Vexercise 5 Drops: Play with lyrics & typography

[lola]

Hi everyone! It's that time of the weekend, time for the new vexercise. This one is inspired by the many amazing vids out there that play with text and lyrics in different ways. It's a multi step vexercise--can't wait to see what folks come up with!

Lyrical play/no lyrics (3 versions):

Produce a 1 minute video edit from your selected source, in which lyrical interpretation ( guides your shot choice. You could interpret the lyrics literally or metaphorically/suggestively. Once you have completed this video, choose selected lyrics to incorporate creatively as text within the video. Then make a version of this video with the text, but substituting the original audio with a different piece of music that has no lyrics.

Inspirations:
Overtime (Steven Universe):: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-OfHYgDF-Y
Light Years Away (The Untamed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_pqNf5dA_8&list=PLGDrwAYvGR94FnYTVNoEgPEBNz9aGujxU&index=3&t=0s

Comments

[extrapenguin]

My Nemesis/My Only Friend (all 3 vids stuffed into one AO3 work to reduce spam) – Guardian, Shen Wei & Ye Zun. I feel like the swapping out the song really changed it all, and I'm sort of intrigued by the effect of the unrelated lyrics. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else's look like!

oh and an actual question

[extrapenguin]

Because I was 1) consumed by inspiration, and 2) really fucking bored the past weeks, I also started a second base vid: Down My Throat* (Guardian, Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, has alcohol) and was then plagued by indecision: since my original song isn't in English, should I, in step 2, add some of the original Finnish lyrics (which no-one can understand) or some of the translation as the typography?

(I might just scrap this one's continuations and declare that this is a standalone, though.)

Re: oh and an actual question

[actiaslunaris]

Firstly, this is beautiful. (Shen Wei, oh my heart.) Secondly, I've seen people use typography creatively with both the original language and translation on screen, for what it's worth.

Re: oh and an actual question

[extrapenguin]

You wouldn't happen to have any links on hand? I've been bashing my head against the wall with this, but it's not congealing into anything. :( (Alternating original and translation just looks jarring. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I do know the original that makes it so jarring, but ... argh. I'll need to bash my head some more.)

Re: oh and an actual question

[actiaslunaris]

Sadly, I can't seem to dig up any links; many foreign language fanvids I've watched tend to disappear, so if I did see any in the past, I'm not sure they'd still be up. I did remember this one Guardian fanvid that uses text creatively, and might give some inspiration: [镇魂 Guardian] CRACK. I also remembered a constructed reality/au fanvid (for Rurouni Kenshin) that puts spoken Japanese dialogue up on the screen:【浪客剑心现代衍生|斋藤一X比古清十郎】雨系列之一. That's as close as I could get with links.

Have you thought about using both the translation and the original language so they appear simultaneously, instead of alternating them? I think using complementary fonts would look good graphically, if they appeared together.

Re: oh and an actual question

[extrapenguin]

Have you thought about using both the translation and the original language so they appear simultaneously, instead of alternating them? I think using complementary fonts would look good graphically, if they appeared together.
The problem with that is that then it looks sort of crowded? There aren't that many places text could go without obscuring stuff and I also don't want to make it too tiny. Thank you for the links! I'll see if I can make something work...

(I suppose part of my problem is that I am very, very bad at text and fonts in general. Ah well. Surely if I stare at the drawing board for long enough, it will magically pop out a vid? /o\)

Re: oh and an actual question

[actiaslunaris]

I do understand the concern with crowding the screen. I gave this some more thought after my initial attempt to help and remembered that the source I'm vidding is actually what gave me the thought about simultaneously combining, so I've come back with a few more links:

The ending song for Galileo with karaoke work done by the subbing team for the first season: OST Galileo Kiss shite

In this you can see how the translation and original text of the song lyrics is placed on the top left, left edge, and bottom left of the screen, with animation of the text.

And a gif set about Tony Stark that elegantly shows how you can combine differing styles of fonts with subtle animation: futurist: i saw them all dead

This exercise is a challenge because it touches up against graphic design. I taught myself vidding and graphic design at the same time, so I hope you don't mind that I'm showing a bit of my passion about both in trying to help you! Some of these effects are a bit beyond what I can do myself with my software, so that's not to say that you should try to emulate it if it's too difficult. I'm fond of simple crossfade, myself. Besides, we all learn as we go, right?

