OT: What NOT to do with FCP

Edited on FCP using Livetype and a a bit of Boris

Hot Hot Hot!!!

Please...make the bad man stop.

I had first year video students who did better work than this stuff...


Yikes.

Oh, you found this too eh? Hee! I have no doubt that this guy was once aided by people either here, or Apple or the Cow.

Makes you NOT want to go to that college, don't it?

oh my god...I love the beggining....you know when it's black and the video is loading and you hanve't seen the first frame of video yet...that's awesome...the blakc is so crist. oh and the end when the video fades to black...specially when it's totally black...everything else...oh oh oh...wait....i gotta puke.....
....- five minutes later.....

oh i feel better

"the blakc is so crist"

The black is Christ? Careful....

(LOL)

oh sweet mother of GOD!
i REALLY hope that is a joke, joke, joke!

I just love the damn song. It's classic. I can picture the group of singers in the recording studio snorting...something.

One thing it it's favor. They avoided the page peel. That must have taken extraordinary discipline what with the producers, yelling, "Hey, that clock wipe is cool."

i LOVE when they bring up the shot of the black guy - suddenly a black "soulful" voice starts singing - SUPERB bit of editing!!! almost magical in fact!!!

Subtitles on the song...?

Cheesy guitar/sax/organ solo and Jennifer Warnes-esque female lead singer?

Border of trees with nothing to see?

It's got to be a "Shining"-type spoof. It can't be real.

They didn't even have enough video footage. All those damn stills. I've done better bat mitzvah videos than this.

I'll send my kid to this university...if I want him to die of humiliation.

wayne granzin wrote:

> i LOVE when they bring up the shot of the black guy - suddenly
> a black "soulful" voice starts singing - SUPERB bit of
> editing!!! almost magical in fact!!!

A producer was overheard yelling at the editor, "Damnit man, can't we find at least one more African American to put in this thing?"

Just goes to show you that FCP should not be available to anyone with a couple of hundred bucks to burn.

How many solos are there? A guitar solo, sax solo and a synth solo? Not many artists can say they have 3 solos in one song.

My only question is:

When does the sequel come out?

They probably advertised on Craigslist for a free editor in return for credit, a copy on DVD and lunch.



Craig Seeman
[thirdplanetvideo.com]

JC wrote:

> Just goes to show you that FCP should not be available to
> anyone with a couple of hundred bucks to burn.

No, it was surely a pirated copy. No pays $1200 for software and then does this.



Craig Seeman
[thirdplanetvideo.com]

> No, it was surely a pirated copy. No pays $1200 for software and then does
> this.

(Singsong)

You...might...be...surpriiiiised....

Ever seen a doofus amateur editor go down the list of transitions one by one, in consecutive alphabetical order?

ok, so everyone search the forum for a post that was like:

Hey all. i need to have a word fly in from the left and a ball of sorta 'sparkler-fire' come in from the right. how do you do that?

oh yeah, how do you make subtitles that follow a song?

thanks
?

Thanx, Mike. You made iced tea shoot through my nose from 3500 miles away.

ROTFLMAO :O

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

You guys are a bunch of snobs.

Yes...yes we are.

I agree Scott, it's not good manners to publicly humiliate anyone or in this case any 2 or 3, but sometimes you just got to say, "ah..the hell with it, lets have some fun."

So I guess I shouldn't admit the work was mine (and got paid $7500 for that).

Haven't you ever had a client say: "Yes you have to use all the photos, there's company politics involved . . . and here's the budget . . . "

You look at After Effects, look at Combustion, Motion, you think about the budget and say to yourself "I'll take it but they only get 2 hours of my time"

The BIG difference is you're smart enough NOT to post it on YouTube . . . but the client does so proudly and you wished you'd given him a pseudonym.

Back in my "big iron" facilities days with D2 Machines and PreRead I worked with a client paying $300/hr and he wanted a page turn after every edit (and the edits were short). Let's just say the client got what he wanted and my boss was very happy the client was so pleased with my work.



Craig Seeman
[thirdplanetvideo.com]

<You guys are a bunch of snobs.>

On the contrary, I have spent most of my professional career steering newbies AWAY from editing this kind of crap...oh wait, you're right! I AM a snob!

