On clipping and rhythm in vidding

[lierdumoa]

Yesterday I was supposed to be writing RPS. But I got lazy. So instead I decided to read lots and lots of vid meta. I came across laurashapiro's notes on her Creating Mood Panel.

Timing Cuts
To the Beat - simple, direct, "punchy", makes the vid danceable, hard-hitting, rhythmically satisfying
To the Lyric - emphasizes the words, cuts will sometimes be on the beat and sometimes not, vid has less bounciness but may have more flow, or feel more organic
Other - cutting to a grace note or other musical accent will tend to emphasize that element in the music, so the mood of that guitar solo or drum break more concretely affects the mood of your vid in that moment

Now my gut instinct after reading this was to think -- you're wrong. You should always cut on beat. But here was someone disagreeing with me. So I had to think about why my opinion on this point was so strong. I had a conversation with permetaform last night. The both of us are total beat nazis (or maybe beat whores is a better term). Our chat helped me to develop my argument against this set of vidding guidelines.

I'll start with a little background on me. I played piano all through childhood. I'm very conscious of rhythm and meter in music. If a song has a really interesting, really complex beat, it's the first thing I notice. If a song doesn't have drums, I will pick beats out of the melody. I did not learn to clip on beat. No one had to tell me to clip on beat. It was always completely automatic for me. The only vid I didn't clip on beat for is my very first one, and I cringe every time I look at it (although I think all vidders do that with their first vids).

Now my first objection -- danceable? Bouncy? The song itself is always on beat. That does not necessairily mean the song is danceable or bouncy. I don't see how clipping to the beat would make a vid danceable or bouncy. I vidded to Tori Amos's cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The music itself has no drums -- only vocals and piano. The beat is more often understood than heard explicitly. All of my clipping for that vid is on beat. Certainly it wasn't the best vid in the world, but at no point did my vid come across as bouncy or danceable. I managed to maintain proper mood throughout and stay on beat.

Also, I noticed that even when beat did not coincide exactly with lyric, it was close enough that it felt like I was clipping on the lyric. My clips were positioned to accent the beat, but due to their context it seemed as if they were emphasizing the lyrics more than the beat. Clipping to the beat doesn't have to undermine your meaning as long as you don't do it badly. If a song is slow, you might want to make a scene last through two or three beats instead of one, because otherwise your visuals will be moving faster than your music. Of course, if your visuals move too fast for your music, your vid might come across as bouncy when it shouldn't. The problem isn't that you're on beat.

My second objection -- that by clipping to the lyric "vid...may have more flow, or feel more organic." I don't care what the music is -- it will never have more flow or feel more organic to me if a song is clipped offbeat. It will always feel slightly wrong. That's just how I, personally, experience music. I have to force myself not to notice when vids aren't clipped on beat. I don't know why it bothers me so much and not others. I strongly suspect it has something to do with the fact that the majority of fandom is made up of rhythmless white nerds (don't deny it).

My third objection to this set of guidelines is that I don't think it encourages a proper understanding of what beat is. Beats and lyrics are not mutually exclusive. A song beat is very complex. It has lots of intermediate beats. Grace notes and musical accents are not outside of the beat, but inside of it. Part of it. Lyrics themselves have beats. English is a language with a stress accent. Words have rhythm to them. I noticed this especially when I vidded rap. The words have a beat as much as the background music. A few of my clips in my Superman vid were matched up to lyrical beats -- to various stressed syllables. This was most noticeable, I think, at point 1:52 in the vid with the words "runway ho," and point 2:11 with the words "everybody knows."

ETA: If you're reading this and you haven't seen my vid, but want to, you can download it here.

On a somewhat related note, I think it would be interesting for someone to try to vid Tori Amos with lyrical beats in mind. I've seen a number of vids to her, and made a vid to her, but I don't think any of them quite do her justice. She has some of the most complex lyrical beats I've ever heard, in which she uses both pitch and stress to accent certain syllables.

In her song "Siren" off the Great Expectations soundtrack she pronounces the word "vanilla" as "vi-ni-ia-la-a." The word sounds like it has extra syllables because of the way she stretches a singular vowel sound across several different pitch ranges. In "Take To The Sky" she sings the lyrics "hold me in the dark" as to "ho-old me in the da-ark." She stresses syllables that don't necessarily exist in the webster's dictionary pronunciation guide. I think one extreme example is in "A Sorta Fairytale" when she sings "for me to take your word I had to steal it" as "for me to ta-ake you word I had to ste-e-e-eal it." The word "steal" goes through four different pitch changes. Pure. Aural. Sex.

