Suggestions for scene transitions

PBurdett wrote on 11/27/2002, 2:07 PM
I am making svcds of my hi-8 home videos. I am almost over most of my tech questions and now am moving to the realm of style.

I tend to have a lot of 5 to 10 minute segments. I was thinking of making a menu chapter of each one. Each would have a sort of title page with a text title and probably a background still. Then I would fade into the video.

Any suggestions or examples of a nice way to fade in? (artistically, not technically). Also, how should I end one segment and proceed to the next if I am on the same disk? Fade to black? How many seconds?

If there are any good samples out there I would love to see them.

Comments

jayman8190 wrote on 11/27/2002, 8:54 PM
A favorite technique of mine is to use a still shot, or digital picture, from the video itself. Or a picture taken on my digital camera that represents the content of the footage. This provides a gerat intro background and you can put title text over the top of it to identify the material.

Regarding your endings... a fade to black is great and permits you to add text like "the end" or "film and produced by" or even just the date of the footage.

Jay
IanG wrote on 11/28/2002, 3:41 AM
If you use Nero to create the SVCDs it has the ability to extract a still automatically for each chapter. I don't think you can overlay text though.

It wasn't a conscious decision, but I tend to fade the audio in a couple of seconds before the video - it's less of a shock to the system! Because most of what I produce is along the lines of "What I done on my holidays" I like to include an establishing shot that labels the location, rather than use titles. To my mind, the worst thing is a voice over saying "And this is us in Paris". Most people will have gained that impression from the shot of the gendarme selling onions in front of the Eiffel Tower!

Ian G.
Grazie wrote on 11/28/2002, 4:07 AM
Yup fade in audio AND sometimes keep the audio going when the clip has finished.

Oh yessss..... start looking at real film in a more critical way. Really look at adverts and my favourites are holiday shows - BBC Rules Okay! Gardenining programmes and see how they keep the pace going. All those House Makeovers. News bulletins. Hey don't forget most of these camermen and women learnt somwhere. Either at Film College or "on the job". Best advice is to truly keep your ears and eyes open. THEN start criticising youe own work. Try and establish why you may not be getting the "pace" you wanted. Re do it until you getting near thew target. I use my partner and mother - who has the attention span of a gnat! She starts shuffling about if the vid is getting tedious. Do you see what I mean.

This video work is an art and a craft of major experience. Do not forget it. You won't - I aint - get it one go.

Oh yes - Less is More - try and keep those "cheesy" dissolves to a real minimum. After all real life does consist of "page-rolls" and "hearts" appearing from nowhere. Yeah?

Regards

Grazie
miketree wrote on 11/28/2002, 4:19 AM
I like to see consistency in a vid. Use the same font for your subtitles. I recently di my summer hols vid. I started off captioning bits with white subtitles. Then I came accros a scene which was fairly light & the text didn't show. SO I created a new text template with white text with a black feathered outline. This can be used on any shade of background & so produce consistency. The other thing I did to keep it consistent was between each location I used a clock wipe transition but used a bog standard fade, or sometimes no fade at all between other shots, So viewers think 'Ah! Transition! I must be somewhere else now'.