More organic looking dissolves

S

szegedin

Member
Hello and sorry if this has been discussed a thousand times; but people often like to comment in the now.

I was recently watching Apocalypse Now (for the 10,000th time) and it really strikes me how in the opening montage, the dissolves between shots seem very organic. By that I mean that you can tell they were done by hand on an old film editing machine. This, because the rate of dissolve is not 100% linear in the way it fades out, and you get the impression that the two shots being cut don't always "sum to 100%" if you know what I mean.

Generally speaking, the thing that makes video look least "film-like" to me is often the digital looking titles (that don't jitter like they should and don't have any fuzz on the borders) and the dissolves that seem too robotic.

I only dabble in editing my own stuff, and I was wondering if anyone could comment on a way to achieve something more organic in that in a NLE. Using keyframes to sort of randomly make ten dots of change of level? Any hints? Are there factors going on here that I haven't thought of?

 
Actually, a 100% linear dissolve would look entirely digital. Better, more organic-looking dissolves and fades have more of a s-curve.
 
David Jimerson said:
Actually, a 100% linear dissolve would look entirely digital. Better, more organic-looking dissolves and fades have more of a s-curve.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I mean. Thanks, programming an s-curve is a good place for me to start. And in fact a not even a symmetrical, smooth "S."
 
You picked one helluva reference example! The first four minutes of Apocalypse Now is a master class in montage and juxtaposition. At times there are quadruple layers of imagery present, and then of course the central transition theme is the audio, which turns helicopter "chopper" blades into a spinning ceiling fan. That sequence alone likely took Walter Murch weeks if not months to design.

Editing and cinema style has become fairly pedestrian these days, which is rather intriguing given the technical ease we have available to us to execute them. One only need look at some of the rather fascinating multi-layered effects present in a standard Hollywood film of the sixties like the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair to realize how conservative edit has become.

Polo scene from The Thomas Crown Affair:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKtktLDSOpA
 
Mitch Gross said:
You picked one helluva reference example! ... That sequence alone likely took Walter Murch weeks if not months to design.

Editing and cinema style has become fairly pedestrian these days
Click to expand...

Well, yes sir. I'm not going to ask people how to make a Pringles commercial. : ) I have talked with colleagues about the post sound on that one, where Murch and two other supervising sound guys and a team of 20-50 others worked 12 hour days for nine months... just on the sound post (not sure if that includes the ADR, which was for the whole film.) I think even the worst undergraduate thesis film would be pretty damn good with 150,000 hours of post-production sound work on it.

You are absolutely right. People really are more conformist in their craft these days. I have some theories about why.
What a great example with that polo scene. Those were really freewheeling days of having fun with the technology.

You see what I mean about the fades, for example at around 2:10 Willard's face fades to 30% transparency or so, and then back in? You can pretty much feel the hand on the machine doing this. A propos, I think I'm going to experiment with some kind of USB fader for this purpose. I'm not going to achieve Apocalypse Now, but I'm aiming for something that feels a little more handmade.
 
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