Lessons

Lesson Info

Transitions Part 2

There are three types of transitions there are cuts there's dissolves and there's wipes ah cut is an instantaneous change in perspective it's you do a cut when you want to show the audience new information one of things I enjoy talking with the team here at creative lives we have discussions on when you should cut from one camera to the other and a lot of directors when you're starting out feel that they need to cut frequently I know that I did when I was first starting out because I needed to show the audience that we had the ability to cut from one camera to another but in point of fact you should only change shots when you have new information to reveal to the audience if you don't have any new information then don't cut from one camp to the other think of the difference between music videos today and fred astaire e ginger rogers down sequence front astaire and ginger rogers would do it down sequence you cannot take your eyes off the screen and they would have maybe one camera cut i...

n four and a half minutes the camera was locked down sandbagged in place and the performers were charged with keeping the audiences interest. Now we're seeing that and I hate to tell the guys on the couch because I know how this is going to disillusion them but there are some performers today that can't sing and can't deaths yet somehow they're a performer, and our job as an editor is not to reveal the fact they have no talent but to hide the fact they have no talent. So the very first thing that we do is we make our camera go hand held a hand held camera is an instantaneous trigger to me that says that whatever we're shooting is so dull and so boring that the director has to go hand held because they want to distract us from the fact that whatever we're looking at is dull and boring. Then you surround the dance group with naked dancers because people will look at naked dancers and ignore the fact that the performing group has no performing skills whatsoever. And then ideally with your handheld camera, you shoot interesting odd angles like up at the lights and down inside the drum kitten and the back of the of the tattoo on the neck of the lead singer because anything you can do to come up with some sort of weird, distracting angle or or aspect of the group hides the fact that the group itself has no talent whatsoever. So if you want to have a director telegraph, the fact that the performer is zero performance quality one camera's handheld to they're shooting the light's number three there, surrounded by naked dancers on number four there, cutting so rapidly to so many different cameras that you never really figure out where you are you're always off balance and you're always left wondering exactly where am I in the stage right now? Because cutting quickly and crossing the axis means that the audience remains confused which is the state you want them in because as soon as they figure out the fact that this group has no talent they're going to change channel and as an editor you've failed in your mission of hiding that fact same thing with transitions ah cut is a change in perspective revealing, he said changing from one camera to the next ah cut reveals new information a wide shot of the set or back to a close up on the set a dissolve is a change in time or place I dissolve from day tonight I dissolve from seattle to chicago ah change in time or place or a change in perspective changin change in time replaces what a dissolve is used for but a dissolve us also an amplifier of emotions if we have a music sequences still sequence and I'm cutting from one shot to another everybody says hey, that looks good but if I dissolve from one shot to another I'm amplifying the emotion of the music and leveraging that up so that by the time that sequence is done the emotions are stronger when I use dissolves then if I were to simply cut in the beat to the music not exactly sure why this is true was discovered a long time ago with some of the early film editors like sergei eisenstein, who was practicing the art of montage, which he invented, or the the idea of when do we want to cut in the juxtaposition of shots, changing the emotional level and when dissolves makes sense. But what we've seen is a dissolve amplifies the emotion of a particular scene, but a wipe wipe is something different. Ah, wipe breaks the story and takes you somewhere else. Probably the best example I can think of this sports, if you remember sports and in the fall where football's a good example, football has got a bunch of very large men running around very quickly on the field run, run, run, run, run on cock, cock, cock, cock, cock, cock, cock and then all of a sudden, when they're all done jumping on top of each other, a committee meeting breaks out and they spend time discussing what a wonderful job they had running around and jumping on top of each other. Television hates committee meetings. So what is television? Do it wipes in the nfl loco and now it tells us what breaks the story that we're no longer in rial time were in replay time. We're in slo mo time we're in fast mo time it's the helmet cam the coach count the quarterback count the linebacker council blimp cam the grass can the opposite side of the field camp the shots of the cheerleaders can the shots of the people in the stands camp it's back to wipe real time and a guy's running around jumping on top of each other again ah wipe