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Post by obsessive24 on Dec 5, 2011 10:44:31 GMT -5
So much of what you read is 'cut to the beat, cut to the beat' that you feel you *have* to do that. Really?  Where did you read that? It feels so counterintuitive to most vids/vidders I know that I find it very strange it's being touted as the must-do thing somewhere. Not that I don't believe you, but clearly it's coming from outside my little corner of the internet and I'm just curious. ;D Unless they mean "make your visuals follow the beat", which makes more sense if they don't actually mean you have to place the physical cut on the beat all the time... |
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Post by rokikurama on Dec 5, 2011 11:06:35 GMT -5
winterjasmine
I think you could do it either way, ripping the sounds right along with your clip or realizing you'd like them later and going back to get them. Either way, what you'll need is for the video and the audio to be in separate tracks in your editing program. That way you can mess with the volume, fade, etc. of the source's sound, since you want the fancy BANG and WHAP but not their music, probably.
Make sense? I'd be happy to talk about this more/screen-cap it over the in the tech thread (after, ah, this week since I've got two papers due and am about to be handed 60 exams to grade).
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Post by franzeska on Dec 5, 2011 11:29:41 GMT -5
So much of what you read is 'cut to the beat, cut to the beat' that you feel you *have* to do that. Really? Where did you read that? It feels so counterintuitive to most vids/vidders I know that I find it very strange it's being touted as the must-do thing somewhere. I've seen numerous AMV editors say that vids are inferior to AMVs because vidders "don't know how to cut to the beat". Now whether that means people have spent so long looking at animated footage they've forgotten how different animated and live action internal motion are or whether it means they're seeing only bad vids or whether it means they're watching old VCR vids with an aesthetic they can't get into, I don't know. But I've seen it a lot. I've seen it other places too, but usually more as an explanation of how one would do that if one wanted to, not an absolute rule. |
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Post by obsessive24 on Dec 5, 2011 11:51:11 GMT -5
Ah, it makes more sense if it were in an AMV context, I think. There is a lot of visual subtlety in live action that isn't always present in anime. I can see how the AMV aesthetic developed out of the way the medium looks; just as I can see how a somewhat different live action aesthetic developed out of how that medium looks. I do wonder if these AMV editors are sometimes comparing apples and oranges and calling the oranges "bad apples" because they're pretty poor apples by apple standards... although that's entirely because - surprise - they're not apples to begin with.
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Post by legoline on Dec 5, 2011 12:29:02 GMT -5
Where did you read that? It feels so counterintuitive to most vids/vidders I know that I find it very strange it's being touted as the must-do thing somewhere. Not the OP but I, for one, learned that from studying other people's vids, I guess. I just figured that cutting clips on the beat seemed to be the "right" thing stylewise. Also, just to let you know, people, your advice about treating fight scenes like dancing choreographies and having the motion on the beat rather than cutting on the beat was gold. I think I'm finally getting somewhere with that sequence. And now I feel I need to go over the entire vid again to smooth more things out ;D |
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Post by dragonchic on Dec 5, 2011 18:48:14 GMT -5
Besides needing to work around entirely static shots, fast beat-oriented cutting often works well in animation because movement and expressions tend to be much more dramatic. A lot more can happen within a few frames than is possible in real life, meaning you can convey more in a short clip. Although I started out vidding animation that's not something I really noticed until going back to it after a few years of live-action vidding. ETA: Not to ignore the thread topic entirely or anything, just don't have anything useful to add. As others have said, focusing on internal motion is basically the secret to vidding action sequences well. Once you get the hang of that it's a lot of fun IMO. I would make all of my vids action vids except I'm fairly sure Nicky and others would yell at me.  |
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Post by obsessive24 on Dec 6, 2011 2:57:37 GMT -5
A lot more can happen within a few frames than is possible in real life, meaning you can convey more in a short clip. That's a really interesting observation! Is that something you found in anime as well as western animation? LOL. With certainty. |
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Post by dragonchic on Dec 6, 2011 13:46:57 GMT -5
It depends on the style of animation, but in general I think the idea holds for both, particularly when it comes to facial expressions. The fact that they're often so exaggerated means you don't have to linger on someone quite as long for the viewer to grasp what they're feeling. And of course the fact that they're drawings means you're often getting movement that isn't humanly possible in action scenes.
Of course on the Western animation side my experience is biased towards superhero cartoons, so that may play a role.
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Post by winterjasmine on Dec 6, 2011 16:58:03 GMT -5
So much of what you read is 'cut to the beat, cut to the beat' that you feel you *have* to do that. Really? Where did you read that? It feels so counterintuitive to most vids/vidders I know that I find it very strange it's being touted as the must-do thing somewhere. Not that I don't believe you, but clearly it's coming from outside my little corner of the internet and I'm just curious. ;D Unless they mean "make your visuals follow the beat", which makes more sense if they don't actually mean you have to place the physical cut on the beat all the time... I've always taken it to mean 'cut to the beat' i.e place a cut on a beat, rather than 'make your visuals follow the beat'. This thread was one of the first places I'd seen that discussed and even promoted. I don't know exactly where I picked that up, and it may just be that I've simply been miss-understanding all this time!  As an aside, this is not something I picked up in AMV circles, having never been there!  winterjasmineI think you could do it either way, ripping the sounds right along with your clip or realizing you'd like them later and going back to get them. Either way, what you'll need is for the video and the audio to be in separate tracks in your editing program. That way you can mess with the volume, fade, etc. of the source's sound, since you want the fancy BANG and WHAP but not their music, probably. Make sense? I'd be happy to talk about this more/screen-cap it over the in the tech thread (after, ah, this week since I've got two papers due and am about to be handed 60 exams to grade). :nods: makes sense  Not sure how I make it work, and would love to revisit this in the tech folder when you're not so busy! Jaz |
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Post by astarte on Dec 6, 2011 17:24:05 GMT -5
There are a lot of ways to match visuals to the music, but I never followed the 'cut to the beat' strictly. It often didn't feel natural or plain forced, if I gave the beat too much emphasis. 'Make the visuals follow the beat' looks more natural to me. Impact of a fist or the likes.
The different aesthetics of anime vs. live action that dragonchic mentioned are a good observation and perhaps a reason, why I can't really connect emotional with AMVs. Besides never having watched a series of it. AMV editors just place more significance on things, I often don't care about or even 'see as changes' because I'm not familiar with the source. But I totally get into it, if a vidder does something with animated source like Charmax's Misunderstood.
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Post by obsessive24 on Dec 7, 2011 6:34:41 GMT -5
I feel like I'm insinuating certain things because I don't want to come right out and step on anyone's toes, but rereading this thread, I think it's worthwhile to make my personal position clear on this. To be blunt, "you should always cut on the beat" is the kind of advice that I would have given when I first started live-action vidding, and I like to think that I have moved onto more effective techniques since then. I'm not saying "don't cut on the beat ever", but for me, timing the contents of the clip to the music is far more important than actually trying to time my cuts to the music. Imma post an example between an older vid and a newer vid of mine. Neither is really "action" - sorry for going off-topic a bit here. This is a The OC vid that I made when I first started vidding. (password: beat)Check out the very uniform cutting of most clips on the beat, especially from 0:27 onward. That was basically all that I cared about. Rewatching this vid, some specific moments stand out for me... and I think those are the moments where the internal motion hits the beat, not where I'm cutting to the beat. (Admittedly I wasn't cutting to the beat all that accurately either...) This is a The OC vid that I made a couple of years ago. (password: beat) I picked this one because I actually still happened to cut to the beat a lot because that was a specific stylistic choice for this vid, but hopefully you can also see that it's no longer my main concern. There is a lot more focus on internal motion landing on the beat and musical layers (e.g. 0:25, 0:29, 0:54, etc, etc), or on camera motion (external motion). You tell me which one looks more effective: cutting to the beat slavishly because I feel like that's what I'm supposed to do? Or using it only as one possible technique amongst a selection of other techniques? (I'm hoping everyone's gonna say "the latter", but this may well bite me spectacularly on the ass. ;D ) |
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Post by thedothatgirl on Dec 7, 2011 7:26:49 GMT -5
I love editing action/fight scenes. Not particularly profficient but I get a real buzz from it. Like most of the posts here I just look at it like it's dancing. I tend to focus mainly on the internal motion to coincide with the music rather than strict beat editing though.
