I've watched other AMVs which clearly add pans / zooms and camera motion in general. For example:
I've watched enough Haurhi dance to know when the camera is edited. And I've also seen enough DBZ to know that its basically composed of completely still-scenes with little-to-no camera motion. Yet, l33tmeatwad and ZaCloud here have managed to make the camera motions seem pretty natural.
I've basically got one "technique" mastered, where you zoom in (or out) to match the new location of a character. For example, in "I Ain't Marryin' No Friggin' Horse!!!" at ~7 to 8 seconds in, the camera zooms to make Haruhi move to the new location. This eases in the cut and makes things look "smoother" overall. However, whenever I try to make the camera "dance" with the music (Ex: around 10 to 12 seconds with Asahina), things just don't seem to work at all for me. It just never looks quite as sharp as ZaCloud does it here.
Moving on to Mother's day Special, I've picked up that very slight amounts of zoom applied consistently over a period can really spice up a video. From 0:16 through 0:20, Mother's day Special has a very slow zoom. I can see how this works, and generally I personally can get long-slow zooms working decently in my own videos.
However, at 0:22 through 0:24, l33tmeatwad also makes the camera "dance". (Oh dang // what is it dog // I forgot it's mother's day). Not only is it on beat, but the camera motion really spices up an otherwise plain lip-sync scene. 0:45 (Lyrics: My mom has been so sad) has l33tmeatwad use a paused frame + slight zoom out, followed by an intense zoom-out+unpause of the video. Its these sorts of intense zooms / pans that I can't seem to make look natural at all. Especially when the camera continues to move before and after the major pan.
(Lyrics: I'm counting on you cause I can't do it myself) 2:25 is probably my favorite zoom_out in the video.
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Anyway, my current methodology is purely "guess and check". I spend few minutes messing with camera motion, and then look at the video... and then erase it and start again. I'm wondering if anyone has a methodology they'd like to share... or maybe if everyone else is just messing with camera settings randomly until things make sense. Somehow, I feel like the more experienced editors might be able to drop me a tip. So... please help?
Also, it helps when the source footage already has awesome pans / zooms. I can use those easily.
. I'm more curious about adding good camera motion to moving video (like both the videos above)