Seriously, this "video" is gawdawful, and deserves to pummelled with a rusty hammer until it's dead, dead, dead.





"I'm just a Simple Cave Man Lawyer. Your world frightens and confuses me." - Phil Hartman

> You look at After Effects, look at Combustion, Motion, you think about the
> budget and say to yourself "I'll take it but they only get 2 hours of my time"

You made some good points, Craig, but come on...with a professional editor, even with only two hours to do this, s/he would never come up with something as aesthetically inept as this! This was a case where if I had to cut this in one hour, I'd:

a) Start off with the video shot on its own as the background of the titles -- and the titles would be just the university's own logo, which looked OK;

b) Choose a different damn song;

c) Just cross-dissolve or fade-in-fade-out between pictures -- simple is better than cheesy.

I don't think technical ineptitude is the only problem here; it's lack of taste. All of us acquire that sense over time, and this person clearly hasn't. On the other hand, I've seen perfectly decent videos made by first-time filmmakers, and I've also run kids' videography workshops with children anywhere between six and 17 years old where, with a little guidance, they were able to steer clear of the nacho deluxe.

I suspect they were limited to the material on hand. Given the same material. Only that long slow moving scenic, a bunch of stills and the requirement that you must use that music, what would you do?

Certainly tossing the captions would have bought more time to do creative work with the stills. What would you do given this material?

One might allow for a VO to take this in a scripted direction but I can even imagine the editor being told you must use the song in its entirety.



Craig Seeman
[thirdplanetvideo.com]

derekmok wrote:

> > You look at After Effects, look at Combustion, Motion, you
> think about the
> > budget and say to yourself "I'll take it but they only get 2
> hours of my time"
>
> You made some good points, Craig, but come on...with a
> professional editor, even with only two hours to do this, s/he
> would never come up with something as aesthetically inept as
> this! This was a case where if I had to cut this in one hour,
> I'd:
>
> a) Start off with the video shot on its own as the background
> of the titles -- and the titles would be just the university's
> own logo, which looked OK;

MUCH better of course.

>
> b) Choose a different damn song;

My bet is that wasn't an option. School internal politics and someone said you MUST cut it to this music and use the song in its entirety.

>
> c) Just cross-dissolve or fade-in-fade-out between pictures --
> simple is better than cheesy.

I agree. One might actually use some "motion control aka Ken Burns" to emphasize elements. Doesn't have to be slow moves either. Maybe some jump cuts in closer or accross a still.

>
> I don't think technical ineptitude is the only problem here;
> it's lack of taste.

I can't help but think someone was pressed for time. I've had low budget clients that say they're only paying for x hours and that's it. You show them a dissolve and they so "too slow" and demand something cute. You show them the simple DVE type move and they say "go with it." You barely have enough time to do that little spin with the sax still.

What I would have done is told the client there's no need for the captions and would have spent the gained time doing something more interesting with the stills.


> All of us acquire that sense over time,
> and this person clearly hasn't. On the other hand, I've seen
> perfectly decent videos made by first-time filmmakers, and I've
> also run kids' videography workshops with children anywhere
> between six and 17 years old where, with a little guidance,
> they were able to steer clear of the nacho deluxe.



Craig Seeman
[thirdplanetvideo.com]

> My bet is that wasn't an option. School internal politics and someone said
> you MUST cut it to this music and use the song in its entirety.

Here's where I'd raise my long-standing objection to cutting to music. For several reasons: a) If you change the music, you're screwed; b) Cutting dead to music locks you into picture edits that don't necessarily fit the rhythm of the footage. Modern music video sucks because directors, producers and editors think the "one" beat is the only place you can put a cut. When in reality, the best place for rhythm cuts is often right before or after the beat.

Oh, and I'm pretty convinced the song is a student/faculty production. The mishmash of voices and instruments suggests they were trying to fit everybody in rather than build a coherent arrangement.

> I can't help but think someone was pressed for time.

Nah...points that are obviously bad to us mean that this is somebody who doesn't know what s/he is doing.

> You show them a dissolve and they so "too slow" and demand something
> cute.