My favourite thing is to see various fight scenes intercut so that a punch is thrown in one scene and you cut to a different fight where it lands. Great if you can pull it off.
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Post by franzeska on Dec 7, 2011 14:15:21 GMT -5
I feel like I'm insinuating certain things because I don't want to come right out and step on anyone's toes, but rereading this thread, I think it's worthwhile to make my personal position clear on this. To be blunt, "you should always cut on the beat" is the kind of advice that I would have given when I first started live-action vidding, and I like to think that I have moved onto more effective techniques since then. I think that's an important thing to keep in mind about most advice. When I told people I wanted to try vidding, the first thing they told me was not to read too much meta because I'd psych myself out. (Of course, meta I disagree with is more likely to send me off to make epic talkyface vids out of spite, but it's a good point in general.) But anyway, even aside from whether a person giving advice is a good vidder themselves or is a good teacher who can effectively explain to other people what makes their vids so great, I think there's also an effect that some advice is just easier to explain. Cutting on the beat is an extremely obvious, defined thing that doesn't require any example videos or diagrams. It's not all that subjective either in most music. It's not the be all and end all of good editing, but it's pretty common for an individual cut that's just off the beat to be jarring, so it can be helpful to point out to someone who has only just started to think about how editing works. Editing so that action falls on the beat or goes with the music somehow gets into the whole question of musicality. It's quite subjective and quite hard to explain without showing examples. I think that's one reason you see so many "rules" that aren't really rules and aren't really helpful: they're the most obvious, non-subjective things you can explain in a couple of sentences to a really wide audience. |
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Post by littleheaven on Dec 8, 2011 6:51:42 GMT -5
I do wholeheartedly agree about getting the contents of the clip timed with the music. And often that means cutting before the beat to get the main movement in the clip on the beat(s). I guess rather than cutting religiously on the beat, it would feel fine to me to just make sure I was cutting on a natural accent in the music, be it an instrumental one or a vocal one, so the cut didn't just look random and unplanned. As a viewer, I find cuts that seem to have no reason to be where they fall, a bit jarring.
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Post by fabella on Dec 13, 2011 6:50:42 GMT -5
*points*
I know it sounds counter-intuitive to recommend a vidder not cut to the beat, when we've promoted this so much over the years, but I don't think you're saying that, because what I do think you're saying is something I can relate to entirely. Beat cutting was of ultimate importance when I first realized vidding was a thing. Over the years, I still find it important but I've realized it's more important to follow my instincts, especially since I am terrible with counting music. I rewatch some of my earlier work and parts of it feel very rigid and awkward to me. I would still say to a newer vidder - "hey, listen to the music, mark it up a little, try to cut to it, there are these things called beats that really integrate visual with sound" --- but I would also say, "but above all, vid by feel. Check out the different sounds in the song. Are what the lyrics saying more prominent or important than the music somewhere? Go for it!"
Beats are not a cage! Music is not rigid. It vibes! I used to mark every single beat and sound on my timeline before I would start vidding. These days I go in, toss some clips down, do some marking beats here and there, and adjust the clips if they sound like they are in the wrong spot. My timeline is quite marked up, but it's a process that's much less restricting now. I don't know if it's made my vids worse or better, but I'm happy. ;D
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Where did you read that? It feels so counterintuitive to most vids/vidders I know that I find it very strange it's being touted as the must-do thing somewhere. Not that I don't believe you, but clearly it's coming from outside my little corner of the internet and I'm just curious. ;D
Not sure how I make it work, and would love to revisit this in the tech folder when you're not so busy! 