breaks the story and takes us somewhere else for this reason you never use a wipe in the middle of a narrative story because the audience is going to say what just hit us but you would use a wipe coming out of the open into the start of a program or ah wife coming out of a commercial into a program or a wipe when I want to say this is over let's try somewhere different let's go somewhere different instead you want to use dissolves to keep people in the story or cuts use wipes only when you want to interrupt this story real time sports and take us somewhere different replace sports where time has no value slow motion fast motion are equally valid but slow motion in a really time game people would look and say wait a minute what's going wrong here wipes break the story and take us somewhere else with that is ah wrap up on transitions jim are there any questions on transitions before we shift over and talk about titles people were fascinated by larry's soapbox they're like that's so great because they love to hear people talking passionately about you know whatever it may be so they definitely appreciated it so let me let me take a look at this I'm going to use wide eyes pictures if you've cut up a single shot or take and have it dispersed over several areas of the timeline can you replace that clip with something else and have all the instances on the timeline update the answer is yes but maybe not the way that you want let's just try and experiment here let's get rid of this clip and let's find this will work no no no no I want to be appear this is this's such an amazing shot jim did I show this shoe when we're doing premiere last week no that's no it's beautiful this is this is a guy who's making this is molten glass just look at this that's we deserve an art break this is an art break you want to see an artisan at work watch this there's no particular sound here but this is molten glass coming out of the furnace and this is bare handed just watch this for a second look at that we got a horse it took a minute if I tried to do that we'd end up with class dripping all over the floor I just I love watching people who know what they're doing do what they know to do and this is just I love that shot so let's use this use this horse shot here and that sees go up to here and we'll set it in and we'll set let's just do this let's do in out and we'll set the play head up barrow the letter w do an insert at it trim this back by grabbing the edge trimming it if I have different elements off the same clip in the timeline let's just see what happens I haven't done this publicly before so let's just see what kind of trouble we get into and we'll set it in and out here and hide the transition browser and now I've got my horse clip here I've got another horse clip here I've got another horse clip here and as you can see, I have one, two, three, four, five, six seven clips okay, still with me I'm going to select these clips let's just see what happens and see if I can replace this with that's just replace this with this clip right there, turn on skimming find that shot I control d will make it a two second shot and I grabbed the clip noticed the clips down below are selected let's see what happens if I nope nope nope nope I wait for it to turn, white says, replaced from start okay, when I have effects now, I haven't answered jim, when I have effects, whatever clips that I have selected can have the same reflect applied to all selected clips at one time when I have multiple it orations of the same clip in the timeline, I cannot replace multiple iterations of the same clip pichon only replace one clip at a time, and the way you replace the clippers to drag the shot on top of the new clip on top of the old clip, wait for the old clip to turn white, and then you say, replace from start and it will automatically be replaced. So the answer is it depends upon what you're trying to do if you're adding effects, yes, if you're replacing shots, no, so if we could be really tricky and be really deceptive, we could actually maybe rename another file with the name of the file we have in the browser already, then re forced to conform that it's a replay pre linked the media and have it do it that way. No in final cut seven you could, but in final cut ten, you can't final cut ten uses a more powerful form of lincoln called a sim link it not only looks at the file name of the clip it's looking at the characteristics of the clip one doesn't have time cody if so what's the time code what's the kodak it's looking to match the clip not just based upon file name but based upon metadata associated with the clip with it and if it finds that the clip that you're trying to replace isn't really the same as the clip it thinks it is it's going to pop up in error message saying I'm sorry but these two clips don't match we would then have to import that renamed clip as a separate clip and deal with it does not was a separate clip other questions jim um final cut newbie would like to know what are larry's favorite transitions to use when you do use transitions a transition which two thirds of a second and the way we set that is to go up to final cut pro goto preferences which I haven't had time to discuss and I want to just take a couple seconds to talk about real quick because I don't know what else I'm gonna have time to talk about it preferences are stored inside the final cut setting there's five preferences across the