Part II: Video Montages Tech Talk Tutorial

This article is the second part of our continuing series on the technical side of creating video montages for weddings, sweet 16s, quinceaneras, or bar / bat mitzvahs. If you have not read the first part, Google first, before reading the second part.

When we last quit, he had successfully navigated past the PAL / NTSC option, decided if he wanted his montage to be 4: 3 / Full Frame or 16: 9 / Widescreen, and chose whether or not to create his video montage hi-definition video, commonly known as high definition, or standard definition video, also known as standard definition.

You should also have figured out how to import your photos and video clips into your project, and now you’re ready to go.

An entertaining montage for an event like a wedding, bar or bat mitzvah, sweet 16 or quinceañera is most effective when telling a story. Instead of just going from one photo to another while some background music is playing, you want the montage to enlighten the audience about who is the subject of the montage, making him, her (or them), the (s) ) person (s) are, as evidenced by photos, video clips, music, voice-over and graphics. I won’t spend too much time explaining how to best accomplish this, as this series focuses primarily on the technicalities of creating a montage and that falls a little further into the creative zone, but there is some overlap here, so I’ll play some of the technical tools used to create an effective montage.

The basic elements that comprise an assembly are the following:

1. Picture / images
2. Sound
3. Titles or graphics;
4. Transitions;
5. Special effects

“Image”, or images seen in a montage are primarily (a) conservation over a period of time in a photograph; or (b) allow a video clip to play for a specified duration.

With photos, montage will be infinitely more enjoyable if you can use “camera shake” for as long as the photo is on the screen. Different software packages will allow you to create these movements in different ways, with the end result allowing “camera shake” to zoom in, zoom out, or move in any way across the image. The speed at which motion will occur depends on how long the photo is on the screen and how large the motion is that you program.

For example, suppose you have a nice, wide photograph of a person standing on a beach, and the entire figure of the person is only half the height of the photograph. If the photo will be on the screen for two seconds and you program the computer to start showing the entire photo and then you want it to end up close to the person’s face, well that’s a big move it will happen in two seconds and the move getting there will be relatively quick. It will appear slower if you lengthen the time the photo stays on the screen, or if you choose an end point that is not as drastically different as the starting point, such as going from the entire photo to finish framing the person from their head to the knees instead of just the face. This would require slower camera movement to get there.

Just like in a movie, camera movements also serve to point out aspects of photography to the viewer. They help “tell a story”. If you start to zoom in on the photograph and then “pull back” to reveal another object or person, the viewer has a certain transmitted feeling, that is, “Look at Little Mikey having fun on the beach there. Oh, he’s there with cousin Bobby! Or, if he starts wide in a photograph of a group of people, the viewer will first catch the whole group at once … but if he then approaches a particular person, the Camera movement will focus the viewer’s attention to Perhaps pointing to something about that person, ie “look at Lisa’s expression! She is rolling her eyes at the person next to her. “In this way, you can make a still photo much more exciting and informative by passing the information on bit by bit.

Keep in mind that camera movements are also effective when they are not repeatedly the same, but rather varied, that is, they sometimes start broad and get closer; other times starting close and pulling back widely.

Video clips should be chosen to help add to the story about the person featured in the montage. Be careful not to use a clip that is too long – keep asking yourself what is the shortest length where the purpose of the clip has been conveyed, and then continue on to the next material.

The sound can be the audio from the video clip, or a selection of music, voiceovers, or sound effects, or a combination of all. Obviously, with photographs there will be no natural sound, so all of the above can be used to make photography more interesting. Also, just because a video clip has sound doesn’t mean it can’t have more sound, like music or sound effects added to it. Also, there may be cases where you don’t want to hear the natural sound of the video clip, but just want to use the clip for your images, with a different soundtrack behind. Image and audio should always be viewed as two separate elements, and you have unlimited freedom to change, regardless of whether there was anything there in the first place. Again, these options are the ones that combine to help you tell a story through montage.

Titles or graphics are elements created in your editing system (or elsewhere) that convey visual information. Titles may appear on black (or other colors or backgrounds), or may be added on top of a photograph or video clip. Titles and graphics can be an effective way to convey information in your “story” and also serve to add some variety to the visual impact of your montage, so that the viewer has a momentary break from looking at photos and video clips. This can be used to separate sections of the montage for a purpose, or to build a particular photograph or video.

Transitions are the methods in which you switch from visual to visual. The simplest is known as a slice, which simply replaces one image with the next at a particular video frame or point in time. For montages, cuts can be effective when they occur to the beat or to the beat of the music. Cuts can also be purposely jarring or not.

A softer or smoother way to switch from one image to another is with a dissolve or erase effect. A dissolution is a gradual replacement of one image with another over a period of time, which can be adjusted in length. Essentially, one image fades while the other fades, creating a more lyrical shift from one to the other. A “cleaning” can come in many different ways. The image can slide off the screen while the other image slides; can rotate, bend, detach; shrinkage; There are circular wipes, page flip wipes, pixel wipes, etc. As computers have become more sophisticated and software packages more developed, the number of “preset” wipes has only increased.

A word of caution. Watch out for the wipes!

They may look great when you first look at them, but if you wear too many too often they can be distracting and ultimately seem cheesy or cheap instead of cool, the opposite effect that you might have been thinking. Cuts and solutions are the “most elegant” tools in my opinion, with the occasional use of creative cleaning, an effective way to bring some variation to the montage. But use them sparingly! Just because you have it, doesn’t mean you have to use it!

Special effects can also be effective if used sometimes. A trend that has reached event montages but is beginning to enter the “cheesy” area is the use of green screen compositing with video clips. This is where a character in a clip (usually recently created for this purpose) is inserted or composed into another background or moving image, such as a familiar movie. The biggest meat I have with this is not so much the idea itself, but rather the poor quality of the composition work. The green screen / composition is difficult to do well. In fact, I directed a conventional film where we filmed two thirds of the film in front of a green screen. It was a movie called Gamebox 1.0 (look it up on video or TV!), And the story involved a video game tester who is literally inside a video game, and the only way out is to win the game. (The upcoming movie Tron has a similar premise.) So I am very familiar with green screen work. To get the green screen right, you need to use the right tools and shoot in a certain way to make the integration look credible. If you can’t get it right, don’t do it at all, IMO! There, I have said my peace.

Obviously with special effects in general, if you “add” to the montage story, then great, do it. If so, then don’t do it. Sometimes simplicity is the best way to tell a story.

Now is the time for you to take care of assembling the assembly using all the elements described above. Happy assembly!

That concludes the second part of our series …

Stay tuned for Part 3 of the Tech Talk Video Montages Tutorial, which will cover the technicalities of completing a montage and preparing for your big screen debut.

Conceive How YOU TOO Can Easily be a Recording Line Querier Effort Postpaid To Drama Recording Games at National!: Click Here