Idiots judge the sophistication of a NLE by how many transitions it has.

"Idiots judge the sophistication of a NLE by how many transitions it has."

That was kind of a strange statement. I don't recall anyone say that an NLE needed a lot of transitions. Just a simple discussion with interesting information.

Harold: My comment was to address the fact that often bottom end NLEs advertise like "includes 10,000 transitions" as if that was good and at all necessary. Even top-end NLEs like Vegas have way to many transitions, possibly so that a low end package can't advertise that they have more.

It was just a satirical tongue in cheek comment.

"You have never seen a Hollywood film that used a zoom? Perhaps you weren't aware of it, so it was successful."

Few - very few. Name one decent hollywood movie made in the past few years that uses zoom shots. In fact, name one academy award winning movie after Hitchcock that used zoom shots.

Steve Mann

"Can I have a definition of zoom? I ask because actually you do see zooms in movies. "

I am not sure that you are seeing a zoom, but a dolly-in/out or CG. Zoom changes the depth and parallax of the lens. If the background changes size at a different rate than the foregrond, you have zoom. Alfred Hitchcock used the effect extremely well, and no one has duplicated his mastery of the zoom as an art form. If the background remains mostly unchanged and the perceived depth (distance to the background) and the depth of field don't change, then you're seeing a dolly in/out.

Your eyes can't zoom, which is why it is "feels" unnatural when you see it.

Steve Mann

Look, a person just getting used to the capability of a new NLE is entranced by all the cool things it can do. If my new editor can make zoomy star transitions from one scene to the next, that's cool. But after a while, one will gradually get the sense of what good moviemaking looks like--cuts or dissolves, depending on the mood.

It's like the good old days surrounding the introduction of the Macintosh and the Laserwriter printer. All of a sudden mere mortals could do professional-quality Desktop Publishing, and a document could (and often did) have 20 different typestyles, just because now it was so easy.

Here's more bait for newbies: digital camcorders shouting out "400x digital zoom!" I'm even embarassed by the "48x zoom" on the side of my semipro VX2000, though I'll admit that going 24x (2x digital) is sometimes useful, given the sharpness of the optical zoom.

I learn every time I watch other people's work.

I didn't take it negatively -- I just thought you were "funnin" me. I have some old stuff posted at my old web site. You're welcome to view things there anytime:

Meyer Video Demos

The three links at the bottom of the main page are the ones you should click on.

If you are a real glutton for punishment, you can try to view the files on my Yahoo Briefcase. Click on this link, and then click on any of the media files:

Meyer Yahoo Briefcase Media Files

You may need to be a Yahoo user to get at these files.

"Then and Now" uses a boatload of transitions -- probably the only time I ever used more than two transitions (other than crossfades) in a project.

I was visiting Samuelson Film Service (as in Sammy's) in London once ('79 I think) and one of the Samuelson brothers showed me a lens he had constructed. Very proud too, he was. What it did (according to my memory) was to divide the image into several small ones circled around one slightly larger version. An effect I think most videomakers nowadays can do just like that with the software that came free with their cameras.

Here is a quote from this article:
On "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE", Kubrick had made effective use of a 20-to-1 zoom lens that he had rented from Samuelson Film Service in London. The closing scene of the movie, with a long slow pull-back from the hero of the story as he walks along the river, is a prime example of its application.

The statement that zooms were looked down upon because they were not available when the old guys learned their stuff, has more than a grain of truth in it. Still, it is an un-natural element in storytelling. As is a movie theatre.

People do not pay to sit in the dark and see natural. They want to see spectacular. And they want to see a good story. I guess our job is to balance the two so that one does not get in the way of the other.

Tor

One could start a rather esoteric discussion about the relative advantages of pulling back as opposed to zooming out, the former is quite common in film but somewhat rarer in video.
I guess the reason is that to pull off the later you need a dolly, follow focus gear and a focus puller.
Bob.

"People do not pay to sit in the dark and see natural. They want to see spectacular. And they want to see a good story."

Interesting observation. My first reaction is that this isn't so. Obviously much of the present output from the USA gives 'spectacular' precedence over 'good story' (easier to do, as are fancy shot transitions). Spectacular is for teenagers (ie the usual target audience). My general observation is that if you're watching the techniques on your first viewing then there's really a lot wrong with the film. Remember good editing is something you don't notice until you come back to analyse the structure.

Zooms? A zoom is a simple magnification (or diminishing) of the image. A dolly shot (or any camera movement) gives depth to the scene because of the changing relative angles and positions of objects.

Tor is right. The "old pros", folks like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, et al, did not take to zoom lenses in the beginning. Believe it or not, there is a distinct difference in both look and feel between a zoom and dolly shot.

I hadn't read Serena's post when I posted this.

For what it's worth... a dolly shot moves in and out (like a zoom), and is sometimes referred to as a tracking or trucking shot. Any lateral move by the camera is referred to as crabbing.

The question that LarryP asks in the post when he started this thread is "Is glitz the main reason for so many transitions?"

Well, I unapologetically say the answer is "yes". I have made several videos for different occasions and many of them have just cuts and/or fades. I understand how using more "glitzy" transitions can bring down the quality of many projects as they can be distracting. I get it.