She's the one of the few artists I've seen do this consistently. I've also noticed it in Boa's "Duvet" and the Cranberries' "Zombie" and, to a lesser extent, some of Jewel's and Alanis Morissette's music. Personally, I think it sounds more interesting the way Tori does it. Less yodel-y.

I don't know *how* anyone could represent this in a vid, but I'd love it if someone tried. I'm going to be vidding "Spring Haze" to Butterfly Effect (the theater version), so I guess I could try my hand at it. The song has both complex drum beats and complex lyrical beats.

Comments

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect it has something to do with the fact that the majority of fandom is made up of rhythmless white nerds (don't deny it).

I ADMIT IT PROUDLY (AND SADLY)!!

I still balk at the use of the word 'wrong', though. I don't like to be told that something is 'wrong' just because you don't agree or because you'd do it differently.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks. I should clear that up. I didn't mean that it was wrong in any objective sense, but that it felt wrong to me -- like seeing plaid and stripes together.

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this reminds me of when I was twelve and I first became aware of the fact that I "have no rhythm'. I was dancing, and thought I was doing a bang-up job, and my mom was like, "Honey, why aren't you dancing to the beat?" And after a discussion with her, I realized that not everyone dances the way I do--

I dance sometimes to the beat, sometimes to the vocals, sometimes to the instruments, and, yes, as you say, they are part of the beat, but they are not always on beat.

I've been shamed out of dancing in public because I'm a 'rhythmless white nerd', and that is sad for me. I love music, and part of me contends that I just hear it differently than people who focus on just the rhythm, but try telling that to the people who laugh when I dance.

So, now that I'm 'self-analyzing', I'm seeing that my reaction to your comment was because I suddenly felt like you were telling me that the way that I vid is wrong, too. And I don't want to be shamed out of my amusement just because I hear and see the music differently.

However, you're right. I have no rhythm and I'm not a real vidder, so I'm not sure why I really reacted at all. But I did....

Yes, I have hang-ups. I guess being mocked will do that to a girl. ;)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I totally understand that. See, when I first read her post, I had your same reaction. I felt like I was being told that the way I vidded wrong, because I clipped on beat even in songs where other vidders would have chosen to clip to the lyric.

Essentially, I have to vid what feels right to me, and you have to vid what feels right to you. The two don't always perfectly coincide. Just so you know, the fact that you don't clip on beat has never prevented me from enjoying any of your vids.

Just found this post about cutting to the beat...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

I find this interesting, because my panel notes were presented as just that: notes. I have no vested interest in telling any vidder that their choices are wrong. The point of the panel was to explore the different possible choices a vidder could make, and the impact those choices could have on the vid's mood.

It sounds like a vid that is cut to the lyric *always* feels wrong to you, which is a perfectly valid opinion to have. I like many vids that cut in all sorts of ways: to the downbeat, to the up-beat, syncopated, to the lyric, to musical ornaments, and to many combinations of these.

But my point with the post, and with the panel, was never to say that my way was the best way. Just that these were the various possibilities, and here's how they might feel.

Re: Just found this post about cutting to the beat...

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I understand that they're just notes. They're very different from the way I see things, so I wanted to present my point of view. And, well, I have this tendency of getting really overzealous whenever I'm presenting an argument.

Honestly the more I think about it the more I think it's an issue of semantics, rather than an actual disagreement. For example, I have on occasion clipped to the lyric -- usually in addition to clipping to the beat, as opposed to instead of.

The thing is, when I'm vidding, I don't think of the lyrics as lyrics at all. I reduce everything down to beats. Usually when people say beat they only mean the simplest backbeat. When I say beat I mean basically everything that is accented. A hard accent on a certain syllable will hit me the same way a drum beat will. I might clip to a word if the beat of that word stands out to me. The same goes for grace notes -- they hit me as beats.

In that way, lyrics are just part of the beat to me. I only dislike clipping to the lyric if I feel there is a more pronounced drumbeat that is being ignored in favor of a less pronounced lyrical beat. Clipping on the lyric might feel onbeat to me in one song where the lyrics have strong accents, and offbeat to me in another song where clearly it is the drums, and not the words, that are carrying the bulk of the beat.

So the more I look back on our two posts the more I think we were saying similar things, but in totally different ways.

Hopefully I made some sense there.

Re: Just found this post about cutting to the beat...

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to clarify your position. I understand what you mean about the semantic issue. My musical training has taught me to think of only the actual rhythmic notation of the song as the beat (percussive or not) -- the beat is the part where the conductor's arm goes up and down. *g*

But seeing the way you think of it, your take on the issue makes a lot of sense.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I was talking about rhythm to permetaform last night and I got an epiphany.

