but your edit rly succeeded in bringing a kinda eerie vibe across OOF well done!

[lola]

Okay, here's my vexercise 2 attempt!! I feel like working with MVs lends itself very well to this particular exercise re: movement matching at least, but I am really struggling with how to create meaning or narrative the way I would want to for a more standard vid... I know ppl do succeed at doing this but I can't quite seem to figure out how! Instead I guess I was going for more of a feeling... but I feel like I want there to be something more to it somehow.

Runaround

[valoise]

Some source material works better for specific kinds of vids and performance & music videos are perfect for showing visual continuity. This vid is great, it doesn't need narrative since it has such great visual flow.

[valoise]

Serving noodles, slurping noodles, drinking broth - these were the obvious visual continuity themes in Tampopo, so I ran with that.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/23447053
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMPngYuuG_4

[hannahneko]

hehe i love this ^^ u chose a great theme...made me hungry tho...

[hannahneko]

this is my attempt...i focused on archery in the untamed:

https://youtu.be/Wxica5KG0co

i like how it kinda turned out to look like one continuous scene but i think i focused too much on the motion matching that i forgot a bit about the graphic matches...hm...maybe ill try to do a second vid if i find the time ^^

[extrapenguin]

Ooh, this was cool! I enjoyed the way you cut Lan Wangji's entrance to the scene – it felt like all one scene! (And yes, I'd have wanted to see Jiang Yanli participate in the archery competition as well, sob.)

[naye]

See You Again, a Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan Guardian vid that started out at one minute and then bonibaru happened and now it's a full 3:21. (I was told exercises were allowed to go over as rules are made to be broken?)

Other than the pechakucha I made for the last challenge, this is my first vid! It's entirely possible that I have too many feels about these two...

[bonibaru]

Rule number one is there are no rules.

[hexenmeister]

Ok, here is my attempt at this challenge! I again ignored the source limit and in fact added a spinoff movie. This one's focused on the Nie sect, with a lot of footage from Fatal Journey:
BAD GIRLS

I think I was too invested in my "Nie sect sexy" feelings to let all my choices be guided by visual continuity, haha. If I get it together, I'd like to make a different visual continuity vid where I go in with less of a narrative agenda and just see where the footage takes it.

[bonibaru]

HELLO WE WILL NEED A FULL LENGTH VERSION OF THIS FOR THE NEXT FAN CONVENTION DANCE PARTY THANK YOU

[hannahneko]

i already did smth for this challenge previously but i felt like doing more because i focused a little too much on action matching in my first try....

so here we go! lan wangji being protective:

https://youtu.be/24R7wP6a1Hg

ngl i kinda like my first try better but i think thats because for this one i spent days finding a song and am still not rly happy with the final choice but...oh well ^^ i tried!