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

[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?

[naye]

These are all excellent points! And yeah, since it's just a minute I think finding a song is more important than finding the song...But I will have to have a talk with my intuition about picking something to stick with.

[bonibaru]

Do you approach music with any particular kinesthetic sense? I've had some great conversations with other vidders who hear music as color (one visual/graphic artist in particular) and some (like me with more affinity for dance) who hear it as movement. A song has an underlying feel for us. Is there some way that you relate to music beyond just the lyrics and the tempo? Depending what your source has available you can even get away with an instrumental piece if it feels the right way.

[naye]

I have absolutely no synesthesia of any kind - I just...hear music? I don't see images or hear movement. (Which is why I've never thought vidding was for me!) When I listen I usually put as much importance on lyrics as melody, but that's not the best way to approach something that's about movement I think...

Right now I'm trying to find a, um. Mood? I think. I don't even know! I do have a playlist, but it's just a fraction of the hundreds of songs I've been clicking through today.