You can tell me if I'm totally off-base, but this is my assessment of how you hear music. When I look at your vids you sometimes vid to the main beat, and sometimes to a lyrical accent, and sometimes to some other musical effect. I can usually tell that you're clipping to *something* in the music.

The thing is, I experience all musical effects and lyrical accents as part of the beat. I can feel their other merits, but first and foremost I experience them as part of the beat -- as minor beats that tie in with the song's major beat.

It's almost like I'm a little colorblind. Because I'm not seeing the "colors" every thing looks black and white to me. I hear everything as a beat. That way it's easier for me to discern "shades" -- the more pronounced beats and the less pronounced beats.

So when I look at your vids, it doesn't feel so much that you're clipping *offbeat* as that you're not really clipping with a pattern. Think of it this way -- you have musical stanzas. They start with the major beat, and within that there are minor beats. Sometimes you'll highlight a minor beat in one particular stanza, and I'll be expecting the same highlight in the next stanza, but then you'll highlight something else. I know that you're always clipping to *something* but you rarely ever do so with a fixed pattern.

When I vid, my pattern is very fixed. I *always* highlight the major beat patter since to my ears it is the most prominent and most important beat. I sometimes highlight lyrical accents and musical accents. I hear these as more minor beats, so they doesn't get the same representation as the major beats.

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

I think this is probably very accurate. I was actually thinking about vidding and beat, etc, the past few days, too, because I was watching some of the vividcon stuff and thinking that, for whatever reason, most of the stuff doesn't appeal to me.

This is going to sound perhaps very strange and I don't mean this as an insult at all, because I do think that you hit the nail on the head when you said that we hear music differently, and thus what I want from a vid is probably quite different, but the vids that seemed to get a lot of praise at Vividcon were things that felt too polished to me, not organic at all, too souless in a way.

I was reading the con reports and just viewing the ones that many people were praising as being great and, er, I found most of them rather boring in a way. What I found is that I enjoyed it the first viewing, but repeat viewings didn't seem to offer me anything new to look at, and so I grew bored very rapidly.

I will give an example of a vid that many folks think is just amazing but I've always found really boring, and that is Sisabet's SV vid--the one she did to Placebo. I remember watching it when everyone was having orgasms over it when it was first released and finding it so dull that I didn't watch the whole thing. It was too...polished. Too professional. It didn't do anything that made me feel the music at all.

I still find that very strange to this day. I mean, obviously, this is something about me and what I want from vids.

Actually, you know what it reminds me of? I remember in college going to see a dance troupe and the piece that they danced to was Peter Gabriel's Passion. I remember thinking, "Oh, dear. If I were the choreographer, I would never have done it this way." It was very focused on the beat, and that isn't how I always heard the album. I always heard the album with my focus going from instrument to instrument. In my head, I imagined how I'd have choreographed it, and no doubt dancers and choreographers alike would have shuddered and died, but I thought there should be a dancer representing each instrument, and that the dance should blend these dancers just as the song blended the instruments.

In my mind it was beautiful. ;)

But, I have to say that I really, really, really don't think that vidding is my passion. What am I saying? I know vidding is not my passion. So, I think that I might not think like vidders think. I went to lunch with rosesmove the other day and she agreed that vidders think very differently, and are very detail oriented in a way that I don't necessarily appreciate.

I've read some meta posts on vidding and my main reaction is befuzzlement about why anyone feels that strongly about vidding. I don't feel that kind of passion for it. I think it is because vids don't hold up for me over time--although, oddly, even though I know they aren't very good vids, my vids do hold up for me over time. Well, most of them. There are a few that I never liked that much to begin with that I still don't like a lot. *laughs*

Ummm, so, I think all of that was to say that I find most fangirled vids to be un-organic feeling, too polished, and boring--especially on repeat viewings.

You know, the only vids by other people I keep on my hard drive are:

Head Over Feet by whoever did that one. Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space, by whoever did that one. Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk, by whoever did that one. And I'm considering keeping Defying Gravity despite some of the parts that feel too technical for my enjoyment. And your Smells Like Teen Spirit vid. All of those are decidedly less polished than the vids that get high critical acclaim in fandom.

I think I just like organic over polished, and too much beat often feels too polished to me. I have no fucking clue if any of this makes sense. ;)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I think I like vids that are polished, but moreso, meticulous, which isn't quite the same as polished. For example, probably my favorite vid by you is Seventeen. Something about the movement in the clips. You manage to capture virtually every beat, minor and major, made by whatever sound be it drums or lyrical accents. It doesn't look forced, though, and it has no definite pattern, which is why it doesn't come across as polished.