top that I talk about this stuff or is it just my imagination okay good the general tab allows us to make backups of the library this is a backup of the library database it does not back up media it is on by default and I recommend you keep it that way it also specifies where the backups are stored by default the backups are stored inside your home directory I don't have a problem with that because the backups themselves they're small the databases air small they have to be stored someplace you don't want to keep it on a drive different than your library so storing it in the home directory makes perfect sense you can also specify what our time display is and I'm old school enough that I like hours minutes seconds and frames so I'll just leave it set to the default in other words I don't change the general settings at all editing settings I do change editing settings allows us to say do I want to show you detailed trimming feedback when I grab the edge of a clip notice these two windows that show up those two windows show up because detailed trimming feedback has turned on if you leave this off you don't see the two windows when I'm doing trimming I love the detailed feedback I love being able to see the the out of the clip on the left and the end of the clip on the right I like being able to compare and contrast I turn this on positional play had after an edit operation means that the play head will move whenever you add a clip so that it jumps to the end of the clip I don't have strong opinions about this I leave it on pixels means that when you are doing effects, you can either measure the effect in terms of pixels or in terms of percentages I've spent so many years working with with image sizes of seven, twenty four, eighty seven, twenty five, seventy six, twelve, eighty seven, twenty I know them all. Some working in pixels is very comfortable for me. If you don't know screen sizes that well, you want to save, move up, make a five percent change or a ten percent change, you may be more comfortable working with percentages. All this is his different ways of displaying the same thing we've already talked about show audio reference wave forms if you if you want to be able to see your way forms a little more clearly, this could make life easier. Personally, I find it distracting, but that's only because I've been looking at wave forms for a really long time, so this is again personal preference. You can set this to whatever you want. When you are importing still images, they default to a duration a distance between the enemy out of four seconds. I never know what I want my stills to be this this is good a numbers any, and I generally change at once it gets to the timeline, but if I'm doing us an image montage where stills all run three seconds and twenty one frames because that's the downbeat between the music all changes to three twenty one and that way my stills import with the enemy out perfectly set on there's no problem this is what I do change it defaults to a one second duration for all cross dissolves it's too long lingers too much I prefer two thirds of a second so I said it to point zero six seven and that means that I get a nice, consistent dissolve which is a dissolve but still fast enough that the audience doesn't get bored in playback when I'm doing live broadcasts from my computer which is not what we're doing here because the technology that creative live uses is more sophisticated than most people have, but when I'm doing a live broadcast I turned background rendering off. I also turned background rendering off when I'm on a slower computer because background rendering can slow down a slow computer too much you can turn that on and off most of time on a fast computer when it's just me editing background, rendering us always on and I could determine how long background rendering will wait before it starts in five seconds this is good a number as any I don't set this to zero I do have it wait a couple seconds just because this is something where the default settings are not once I disagree not once I agree with create optimized media for multi cam clips means that all of your multi cam clips will be converted to progress for two to this makes multi committing a lot easier I recommend it a frame drop drop frame means that your hard disk is too slow I always want to know if storage can't keep up, so I always check the second because I will want to know I don't want to have stuff gets screwed up without me knowing and I always check this third one where if I've got a problem with storage or computer performance, I want to know that there's problems and I can't play it back pre roll and post role is when you hit the shift question mark it will back up two seconds before the added point play through the outer point and continue to seconds after the other point I used to think I would use this all the time I really don't use it at all you can set this to whatever you want and final cut is capable of driving an external video monitor. We talked about this during setup on yesterday morning import dialogue this is exactly the same settings that we've looked at whatever we import a clip final cut will always remember the last settings you used when you import a file and if you want to standardize on a particular setting, for instance I do optimized media, I always import folders. I always analyze the clip, so I'll set. This is a preference the next time that import dialogue