So, you’ve made the transition
from using iMovie in the classroom to using Final Cut Express. Perhaps you’re
even venturing into the land of pro-apps like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro.
These are powerful tools, but the beauty of their design means that you don’t
need to spend months learning the ins and outs before you can start creating
amazing video content. Teach your class a few basic rules and they can be up and
running almost immediately. Develop their techniques and they can, erm, run
faster.
I’ve put together my top tips
on manipulating time & motion to get you started.
(Disclaimer - this article
will not give you or your students the ability to actually manipulate time and
motion, just the speed of your footage).
Always remember: “It is not the spoon that bends, it
is only yourself”
Never quite worked this one
out, but it seemed an apt thing to mention before I start dishing out advice. And
I really like The Matrix. Anyway, back to time and motion…
Change the speed of your clip without that staggered
look
Adjusting the footage speed is
easy:
In Final Cut Pro, go to
Modify > Speed (or hit Command-J).
In Adobe Premiere Pro, go to
Clip > Speed/Duration (or hit Command-R on a Mac or Ctrl-R on Windows).
This brings up a dialogue box
that allows you to change the speed of the clip by duration or speed percentage,
with 100% being normal speed (for example, if you want to double the speed of
your video, type in 200%).
However, people often make
the schoolboy error of banging in any old percentage, which can lead to jerky
or staggered playback caused by dropped frames. This will be vastly improved if
the percentage is adjusted in multiples of 25: 125%, 250% 375% etc. The reason
for this is that we use the PAL colour encoding system in the UK, which works
at 25 frames per second. By adjusting the speed in these multiples, fewer
frames (or none at all) have to be dropped and you can create a smoother
slow-mo/speed-up.
Complicated speed-adjustment sequence? Try Time Remapping
In the olden days, this kind
of function was only available in applications like Adobe After Effects, but now
you can do it in both Premiere Pro & Final Cut Pro. If you want to make more
than one speed adjustment, it’s well worth taking 5 minutes to learn about Time
Remapping. It gives you complete control over the speed of a piece of video, so
you can go from normal speed, to fast, to slow, to fast, to slow (you get the
idea), in any increment and at any point. It also sounds pretty cool when you begin
your lesson with the immortal words “Today, class, we’re going to remap time…”
Use Motion Blur & Frame Blending
If you’ve adjusted the speed
of a clip and find that it looks staggered, you can use Frame Blending to smooth
it out. If that doesn’t do the trick, then it’s time to stop playing around and
bring out the big guns: Motion Blur. Like Time Remapping, Motion Blur was once
associated almost exclusively with After Effects and as such was reserved for
motion-graphics artists.
It looks like there was a
meeting that I wasn’t invited to, because now everyone seems to be getting in
on the action, whether they’re professionals or amateurs. Even students can get
a taste of this industry standard technique, which will give them a real head
start if they want to get into the creative industry further down the line.
Motion Blur will help make
movement look natural and clean, but be warned: this isn’t a real-time effect
and, as with all blurs, it takes some heavy-rendering time (something worth
considering before you try to introduce it into all of your lessons).
All of these tips will vastly
improve your speed changes in post-production and they’re all quite easy to
master, so your class will be using the editing tools confidently in no time.
However, if you’re going to be working on special projects for displays or even
competitions and absolutely, positively have to impress with a manipulated time
sequence…
Buy a Sony PMW-EX1 or EX3 Camcorder
There’s nothing quite like
shooting your sequence with a camera that can over- and under-crank (speed up
and slow down action) like they do in the movies! There are loads of cameras out
there that can do this but they can be on the expensive side. If you can afford
to buy one for your school, I guarantee that you’ll be stunned by the results
(and so will your students). If that’s a little rich for your budget, investing
in software like these is a cheaper way to try your hand at some of the same
effects.
We stock Adobe
Premiere Pro in our shop, as well as Final Cut Studio
(contact us for details about an Education discount - you can call us on 03332 409 333 or email learning@jigsaw24.com).
Been
saving the pennies? Take a look at the Sony
PMW-EX1 Camcorder (available at a great price) and the more recent PMW-EX3
(which includes even more features than its predecessor).