On the other hand, sometimes I want it to look forced, depending on how forceful I feel the beat is. A lot of VAST songs, for example have beats that are incredibly complex, and almost entirely made up of different drums. If anyone were to vid one of their songs without serious attention to the complexity of the beat, I would feel as if they were ignoring the most important part of the song.

I found it interesting what you said about the dancers not representing the instruments. If I were watching that choreography, I'd probably want the dancers to represent the instruments with a style of dance. The thing is, dancing to the instruments wouldn't make the dancers off-beat. The instruments are not against the beat -- they work with it (unless it's some new kind of music that I've never heard of). When I represent musical accents in my vids, I always represent them in addition to representing the main beat. I think they are important for the sounds they make, but equally important for the way they fit into flow of the song.

I think this had a lot to do with my piano training. I've composed a few pieces for the piano. When you write music, the beat is the groundwork. This is how it is with every song. All lyrical accents and musical notations are built on the beat. In any piece of sheetmusic the first thing you see before you see any notes is the meter -- the number of beats pure musical stanza. Music is an artform based heavily in repeated patterns -- repeated choruses, repeated verse structure, and underneath that a constant beat that spans the whole song.

So in that way, vids that don't hit the beat don't feel more organic to me because the beat itself is what is most organic to me. When I see something that's offbeat, it actually feels unnatural to me because for me the beat is the most natural, most fundamental part of the music.

I find your reaction to Sisabet's SV vid interesting. It was very polished, but what personally appealed to me about it was the story. It said a lot of interesting things about Lex's emotional journey. I liked the effects and the faithfulness to the beat as an added bonus to the story.

"Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" is one of my favorite QaF vids because of, again, the story it tells. It bugs me slightly that the clip placement is always really close to the beat but not quite there. It makes up for it in that the clips move well with the song. Even when they are slightly off beat they still keep up the right pace and go just the right speed for the music, which gives the sense that if you were to average together all the slightly off timings, they'd all be on beat.



I've read some meta posts on vidding and my main reaction is befuzzlement about why anyone feels that strongly about vidding.

I think that's how it is with any obsession that isn't yours. I don't understand how people can be so into baseball -- I think it's the most boring sport ever invented. In fact, most sports have no appeal to me -- they just aren't my obsession.

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

It is funny, (as in I'm actually giggling), because Seventeen is the vid of mine that bores me the most! Hahahaaa!!

I think that my favorite vid of my own has always been my second one, Because I Told You So, but that's just 'cause I like the opening so well.

Hmm, I should sit down and watch all of my vids from beginning (Hey Jupiter) to end and cringe in horror. ;)

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Hee! I love Because I Told You So. I really love the song and what the vid has to say about Brian and Justin.

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

Gracias!

Hey, you wouldn't have the time to beta, would you?

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Sure! If it's not, like, really, really long.

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well, what is really, really long? I think it is about ten pages. If the end works, that is...it might need something else.

Okay, is lierdumoa at live journal the way to send it?

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Yep! Send away!

[permetaform]

WE STILL NEED BEAT WHORE ICONS!!! ::bounces::

[f1renze.livejournal.com]

::wants::

Even when I do fades they have to break on the beat. ::facepalm::

[permetaform]

no serious! that's the way I do them too! they look *better* that way for some reason, damned if I can figure out why because I didn't think that the eye was fast enough to catch those few frames where the fades *start*, but if you do the 3 frames before trick it *still* works. ::bogglement::

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Maybe your eye doesn't catch those few frames where the fades start. Maybe your brain just logic!compensates. Cause visuals don't make sense anyway until your brain processes them.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

I'm working on an icon with the words "total beat whore" and the waveform scrolling in the background.

[permetaform]

eeeee! ::bounces:: I *never* have animated icons, but I'll make an exception for THAT oh YES I will!!

OH! have you seen rosesmove's vid yet??? My beat 'ho self is utterly LOVING her vid!!

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

*points to icon*

And the vid was great! I'll have to remember to comment on it later.

[permetaform]

OMG! taking and crediting! ::bounces

[tanacawyr.livejournal.com]

This is interesting to me. Clipping on beat is also more important to me for a dance song with a strong bass line. On a slower, more rolling song with a more leisurely pace, it doesn't bother me as much. (I'd also use more dissolves for something like that as well, which is just not doable on beat, or not as much.) That's generally how I'd probably distinguish it.

