Special effects or no special effects

LenWidleheyt · Post by **LenWidleheyt** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:33 pm

I'm working on a very effects-heavy video right now, and it does take a whole lot of time. Finding just the right clips for a certain section and cutting them together in a well-timed way take lots of attention, but tweaking the effects after that takes almost as long, or longer, even when I have a clear picture of the effect before getting started on it. Usually this is because there are so many options when working with effects. Even if it's just a single color or blur effect it takes quite a while to adjust it so it's just the way you want it. Then when you preview it, you might realize it's not what you wanted after all, and you have to start over.

The most challenging part I'm working on right now is this section where I want the picture to be noisy just like a TV with really bad reception. The Premiere effects I've worked with so far are Wind, Noise, B&W, Roll, Horizontal Hold, Vertical Hold and Wave. The end result will probably be some combination of some of these. And then there's keyframing to time it all to the vid... Yes, some effects are very tedious to tweak if you want them just right. Of course, an "effect" could just be when you invert the colors and make the clip semi-transparent, but good effects take time.

By the way, if anyone knows a good way to make static TV-noise in Premiere, please drop a line.

Scandia · Post by **Scandia** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:46 pm

I honestly am not a fan of special effects. Not to be a basher, but Euphoria is really not my style "ducks". None of my AMVs have any special effects- and it is not due to ignorance of using them. Unless you count text, which I actually captured from a video game rather than writing it myself, I have done everything straightforward using anime or video game scenes.

Very often, effects-heavy AMVs seem to be more style than substance. They could easily use 5 scenes from an anime, have little if any lyric sync, yet throw in every effect in the book- yet people rate them high simply because of the variety of effects.

I honestly prefer something more straightforward. You can have a complex storyline and very high originality using just the scenes with little if any effects. In fact, this would be trickier because editing would have to be sharper- no effects to cover up transitions. I don't think I am an old school editor, though. My first AMV was made in 2003, and I did not make most of them till this year.

JCD · Post by **JCD** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:09 pm

If you like effects, do them. If you don't like them, let it be.
Anything else just limits your fun and the pleasure your own video gives to yourself

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:13 pm

LenWidleheyt wrote: By the way, if anyone knows a good way to make static TV-noise in Premiere, please drop a line. :wink:

Record it off a TV. It worked pretty well for me.

Scandia wrote: Very often, effects-heavy AMVs seem to be more style than substance. They could easily use 5 scenes from an anime, have little if any lyric sync, yet throw in every effect in the book- yet people rate them high simply because of the variety of effects.

This, obviously, is no argument for shunning effect work. There is nothing preventing people from using digital trickery to enhance and create substance.

In any case, this thread is going off-topic, so here's my attempt to steer it back on track:

downwithpants wrote:my argument is that effects mean another step to the amv making process.

So does extremely careful timing, scene selection, recontextualization, ...

You can omit the effects step and still end up with a longer creation time then some guy who worships at the feet of Adobe, Apple, and discreet.

bum · Post by **bum** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 2:24 pm

Effects are hard, realy hard to make consistent with a vid without being repetitive. Its a unique creative challenge, one that I'l take up, some day. Till then, ya gota admit that this looks good, despite taking 20something layers. It was actualy prty somple to do, just a long and repetitive proces of copying part of a scene to a new layer, applying a filter, changing its setings a bit, repeat.

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:03 pm

trythil wrote:So does extremely careful timing, scene selection, recontextualization, ...

These steps are present in both effects and non-effects videos. The effects step is a step that is present in effects video but not in non-effects videos.

trythil wrote:You can omit the effects step and still end up with a longer creation time then some guy who worships at the feet of Adobe, Apple, and discreet.

By "longer", I'm referring to the mean creation times (in theory) rather than individual videos. I was hoping my figure would illustrate this.

tuathaanwarrior · Post by **tuathaanwarrior** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:38 pm

I think the problem is that so many videos have been full of effects and come out pretty crappy that now ppl assume that when effects are used in a vid the creater didnt pay attention to other stuff. I agree with downwithpants because you can put just as much effort into the scene selection and story of a vid and then add effects on top of that.

tuathaanwarrior · Post by **tuathaanwarrior** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:39 pm

tuathaanwarrior wrote:I think the problem is that so many videos have been full of effects and come out pretty crappy that now ppl assume that when effects are used in a vid the creater didnt pay attention to other stuff. I agree with downwithpants because you can put just as much effort into the scene selection and story of a vid and then add effects on top of that.

Forgot to mention that these videos that have both substance and effects can be quite rare and i think that has caused a lot of the anti-effect sentiment.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:36 pm

downwithpants wrote:
trythil wrote:So does extremely careful timing, scene selection, recontextualization, ...
These steps are present in both effects and non-effects videos.

The inclusion isn't implicit. To illustrate, I can throw together a bunch of clips with absolutely no regard to clip choice or any of that other stuff, but I can go crazy on the effect work.

Because the inclusion isn't implicit, your figure is incorrect.

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:00 pm

trythil wrote:
downwithpants wrote:
trythil wrote:So does extremely careful timing, scene selection, recontextualization, ...
These steps are present in both effects and non-effects videos.
The inclusion isn't implicit. To illustrate, I can throw together a bunch of clips with absolutely no regard to clip choice or any of that other stuff, but I can go crazy on the effect work.

Because the inclusion isn't implicit, your figure is incorrect.

The inclusion of careful timing, scene selection, recontextualization, etc. isn't implicit for either effectsy or non-effectsy videos (i.e. throwing together a bunch of clips can be done with either video.) - Both types of videos show variability in the time dedicated to these factors. Theoretically, both types of videos should have the same distribution of videos with respect to the amount of time dedicated to these factors (which is why both curves have the same shape). However, the same can't be said for time dedicated to effort.

To note, I should have said "variables" instead of "steps."