“Corona Time” lockdown is an opportunity for deepening: thoughts, knowledge, skills. I find myself drawn to video editing, something I like to do very much. I never formally studied it (so sorry if the terms I’ll use are not totally professional), but rather had the chance to practice for YouTube and then even got paid for some projects while studying architecture.
As both an architect and a video editor, I always didn’t think there’s any particular connection between the two. Well, I’ve produced some videos about architecture in the world following my travels, but that’s not what I mean. In the last three days I worked on an editing project that was a revelation in that sense…
First, watch the video:
Space, Time and Scale
As architects we deal with SPACE. Space is the main arena in which we work, and we utilize it while designing in a varied SCALE: from a door knob, through a building up to a whole neighborhood. The higher you go in “space resolution”, the more attention is needed for details. Video editing is mainly a TIME domain work. We design a sequence, in which SCALE is also a critical aspect: from a short commercial through a short film up to a feature film. In editing as well, the shorter the film, the higher attention needed for details, or higher “time resolution”. So the significance of SCALE and the relevant resolution is a common aspect both in architecture and in video editing (and cinema in general…). The TIME / SPACE duality make an interesting complementary aspect.
About WELCOME video
Here are a few words about “WELCOME” video clip. The initial aim was to create a short video as a welcoming clip to my YouTube channel. I decided to make a “Best of” clip based only on existing edited footage. That still gave me a base of about 150 clips to work with.
As background music, I wanted a short dramatic piece with a notable crescendo. Searching YouTube music library I found “To BE A Ball Of Light” by “Late Night Feeler”, A 109 seconds “cinematic/dramatic” piece. Perfect!
I aimed at editing the video such that the cuts will be in sync with the music, to give the clip a notable rhythm. Working on a 25 frame per second time line, analyzing the tune, I learned that the beat is approximately one second, hence working on chunks of 25-26 frames. For the more dramatic parts I used “Half rhythm” units of 12-13 frames. While doing the rough editing placing the various shots, I did not finalize the exact shots’ lengths, but rather placed them and cut them by hearing (for some reason, beat detection did not work well on my editing software).
As the editing iterations became more and more precise, I noticed that something is still wrong with the clip’s flow. I then checked all the shots, just to find that a single 14 frames shot in a sequence of several 13 frames shots was disrupting the flow! As always, discovering things by yourself is more emotional and better memorized, so for me it was a significant lesson: The importance of one frame, or 40 milliseconds!
Relating that back to architecture, try to step through a staircase in which one of the stairs’ run or rise is different by several millimeters! That’s going to be a risky task…
To conclude, I must admit that it’s quite symbolic to undergo this lesson during “Corona Time”, when the meaning of time is revised…
Leave a Reply