There was one significant point at which I cut on beat during my "Hornblower" vid, thinking I always had to mark the downbeat with a cut, and it ended up looking awful. I've also got many years of classical music training (piano as well), so I think I had the same initial feeling as you. (Classical also equals "no lyrics," usually, so I wasn't used to being sensitive to the lyrics.) It took screwing up that cut to convince me that while cutting on beat is the best first instinct, sometimes that rule must be broken.

The way I think about it is that the beat is the default place to cut. You cut on the lyrics if it's absolutely necessary, but otherwise you cut on the beat. And if you cut on the lyrics, you'd better have a damned good reason.

I don't see how clipping to the beat would make a vid danceable or bouncy.

It does to me. Very strongly. The bass line in your average dance number is very, very strongly emphasized, 60bpm, once a second. It's already a powerful rhythm, and a natural one for the human body, which is why swordfights vid well to dance numbers. I could vid to one of Chopin's etudes, and the fact that it's not 60bpm would make it much less strong in emphasis to the average viewer. A polonaise would almost require cutting on beat.

All beats are absolutely not equivalent. Dance-tempo beats are very, very addictive and very strongly a part of the human body. Everything from the swing of a leg to the heartbeat is at an average of 60bpm. As beautiful as your average Joplin waltz is, it's just not going to capture the muscles the way a rag would. Cutting on beat is more important to a dance number.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

First I'd like to clear something up. Clipping to the beat and cutting on the beat are not the same thing. Cutting on the beat means switching from one scene to the next on a beat. Clipping to the beat can mean anything from having someone drop their chin on beat to adding in a flare of light on beat.

I'd also use more dissolves for something like that as well, which is just not doable on beat, or not as much.

Actually, dissolves look better when they break on the beat. Trust me on this. I learned it the hard way.



I don't see how clipping to the beat would make a vid danceable or bouncy.

It does to me. Very strongly. The bass line in your average dance number is very, very strongly emphasized, 60bpm, once a second.

I think you might be missing my point. Yes, if the song is danceable and bouncy, than clipping on the beat will emphasize that fact. If the song is not danceable or bouncy, then clipping on the beat will not make it seem so.

I don't know if you've ever seen permetaform's "Lucky You" vid. Everything is perfectly on beat, and it emphasizes the beat of the song -- makes it seem more intense. Certain clip choices hit the viewer harder than they would otherwise. It does *not* make the vid danceable because the music is not danceable.



There was one significant point at which I cut on beat during my "Hornblower" vid, thinking I always had to mark the downbeat with a cut, and it ended up looking awful.

I think the main mistake here is thinking that cutting on beat means cutting on *every* beat. Not true.

You're allowed to skip a beat and have a clip last through two or three if that's what the music calls for. The key is pacing. Clipping on every single beat might mean your clips are going faster than the song. Pace is more important than beat. The first thing to learn when cutting to the beat is which beats are more important than others.

I've never seen your hornblower vid, so I can't really talk about it. I can only talk about my personal vidding experiences. If I make a cut, I put it on beat. That doesn't mean I cut on *every* beat. It just means that when I do cut, it's on beat. I choose which beats I emphasize more than others based on my instincts. My instincts haven't failed me yet.



All beats are absolutely not equivalent. Dance-tempo beats are very, very addictive and very strongly a part of the human body. Everything from the swing of a leg to the heartbeat is at an average of 60bpm.

I never said that all beats were equivalent. There's the basic backbeat -- one at the start of each measure. There are the intermediate beats that make up the notes and lyrics. Obviously all of these beats are not equal. They fit a ranking system based on emphasis.

No, all beats are not equally important. Yes, certain beats hit harder than others. But all beats do register on *some* level.

I never said you had to clip to every beat equally. All I said was that you shouldn't clip *offbeat.* Clipping offbeat will emphasize beat in the wrong way, by forcing the viewer to notice the disparity between what they're seeing and what they're hearing. The more attuned the viewer is to the beat, the more noticeable offbeat clipping becomes.



Cutting on beat is more important to a dance number.

Cutting on the beat is more important depending on how important the beat is to the song. That does not mean the song is necessairily a dance number.

Most hard rock music has a very prominent beat. Most of it is not dance music. Most songs by Vast and Nine Inch Nails, for example, have *very* prominent beats even though none of their songs are what could be considered dance numbers.

Typically dance numbers do have prominent beats. But then, many songs that aren't dance numbers do as well.

I'd say the best example I can think of is Gwen R's "Valentine Heart" vid. The song is slow and sad. It has no drums, only piano, violins, and vocals. Despite this, the rhythm of the song is very obvious. The piano music had a very simple, clear pattern to it. The vidder purposely clipped offbeat in parts in order to keep her viewers off balance. It worked. Seeing that song clipped off beat bugged me and her beta's.