Given the ineptitude of the footage, I get the feeling this is a client that can be persuaded. I've talked many a middle-aged Mom out of bad editing decisions on their bat mitzvah videos to go with something more elegant. They see the results and they tend to agree to go my way!

Of course, middle-aged Moms are probably a little less egotistical than some art director at some little institution who thinks s/he is the second coming of Fellini or Lang. "I WANT A CLOCK WIPE! YOUR OPINION DOESN'T MATTER, MR. PROFESSIONAL EDITOR!"

why was the quality of the images so poor? Was it because they used Livetype? Do the Livetype effects produce poor images? Or was it the complexity and the length of the video that required too much compression?

derekmok wrote:

> > My bet is that wasn't an option. School internal politics and
> someone said
> > you MUST cut it to this music and use the song in its
> entirety.
>
> Here's where I'd raise my long-standing objection to cutting to
> music. For several reasons: a) If you change the music,
> you're screwed; b) Cutting dead to music locks you into picture
> edits that don't necessarily fit the rhythm of the footage.

I agree. Often the feel of the video needs to lead the music and NOT the other way around. The challenge is how to make the music a bed rather than a lead. Certainly doing that frees to the editor to pace the stills and possible creative use of movement therein.

> Modern music video sucks because directors, producers and
> editors think the "one" beat is the only place you can put a
> cut. When in reality, the best place for rhythm cuts is often
> right before or after the beat.

and one needs to think in terms of musical phrases rather than beats. It's like reducing things to cutting on "consonants" of speech without regard to the content of the sentence, paragraph, story, changes in mood and emphasis rather than beats.


>
> Oh, and I'm pretty convinced the song is a student/faculty
> production. The mishmash of voices and instruments suggests
> they were trying to fit everybody in rather than build a
> coherent arrangement.

And that may well be part of the "political" dictate on what and how things were used. The editor being coerced into make the song "lead" rather than the content of the stills and how motion might have indicated mood and spirit.

>
> > I can't help but think someone was pressed for time.
>
> Nah...points that are obviously bad to us mean that this is
> somebody who doesn't know what s/he is doing.

I may have mentioned in another post about the client I once worked with who wanted a page turn after every shot. The like page turns, wanted lots of them and didn't want to hear anything different. Sometimes you just have to give up and push the buttons for the client (and NEVER show it on YouTube).


>
> > You show them a dissolve and they so "too slow" and demand
> something
> > cute.
>
> Given the ineptitude of the footage, I get the feeling this is
> a client that can be persuaded. I've talked many a middle-aged
> Mom out of bad editing decisions on their bat mitzvah videos to
> go with something more elegant. They see the results and they
> tend to agree to go my way!

See above. Sometimes the client is a clinker. Sometimes this is exacerbated when the editor is a newbie and can't find the persuasive "preview" to change the direction of a project.

>
> Of course, middle-aged Moms are probably a little less
> egotistical than some art director at some little institution
> who thinks s/he is the second coming of Fellini or Lang. "I
> WANT A CLOCK WIPE! YOUR OPINION DOESN'T MATTER, MR.
> PROFESSIONAL EDITOR!"

Yup, that's the client I'm talking about.

I do think of the challenge as sort of a video makeover so that's why I've thrown out the question. Given the constraints, you only have the video, stills and music they've used and must use the music in its entirety - What would you do to improve this piece? Let's assume as you say, time wasn't the issue.



Craig Seeman
[thirdplanetvideo.com]

>>> You guys are a bunch of snobs. <<<

Hey Scott Taylor,

You're damn skippy

Lighten up, man. Like Mike says...sometimes ya just gotta have some fun. It's the CLIENT'S FAULT anyway...they were too cheap to pay for a proper production. Sometimes something is just so bad that it turns to comedy. This sample makes my old Toaster Wedding videos look like Star Wars.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Personally I thought it was hillarious! I think most of you are over thinking it. After all, it's APPALACHIAN State University. I bet the video was made by the Professor of their Film/Video major.

I'm gonna have that song in my head all day.

"Even when the weather is cold cold cold. Appalachian State is Hot Hot Hot!!!"

Priceless

Andy