Mondrian Style Editing

Hello lafcpug!

Any ideas for a tutorial on how to edit video with asymmetrically
inset, alternating video, a la Piet Mondrian? There was a
recent film called "The Tracy Fragments" that utilized such a style.
Are there any good motion templates for this sort of look?

watch this trailer to see the style I'm referring to:

[www.apple.com]

Basically looking to have talking head interviews and a whole bunch of diverse b-roll inset around them as they speak, alternating in size, duration, and placement.

Any thoughts, other than copious amounts of basic motion layers and mattes within FCS2?

AQ
FCS2 (6.0.4)

Resizing and cropping in FCP using the motion tab is easy and this is primarily how you can achieve this effect.

However I notice there are some images in the trailer that use selective masking.

For this I'd make a transparent layer with a black grid in photoshop with separate masking boxes for each area that I could turn on and off in FCP.

But yes - copious amounts of video layers - think about it - there is no other way if you have 10 video clips in different areas then you'll need at least 10 video layers!



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

But could I make a .psd where each area of a the grid is a separate layer, import it with layers into a Motion project and fuss with individual layers turning on/off? Something like that?

Then I could drop different, scaled video tracks underneath this "alternately blinking" grid, sound doable?

Maybe I'm making this too difficult, by the time I find a new recipe for greatness, I could've done what you suggest, and I feared, already . . . .

Yes you could but there is no need to do it in Motion you can import the PSD with the layers like I mentioned earlier directly into FCP...

The layered PSD will come in as a sequence so make sure its the same dimensions as your master sequence so for NTSC DV it will be 720x480, etc.

Use the grid layer as the template on say video layer 10 or more (lock this layer) which you can drop the video behind.

Resize using the motion tab or switch on the image and wireframe function on the Canvas window and manually resize and position the videos - use the crop tool to drag in the edges if needs be (or use the motion tab crop controls)

The masking layers of each grid area could sit above the grid and you can indeed turn them on or off as you required...

Motion would actually be slower to edit and limit you on this type of effect whereas FCP will not.



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Thanks Ben,

This sounds like a good approach. I should make the lines of the grid just wide enough so that it's pretty easy to drag and line the edge of each underlying video beneath. I like your idea of putting a stack of masks for each of the grids above the psd. I can fuss with their opacity and fade images in and out of each section of the grid that way.

it'll look smooth and not as jumpy as I feared.

Thanks again,
AQ

You've read this I assume,

[www.apple.com]

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Thus endith this thread.

Good find Andrew

Michael Horton
-------------------

No problem - its an approach I have used myself on a number of occasions going waaaaay back. Simple and effective.

You might have experienced the 24 phenomenon yourself when every promo, every corporate, every daytime TV show - even music vids want to emulate the PiP look!

This style you are going to do is very nice - especially if you choose some nice complementary grades for the footage.



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

I know two of the guys mentioned in that article. It's a Toronto film through and through. I think some of the edit team did a demo at the NY apple store a while back.
I remember it coming up over beers a couple of years back that one of them was working on something that pushed the limits of FCPs track count limit.

For some fun low budget Canadiana check out Bruce McDonald's(link) other stuff, including "Roadkill" and "Hard Core Logo". The last one especially if you survived the 80's with some Black Flag or DOA shirts in your bottom drawer and had more than one discussion about who "sold out" and when.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Digital Heaven's BOX filter is useful, too,
especially if you need your image to pan *within* the cropped box

[www.digital-heaven.co.uk]


nick

AQ

If you are allowed - maybe you could post us a clip of your edit when its finished...



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Nice Article Andrew. I had not seen it before.
Thanks for the help everybody. I'll see if I can get a link for the piece when it's done . . .

Ben,

here's a post, if it's allowed here, of the 3 minute finished piece. It's a pretty simple paid advertisement for an architectural firm. Not revolutionary by any means, but your help helped get it done.

thanks,

AQ

[vineyard.plumtv.com]

Hey good job - I bet they loved it!

Its a really cool effect that I can see being used again and again - maybe you should suggest to them doing some case study work on the properties they design or maybe some of their work in progress and use the same style to create a real theme out of it.

I suggest you put this on the show and tell forum and give a little breakdown of the whole process I'm sure there are loads of other LAFCPUG members who would like to see this and how you did it as many of them won't have been following this thread!

LAFCPUG Show & Tell forum is here: [www.lafcpug.org]



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

You chose the effect extremely well -- it fits what they're talking about. Might have done some audio editing, though -- the interview moves at a snail's pace, lots of ums and ahs. This style allows for a lot of Frankensteining in editing the sound, but it doesn't seem like you paid enough attention to tightening the dialogue. I wouldn't have flipped the pictures either -- it was too obvious, and didn't add anything to the piece. Flop is not a device you can use when you show both directions!


www.derekmok.com

Don't take Derek's comments too personally, Ben. He means well. ;-)

It's a very skillfully done piece. Editors are the world's worst Monday-morning quarterbacks, and we could all tell you three or four or forty things we would have done differently. But I'm sure we've also all seen worse promo pieces.

I had a client a few months back who wanted a "Brady Bunch"-style ending to a short film. Ended up being 24 layers of DVE. Not technically challenging, but a real pain in the hinder. Yours ended up a lot better than mine. Great job.

If you don't mind the critique...

I'll agree with D but also add to watch those name straps.