appears. I've already said it, and I don't have to think about it destinations I'll talk about tomorrow when we talk about exporting someone to hold that for right now. So that's, that is where I set transition, because jim, I know you forgot that. I thought I'd forgotten where I was, but I don't like the default setting of one second. I like that. I like changing it to two thirds of a second. Philip, you've got a question, I'm kind of lazy, I don't want to go through one hundred thirty transitions to find my favorites. Could you tell me a handful of your favorites dissolve? Next question, I try hard not to use wipes now, if I'm teaching high school kids, I go right to transitions, and I showed them where the transition browser is. Now let him play for twenty minutes because giggling ensues, but if you watch a future film there's almost the only time I can remember a wipe in a feature film is nineteen seventy seven. When I'm sitting in the theater, watching the first star wars and there's, that little desert thing, he popping along the desert following along behind was a vertical pipe. And you're not the popcorn out of the hands of a nexus look that there's a vertical white but a feature film who knew ah vertical level I've lost try I have no idea what that little thing it was doing across the desert because for five minutes I was talking about the vertical wipe I had to go back and re watch the film to figure out what happened after that why it broke the story it's hard enough to get people to pay attention to the story that they want to sit and watch a two minute youtube video I have to really sweat rivets to get him to watch a ninety minute feature film and I'm going to get something in the way like a wipe I'm not that stupid ninety percent of my transitions or cuts the other ninety percent of what's left is a dissolve and on lee when forced to at gunpoint by a spot by a by a client that has no clue what they're talking about. Well, I use a wipe and even then I will complain because a wipe just gets in the way now if I'm being hired to do a project for somewhere that needs all the help they can get translate that meaning zero talent, lots of money I'm throwing wipes in all the time as many wives as I possibly can or if I'm doing a radically different transition where I'm wiping from the open or I'm wiping from chicago to seattle I'm clearly breaking the chicago story going to the seattle story I'll use a wipe but if I'm telling a story no, I want to have us few distractions as few transitions and no wipes as possible so the audience doesn't have a reason to to now makes sense so I want to talk now about titles and to do that we're going to go back to the doctor surf clip and notice here that I've added a lower third title and I've added a locator title well let's spend some time talking about type o oh jim, you didn't ask would you ask if it's possible to apply transitions to clips that are not in the primary storyline? Is it possible to apply transitions to clips that air not in but not in the primary storyline? Sir the thing I love about you is your grasp of technology is just really amazing race and leaves me speechless on multiple occasions yes we can and I need to explain why and how so let me do that. This is dr cerf and if I play a clip if I play this clip noticed that at the instant the bee roll clip appears the higher layer clip we're going to cut from one clip to another in order for me to apply a transition to a connected clip you simply highlights the edit that you want to apply the connected clip to notice I've selected the other point and type command tea or open up the transitions browser and grab the transition you want to use and dragon on top of the clip. So now as I play this, I dissolve from dr cerf to the the b roll and now I have ah mohr interesting organic wipe which if I'm doing a science narrated school project, I think it's kind of cool not that I have opinions on wipes or anything and it's a very end notice here I have a transition to dissolve coming out the way this works is if I have a connected clip, let me just add another connected clip when we just add this will set in in well setting out well connected notice that here I'm in a connected storyline see that grey bar across the top here I have a connected clip there's no story line across the top weaken on ly apply transitions two storylines so watch what final cut does when I select the leading edge type command t it automatically converts it to a storyline see the gray bar and it adds the transition in the past early versions of final cut we had to do this manually here it's automatic now you'll notice that I have a problem the grand canyon is sixteen by nine and dr surface four by three we'll solve that tomorrow because I want to talk about a siri's of effects which are controlled from the inspector. But for right now, just imagine, if you will, that this dissolve happens and the two videos perfectly aligned themselves. See how we have that dissolved going on. It would look like this because this also was sixteen by nine video for the b roll and four by three for dr surf. But in this case, I fixed the b roll before we presented it here at creative live, so can we add transitions to be rolled? The answer is, yes, you select the edit point and for dissolves its command tea for anything else. You go to the transition browser, grab the transition, you want to drag it on top of your clips.