However, there are other videos I make where I want to choose from a million different "gaudy" transitions. I do want Vegas to develop more transitions. Who knows, maybe there are some great ones no one has thought of yet.

So I would love Vegas to keep making more transitions. Maybe keep them in a separate file on their website where people can download them if they want to take advantage of them for a particular project. Sometimes these "gaudy" transitions can look real cool, in my opinion. If that makes it less "professional" or less "sophisticated" then so be it.

If Vegas came out with 50 new transitions, wouldn't you at least take a look at them? Maybe download one or two....or thirty? I know I would!

Jeff

On zooming--isn't it a common practice in films to accent the developing emotion of a speech by slowly zooming in on the speaker? the zoom is so slow you have to watch the edges of the frame to reference objects creeping out of view. I think the union requires a "focus puller" to do such things?

On transitions--I like the Spicemaster 2.5 package with Vegas 6 because it says it can animate FX in the timeline of an event, rather than merely be a transition. I'm excited about it--although I bought it nearly a year ago and have yet to figure it out....
.

>>Yes. Tune into MTV

johnmeyer:

Did you really make videos for MTV?

If so, which ones?

Just curious...

Thanks.

Did you really make videos for MTV?

No. I just meant that watching MTV would expose you to every video transition ever invented.

Tor is right. The "old pros", folks like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, et al, did not take to zoom lenses in the beginning. Believe it or not, there is a distinct difference in both look and feel between a zoom and dolly shot.

Absolutely true. Which leads me to remember one of the most famous shots in the history of cinema, in Vertigo, where Hitchcock dollies out and zooms in at the same time, keeping the subject the exact same size. The result gave the audience an unsettling feeling of vertigo because the "look and feel" was changing, but the subject matter still filled the frame at exactly the same size.

Your eyes can't zoom, which is why it is "feels" unnatural when you see it.

Seems reasonable, except we don't see with our eyes.

We see with our minds.

Our eyes can see in focus over only about a 1.6 degree angle, which is like a really extreme telephoto lens.

But we can see a whole room in front of us, right? Looks like a pretty good wideangle, doesn't it?

That is just the mind assembling a scan of what we see around us, with only the central 1.6 deg. or so in full focus, and the rest in a blissful blur to help our mind concentrate on what's important.

The camera zoom is like the mind focusing on some part of a scene.

Zooms can also be combined with a dolly truck in the opposite direction. This gives a strange feeling that has been used effectively by some of our top filmmakers, Hitchcock and Spielberg come to mind immediately.

A zoom is just another tool. It can be used to save time between fixed focal length shots, or it can be used to achieve a certain effect that cannot be duplicated with a dolly shot.

The Hawaii Five-O TV series (1969-1980) had beautiful zoom shots that really helped tell the story, and overall excellent camera work. One zoom shot that was used in most episodes was from the far end of the park outside Iolani Palace, starting with a wide shot of the entire palace, then zooming in maximally to see McGarrett's corner office between branches of the huge tree in front. This could not have been done as a dolly shot, at least not without using Mary Poppins as a camera operator.

It's just a tool, for occasional use when called for, with the skill to use it properly and in a way that the audience doesn't think "that was a zoom".

Wikipedia always amazes me

dolly zoom

This is fun.

To me, zooms and transitions are the language of a genre:

Film vs. video -- dolly and simple transitions (movies) vs. zooming and fancier transitions (live sports).

Story vs. commercial sales pitch -- when someone's been shot dead in a drama that might be told over the space of an hour or two, fancy transistions simply aren't needed. A 30-sec commercial that's desperately trying to get a disinterested viewer's attention might need to attack immediately with every visual trick available.

And many times, amateur vs. professional genres. Amateurs love all the glitz, pros know better.

Generally, the stronger the story, the less glitz is needed to advance the story.

Someone mentioned the wipes used in Star Wars. Lucas was trying to emulate the Saturday morning serial. The exciting episodic serials kids once trilled to employed wipes; so Star Wars does too. The serial genre demands them: a clock wipe means "later that day" and were really just another cheesy way to induce excitement because the budgets were so low that high cost action sequences often were ruled out.

The less content (or the less motion) the more transitions become useful.

Most films use simple cuts and dissolves because the story is propelled by people and the innate action. Car chases are exciting enough with clock wipes too.

However, a static slide show going from full frame shot to full frame shot without pan and crop-induced motion fairly screams for transitions. Add push-in or pull-out motion, though, and simple dissolves work fine. Proper pushing in guides the eye and tells the viewer what's important about the shot. (Vegas' real time pan and crop feature alone makes it a great tool -- if only for slide shows.)

There is a definite difference between zoom and dolly, too.

Zooming does not change spacial relationship between objects: it simply crops out the edges.

Dollying is like walking into the scene. Objects go by the camera and depart with pleasing effect.

Film crews (you know, a few of those hundreds and hundreds of names that go by in the credits) can and do use a dolly or steadycam for almost every shot--they have the manpower and the budget, not to mention a storyboarded scene by scene breakdown.

Video guys (crew of two if you're lucky) zoom for the closeup or push in from long to medium because you'd have to move the stinking tripod and there's no time for a new camera/lighting setup because the exec wants to get this over with and leave.

So "video" looks like video and "movies" looks like film.