If you haven't got a dark background or at least give the text a slight drop shadow to help define it against the background video.

On the smaller jobs you don't always have the time to do the tightening or things you would like and you have to know where the cut off is.

We all know this but people (especially older pros) will always give you the unlimited time/effort/tools crit so don't take it to heart...

...remember that if you aren't important/interesting enough for someone to give you constructive criticism then you really ought to give up!



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Thanks for your comments guys.

What can I say, I posted it with a modest caveat that it's not a testament to my sound or picture editing abilities. I wanted to try and make relatively dry interviews a little more dynamic.

Yes, it is at a snail's pace, and I would have loved to have made a 1 minute snappier version, but it had to 3 minutes, by contract.

I don't mind the critique, I thought all of those things myself.

Thanks again,
AQ

> I wanted to try and make relatively dry interviews a little more dynamic.

There wasn't a huge deal you could have done with the interviews in that respect. If the interviewee looks and sounds uncomfortable, then it's a performance issue...and those guys often clench up even more if you direct them on set! The only solution I've found is to take them out of the sit-down interview setting and put them in their element until they forget they're in front of the camera, and that can't be done if they have a script they insist on.

Like I said, the "moving bands/pictures" motif isn't new, but you've got one of the best motivations for the effect I've seen. A company I worked for did the same thing, except to a hair-transplant promo. Not even half as effective as here, because the effect just had nothing to do with the product.

Was there no more content you could have put in to fill the three minutes? The slow interviews do make it fatty. No more B-roll? Maybe build a music segment to take a break from the talking heads?


www.derekmok.com

Derek, you're absolutely right. Interviews are hard. I once had to interview a bunch of people who'd just been media-trained to do live TV, and it was awful. The footage ended up largely unusable. They were so stiff, with that dead-eyed look of somebody who's thinking before he's speaking.

Whenever I have to do an on-camera interview (conduct one, I mean; I became an editor so I never have to be on camera) I watch "The Fog of War" on DVD the night before. I read that Morris recorded something like twenty hours of interviews with McNamara to make that film. There's a lot to be learned there. Let the camera roll. Let the subject talk. Doing a great interview is like shooting on location at magic hour. You just set up the camera, roll film and wait for that one perfect moment.

Nice job, AQ. Like the others have been saying it works really well because the edits are so motivated. One of the tidiest I've seen.

> There's a lot to be learned there. Let the camera roll. Let the subject talk.

(Lady) Jude and I have had this discussion going back a ways...the Wiseman/Kopple approach to documentary. Expensive but organic.

Oh yeah, and shut that cameraman up. DPs are the worst people for directing or conducting interview and oral-presentation pieces:

"Okay, don't move your head, light's perfect. Framing's perfect, don't turn your head. Don't lean. What, adjust camera to the subject? Are you crazy?"


www.derekmok.com

Hey does any one how the face was done in 'the tracey fragments'?

You know the part in the very beginning when she starts talking. and there are like 24 separate frames offset to create the face.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

It's quite a refreshing take on dry talking heads, that's for sure... Probably need to work that flow a bit (a bit more ups and downs, or cut it tighter) could just cut it..

Haha... Had a doctor's interview i had to cut once. The guy was so stiff, I took out a whole sentence and you almost couldn't see the jump cut!



www.strypesinpost.com

> Had a doctor's interview i had to cut once. The guy was so stiff, I took out a whole sentence and
> you almost couldn't see the jump cut!

Content trumps smoothness! Audiences will hate you a lot more for making them sit through drivel than if you made an ugly cut with conviction. I always point to Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz -- he even spliced three to four takes together to form a coherent thought, and we couldn't care less that the heads were popping. It's not like it's an emotional scene that needs to stay in real time.

Conversely, when I was starting out, I cut a documentary about parents who lose their children to foster care -- some because of their own fault, some because of bad romantic partners, some because they're just poor -- and some of their interviews were so heart-breaking that any violation of time-space continuity would have killed it. So a lot of the ums and ahs had to stay. It all depends on the context.


www.derekmok.com

yeah D,
i had a few interviews like that. In one case if i had cut the ahh and uhmms then it would take away from the persons personality and in another project there were so many in the interview that cutting them would have made for a very glitchy audio track.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

>Content trumps smoothness! Audiences will hate you a lot more for making them sit
>through drivel than if you made an ugly cut with conviction.

That's an interesting point. I was trimming down an interview. Wasn't a great choice for a subject as he was stiff and spoke at great lengths and extremely slowly, so we had to cut to the gist, which was a challenge because he wasn't really nailing the points, but rather floating around them. Which can be an issue with some academics.. But the guy was so remarkably stiff, that you couldn't even see the head pop on the jump cut when I took out a full sentence. Pretty much the most zombiefied interviewee I ever had to cut.



www.strypesinpost.com

I hate to be an Errol Morris fanboy, but I think he's pretty well proved conclusively that an occasional jump cut in interview footage is totally acceptable.

It just needs to be, as the saying goes, a motivated cut.

i like to put 5-9 frame crossD's in interview cuts. depending on frame content.
i also like the look of a cut to some b-roll of the person getting comfortable or looking around. these cuts are never morre than 1 or 2 secs.

I did like the tracey frag remake he did with the design company. In spots a bit to fast and jumpy but very well done.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

BTW , i just saw a doc a few days ago where the cuts were fade to black for about 1sec.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"