I do hope it goes better for you and that your efforts yield something you like. Good luck!

Re: oh and an actual question

[extrapenguin]

Okay, it isn't working. I might return to this later, but for now, please remove this from the roundup, mods.

[actiaslunaris]

All in one AO3 post.

This one broke my ability to focus on vidding; I had to take a long break after fighting both lack of inspiration and a bug in my editor. *sigh* But I did it!

[hannahneko]

off topic - im just dropping by to say the the untamed vid you linked as an example genuinely made me cry so much omg :(((

[lola]

Oh God I know right? I should've warned for extreme tears!

[naye]

If anyone's done this before, what's your preferred order to do things in? Finish assembling the vid and then do the lyrics? Do the assembly and the lyrics hand in hand? Or maybe do some typography first to have an idea of what clips would look good with it?

Any other advice? I've got audio that I want to do a lot of fast cuts to, but fast cuts + lyrics on screen changing might be a bit much in combination?

[actiaslunaris]

I usually do all my typography work after assembling the vid. I use a fontviewer to audit fonts before I settle down to choosing. As for the fast cuts and lyrics: I've rewatched vids to catch nuance, so I wouldn't worry about that if I was trying to do it, I'd just try to render a test and see if timing would need to be fixed so everything works.

[naye]

Thank you! I'm finding it really tricky to find a good balance between the clipping and the lyrics. The two examples in the post had very different styles of incorporating lyrics - I feel that something like the Stephen Universe vid would be difficult to sequentially, whereas the Untamed vid I could see assembling first and then adding lyrics to. So right now I'm trying all sorts of things and trying to keep it from just becoming too much of everything.

[actiaslunaris]

You're welcome! Good luck to you. I'm sure you'll get to something with which you'll be happy.

[caramarie]

Ok, I did this! The three versions on AO3 (more ATEEZ).

I don't know if I will ever put lyrics on a video again, but it was interesting to try. Also interesting the difference it made when I came to pick an instrumental track – it was much easier to match something to the clean visuals than the lyric version.

[naye]

Guardian: Sparkle on AO3.

And thanks to the mods for making this a place for exercises - that low-pressure, try-new-things approach is just what I need to risk experimenting. ♥ Just learning how to make lyrics do things on screen was a great experience, and I feel like I've gotten a lot of Adobe Premiere Pro experience points (as well as taken some damage to my sanity points when the thing just kept crashing). The result this time is very much incorporating almost everything I decided to try - I did actually scale the final version back a bit from some of the stuff I had going on in earlier versions.

[lola]

Okay, this was touch and go at the end there.

Breathe, Nie Huaisang, Fatal Journey

1st version, Fleurie; 2nd version, Philip Glass

Aaaah working with text makes me soooooo obsessive!! I spent way too long nitpicking on this one!

[thatyourefuse]

Ugh, EXTREMELY under the wire: Land's End and Song of the Caged Bird. I don't think I used enough typography, but it's really not something I've ever been comfortable with, so.

[hannahneko]

i love love love the placement of the texts! and i rly dont mind that u didnt use that much...quality over quantity amirite?

[seekingferret]

Honestly I like the untexted one the best, it makes me laugh, but it was an exercise, so hopefully I learned something. I think I got some practice playing with the timing of how text plays against lyrics, that's something.

https://youtu.be/xEVlm8VsrTA

https://youtu.be/O64Nu8TtDhg

https://youtu.be/c8JJ9DqvADE

[actiaslunaris]

Oh no, the third vid has disappeared from Youtube!

The first two, however... oh my goooosssshhhh. Hilarity of the best kind. I needed that. :D

[hannahneko]

wait, this is so funny and creative haha i love it!

[hannahneko]

I finally did it!! I've had this idea in mind for weeks but I'm super busy so i JUST got to it :/ but here it is:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396823

(I actually rly dislike including text in my videos - which is why i'm very bad at it lol and i like the version without any text the best adjkfhsd but im glad this exercise at least made me try hehe)