Thread&Needle
Posted in Manifesto on 06/12/2009 12:41 am by adminTransitions are basically like “thread and needle”. Thread and needle are used to sew two material together, so as transitions, they are use to connect two different clips or video together. Transitions are very important; people who want to produce a video must have a good understanding about how to make effective transitions. It is as important as spacing within words, like what Adrain said, “a word without a space will not be a space”.
There are lot’s of kind of transitions that could be explore. The most popular transitions that are used are the cut, dissolve, and wipes.
I would like to now explore transitions, my transitions will now no longer be the use of combining two video, it’s now something that will create a mood and to create mystery.
Dissolve will be what I would like to explore.
Propositions:
1. Dissolve
Dissolve is one of the popular transitions that are used by the editors. In almost every single movie, we could see at least one used of the transitions of dissolve. Dissolve are added in the space of the two video or clips. The adding of dissolve will make the video look smoother than just cut through.
Dissolves includes a lot of type, there is additive dissolve, cross dissolve, dip to colour dissolve, dither dissolve, fade in fade out dissolve, non-additive dissolve and also ripple dissolve.
I would like to make dissolve as a type of mystery, that could make the audience more focus on the dissolves rather than the content, to make this dissolve will be more attractive.
2. Creative and playful
The space between two clips could be use to show how creative and playful an editor is. The editor decides how creative and playful they could be. Which they then explore using the space. What does creative and playful could mean? Creative and playful can be in many form. Every different human bean has their own sense of creativity.
Dissolve itself actually have many types. In Final Cut itself, they already have 7 types of dissolve, and the way we put them together are the space where we show our creativity.
In the video that I provided, using my playful way, I’ve combine the transitions of dissolve in Final Cut Pro, which make the result of the transitions are much more obvious than the video clips itself.
3. Dissolve as process of production.
Transitions are mostly done during the process of post-production. Instead of believing transitions are a part of post production, we could make it as a part of production process. Which means we are now focusing on “dissolve” transitions as our production, “dissolve” will consist in most part of the video. To make it clearer, our video is all about “dissolve”. It can be how the video “dissolved”, when the video is “dissolved” to the next video, how long it takes to “dissolved”, etc. Transitions will now be part of the production and post-production. It’s the major part of the video, it then will be the major reason of why the audience watched the video.
In the video that I’ve provided, I have uses one clip, and the clip is “wrapped” by the transition of dissolve. This will make the audience notice the exist of the transitions, and the transitions is the major part of the video.
4. Creating Emotions
Having emotions in a video or films are a must while producing a video or film. We can create emotions in many ways, like during the production, setting up the lighting will effects the emotional of the scene. Other than that, using transitions will effects the emotion of the video/film.
The way transitions are used in the space between two clips or video will most likely effects the emotions of the video.
Believe it or not, even a single video or image with transitions will be able to give the audience a very strong emotion. It is all depends on how the transition is used. Dissolve will be used in the video, and with slowly dissolving, the video will be able to let the audience feel moody or emotional, because being slow will make the audience feel uncomfortable. Whereas when the video dissolves quickly, the audience might have an emotion of curiosity, because with a very fast dissolve, the audience will not be able to have a clear look at the video.
In the video that I have provided, it consist two type of version, one is the slow motion of dissolving and the other is in a very fast way of dissolving. Both of the example are able to give the audience two different feeling. The one on the left, is the example of slow motion, in the video it slowly dissolve, the way it dissolve will make some of the audience feel irritated, emotional, moody, or the feeling of “wait”. On the right hand side is the fast motions of dissolving, the video is repeating again and again, because want clip is less than 2sec, even it continuously repeats, the audience wont be able to have a clear look at the video, and they hardly know what is that, this is when curiosity arise.
5. Dissolve light things up
The way a transitions of dissolve goes around the video will affect the video itself. Dissolve are already part of the video, and again it’s a must for most of the video, it will actually be possible to make dissolve as a major part of the video. With extra more or longer of dissolve, it will be able to allow the audience to notice on some not so obvious or unseen scene in the video. In another word, through dissolve, the creator will be able to make the audience focus on the part where they want the audience to focus, they can control to eye sight of the audience.
Like how one of the famous painter Michael Chesley Johnson did on most of his painting. Michael claim that he likes to zoom in, to make the image that he is interested on to fill the frame. This is how he uses the technique of zooming, to control the audience, to make them see what he likes.
In the video, with the way of the transition of dissolve is work and set, the audience will then first notice the brighter part of the scene, which where the editor intend to let the audience look at.
