Friday, September 28, 2012

Pop Quiz "Answers" - Editing Tricks for Amateur Vacation Video

Can the "Thailand Chiang Mai: 1994" be saved?

Overwhelming response was to "Throw that clip into the trash bin!"
I pretty much agree.  That clip is unusable as shown.  Since our goal is to entertain our audience, we have to worry about pacing, and need to be ruthless in throwing away scenes that don't work.

Having said that, let's have some fun just thinking about how we could salvage some value from this clip.  Perhaps not used in today's production, but held as our personal "Stock footage" and placed into some  future video.


Here's the shot list:
00:10 - 00:17 ringing a huge gong in a Buddhist temple.  
00:19 - 00:25 a stick is used to tap a smaller bell 
00:27 - 00:32 walking dolly toward a foggy lookout point.

All of these clips have problematic natural sound.  
The gong was tapped politely so it does not resonate.  But imagine using a sound effect.  Perhaps we could make it ring loudly.  Or an unexpected sound happens ... a cartoon horn or firecracker sound!  Superimpose a title and that becomes the introduction to a chapter!

Use reverse, fast, and/or slow motion to repeat the action and it becomes a drum roll.  Other video effects might work too ... over-saturated colors, lightning or fire.

Similar effects might be used with the smaller bell.  Or the bell strikes could be timed to some music.

With a little work, the camera move toward the lookout might even be used somewhere as a transition.

----


Thanks for reading!   In my next post we'll be getting back to #22 of my History of Vacation Video.  That post will reveal an advance in amateur video technology that happened in 1997.


1 comment:

Please post your comments and share your ideas: