The vexercises are how I got into vidding! For the 2022 round, I participated in full for the vexercise portion and dabbled in some of the vfxercises.
Create a video edit of exactly 60 seconds consisting of precisely 10 video clips from your chosen source text, each lasting precisely 6 seconds, assembled with straight cuts. Make two versions of your pechakucha, with 1 minute excerpts from two different songs as audio. Fade in and out on your audio at the beginning and end of the audio clip.
This year I've decided to use the various SWTOR screen recordings I've made over the past few months as my source! For the first set I used the first chapter of the Jedi Consular storyline:
Your task for this one is to produce a one minute video edit (with an audio track of your own choosing) on your selected source using match-on-action and/or graphic matches as your primary editing logics. The motion of each shot should seem to continue into motion in the following shot and/or connect through images that are similar to the eye.
I continued with my SWTOR Jedi Consular journey, this time restricting myself to footage I had of Tython. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake, as ... there was not that much motion to match. *g* I succumbed to the sunk cost fallacy, did my best with graphical matches and intentional de-matches, and then added some extra pizzazz in the form of a charcoal filter (with the original footage on top with Screen blend mode). If nothing else, the effect looks fine?
20-30 second edit, with transitions between shots (bonus if you use 3D transitions). You could put transitions between all of the shots, or just some of them. (post)
I managed to kludge together a version of the first glitch transition with kdenlive – the color split one can get with 3 point balance, but I didn't spot any way to do a wiggle ... so I used the Transform effect and manually keyframed random wiggling for each layer individually. (Best values were between -10 and +10 for each axis; more than that and it was less glitchy than distracting.) I probably could've gotten the second glitch transition as well, but I will be AFK for the next 2 weeks and I still need to pack for my trip. :P The rest was me playing around with transitions and effects. Does it make sense? No. Did it tell me to be more adventurous with the Transform tool and also transitions? Yes.
Produce a one minute video edit where you focus especially on rhythmic editing. Try your hand at time remapping at least once in this video. Choose an audio track that has a clear rhythmic pattern or interesting rhythmic progressions to make your editing experience easier. Reference the wave visualization of your audio track to help guide your editing choices. (If you’re up to it, make 2 versions, one that cuts primarily on the beat, another where you try syncopated editing (cutting on the *and*) and for extra special credit, an extra one that cuts on other instrumentation/vocals
I did not try velocity vidding, as that's harder in kdenlive than it seems to be in Premiere (and I don't think there's actually a way to do smooth slowdowns/speedups?), but other than that, this is very much within my vidding style – I like cutting to the beat. I tend to go a bit long on clips, though, so I intentionally decided to try out rapid cutting, and made sure I was cutting on 2, 3, and 4, not just always on 1. I even put in a few syncopated/off-beat transitions.
Still using Star Wars: the Old Republic as my source. This time, spoilers for the entire Jedi Consular story. As this vid uses the Big Idea I had for the Consular storyline, I made a full-length vid instead of limiting myself to 1 minute:
I think with fast cuts vs slow cuts my philosophy ended up being that clips that have a change of state (a hologram turning on/off, people entering/exiting the scene, etc) could go on for longer than ones where the action was "static" (people walking, zoom in on a face, etc) because those were, like, clips that had two things vs just one? I'm also glad to hear that the tension-building section worked, since that was one of the last ones I laid down - I knew what I had to do for the refrains, but that was mostly open space.
For our 3rd Vfxercise, let's play around with animated text. Make a 20-30 second edit, incorporating animated text in some way, with whatever vfx tool you choose. Looking forward to seeing what ppl create!
I used screencaps instead of video for ease of layer masking and so that the main attraction would be the text. I looked up typewriter effects for Blender, but the add-on that does that hasn't been updated for years, so I just used text moving in various directions, zooming in and out variously, and some judicious font/color choices. Again, I'm using Star Wars: the Old Republic, Jedi Consular story. Music is Indica - Niin tuleni teen, and the translation is all mine.
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.
I am interrupting the usual schedule of SWTOR because I had a terrible, terrible idea. And terrible ideas must be shared. So! Star Wars Prequel Trilogy time it is. I also think it works better if viewed in reverse order:
(Side note: I found an instrumental that had the same BPM as my original, which I think worked really well. The original was also cut in a more "leave space for text" fashion so I think it's a bit blah, while the betexted one has some direly necessary pizzazz.)
I wanted to make something that was fun, above all, to go with the song, so: maximalism on the text animations.
So the brief here is to make a one minute video where you let color guide the logic and flow, either by selection or special effects. OR: Produce a one minute vid where your guiding logic is lightbuilding. Try letting the flow and build of light guide your editing choices throughout.
The Ghost's Eulogy, another Star Wars: The Old Republic vid! This time using my Imperial Agent and stuff from one of the expansions – Knights of the Fallen Empire ch 2 has a very nice built-in vignette, and fit well with the dark and moody theme I was going for. I did some minor color grading to make stuff match better, but mostly here what I wanted to do was transitions. My happy place is sharp cuts, but here I intentionally only had a few of them and did fade-ins and fade-outs most of the time. Also some fades-through-white as a transition, which I'd seen a few times and really wanted to try out. I like to think it adds to the effect.
Produce a one minute video edit from your selected source focusing on a side character, making them the central character of your vid. Audio can be of your choosing. OR: Produce a one minute video edit that responds to/remixes another fanvid, Vexercise or other.
I didn't have a vid to respond to, so I went for the side character one and decided to do Mace Windu. (SWTOR's side characters usually stand to the side of the frame, so it would have been a bit hard to get 1min of good footage on literally anyone I have a fuck about.) Then, of course, I listened to my entire music catalogue in search of a song... and came up empty.
After a panicked listen-throughs of like three new to me albums that also came up empty, I decided to do something a little different. Usually my vids are at least mostly along the grain of the canon's intended reading, but I went for something a bit more across/against the grain than usual: Die Like a God. (Also I did a bunch of color grading as penance for the comparative lack for the last vid. *g*)
Deploy any and all of the Vexercise techniques to make the fan video edit of your heart, including but not limited to your chosen source and length entirely up to you! Try to deploy a combination of the various techniques you explored in the exercises along the way.
Common People, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy; class critique of Padmé Amidala. The song is, of course, Common People, though in the William Shatner cover, as that one went the hardest. I admit I pregamed a bit and did this in ~3 weeks instead of 2, but fuck it, it's 4:34 long.
I sort of wanted to do some mouth-flap matching for the speaky bits (so it comes across as, if not the characters actually having the dialogue, then Anakin doing a voiceover reminiscence of what happened over scenes of the thing happening) and then going for a more traditional vid-y direction for the singy bits. I also wanted to have the first "I want to live like common people" come from Padmé as Queen Amidala, making a royal decree, to really dig it in that she's not common people at all.
I used podracing as a stand-in for the pool and smoking, as there was footage available for it, and it works as a blood sport: Anakin, a slave, risks his neck for material benefit of the rich Queen, but has also been sent to compete just for the entertainment of others – yet what else is there to do on Tatooine than watch the pod races? What choice has he but to compete? And I am extremely proud of the way the whole Shmi dying/Anakin falling to his knees section and the "I want to sleep with common people like 9-year-old Anakin!" -> wedding segue turned out.
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