Creating continuity is an important facet of video manufacturing. Listed below are 3 ways to make sure continuity holds up when utilizing inventory.
Whereas enhancing a music video a couple of years in the past, I used to be confronted with a dilemma. I’d been given footage that was to be reduce collectively and mixed into one scene. However, as a result of the footage had been shot over two days, there have been stark, apparent variations between how a number of the photographs regarded.
On one of many days, the climate was overcast. This produced some beautiful, shadow-free photographs. Nonetheless, the solar had been shining on the opposite day, so there have been harsh shadows current on the faces within the video.
It was unlucky, but it surely couldn’t be helped; as a result of time restrictions, the group had no alternative however to shoot in these contrasting lighting situations. And regardless of my greatest enhancing efforts, I used to be unable to create a powerful sense of continuity. The phantasm of all of it being one scene was shattered.
Making a Sense of Continuity
It’s essential to create a way of continuity from one scene to the subsequent. Picture through Inventive Journey Initiatives.
Creating continuity is an important facet of video manufacturing. Numerous productions could have a script supervisor whose job it’s to assist keep continuity throughout a shoot. They preserve observe of quite a few particulars utilizing images and huge quantities of paperwork, paying attention to the various components within the scene, in addition to conserving detailed information of digital camera positioning, lighting setups, and different technical particulars. If that is carried out efficiently, photographs which were filmed months aside can sit subsequent to one another in a single scene with out the viewer noticing.
Nonetheless, due to the advanced nature of manufacturing, continuity errors nonetheless pop up extra typically than you’d suppose. It may be something, actually, and it’s often one thing insignificant — the size of a cigar of the extent of a drink. However, sometimes, they’re extra noticeable — like a change in the primary character’s look.
There are such a lot of components that come collectively to create a manufacturing, which is why it’s really easy for continuity errors to happen. Productions are not often shot within the order through which the ultimate piece is reduce collectively. They’re additionally often chaotic due to the quantity of transferring elements concerned. Tight budgets or restricted schedules could imply that issues want to maneuver sooner than is good. Because of this, these small errors can happen.
Continuity on smaller, unscripted productions, nonetheless, might be a lot less complicated. It’s extra about offering a way of cohesiveness inside a bit, connecting every shot to the subsequent, and stopping something that may pull your viewers out of the second.
Incorporating Inventory Footage, Pictures, and Music
Because of the journey, security, and price range considerations created by the COVID-19 pandemic, extra video professionals than ever earlier than are leaning on inventory footage to flesh out their tasks.
It’s difficult to supply a way of consistency when utilizing inventory, because the footage is usually shot on totally different cameras utilizing totally different image profiles in numerous lighting situations. Clearly, you’ll be able to’t management these components, so it’s essential to innovate so as to assist your footage circulation.
It’s undoubtedly well worth the effort to actually seek for inventory that meshes along with your current footage, even when it requires some perseverance. Attempt your greatest to match issues like lighting, the time of day, climate situations — if you may get shut, you may make it work.
I downloaded the next clips utilizing the Shutterstock extension for FCPX, which made the method of working with inventory footage fast and painless. As soon as it’s downloaded and put in, merely open FCPX and a brand new icon could have appeared, as proven under.
When you open FCPX, click on on the Shutterstock icon.
Whenever you click on on the icon, a window will seem that can can help you browse the Shutterstock library and obtain your chosen photographs straight into your FCPX Library.
Obtain your chosen photographs from the Shutterstock library into your FCPX library.
All it’s important to do is click on the obtain icon, and the previews of these clips will routinely be added in to the occasion of your alternative.
Click on obtain for the previews to be added to the occasion of your alternative.
You may as well license the clips via the extension, which lets you add within the excessive decision variations of the footage whereas staying inside one interface. Working this fashion has severely improved the effectivity of my workflow. (FYI, Shutterstock has a couple of extra plugins and extensions, together with one for Premiere Professional.)
Now, let’s have a look at three concepts I’ve give you that assist me construct continuity when utilizing inventory clips.
First, right here’s the video we’ll be fixing. It’s obtained some authentic footage, some inventory footage, and a few fairly apparent continuity errors.
Concept 1: Letterbox
The important thing with these concepts is to create a component of the video that every shot has in frequent so as to make the cuts between photographs far much less noticeable. In case you apply a letterbox to the entire video, it offers it an end-to-end sense of identification, fairly than showing as a number of disjointed photographs. It’s a stylistic alternative, but when it matches along with your video, it might be useful.
Concept 2: Colour Grade
Variations in brightness, distinction, and saturation between photographs might be problematic when utilizing inventory footage. Typically, there are specific casts on sure photographs which may make them stand out from these on both aspect of them.
You may attempt to reduce these variations in look in the course of the colour grading stage of the edit. You may as well give them a stylized grade for a better sense of connection. Often, although, even after your greatest efforts, they nonetheless look disconnected.
One option to neutralize these variations is utilizing a black-and-white look on all of the clips, which is what I’ve carried out within the video under. Now, all of the photographs have the grade and the letterbox in frequent.
Concept 3: Sound Results
Utilizing a sound impact that runs beneath all of the clips can create a way of consistency. I used a common ambient out of doors sound impact on this video, reflecting the hustle and bustle current in these clips. It undoubtedly helps one clip circulation effectively onto the subsequent.
No that you simply’re a inventory footage professional, listed below are a couple of different ideas, tips, methods, and hacks you should utilize to evolve as a video editor:
Cowl picture through Samot.
