If you watch this goofy 2:12 video I made starring Grandma Crabby, you will notice several special effects. The effects were done during the editing process and I think they add to the story-telling elements of the video.  With the effects, I was able to “say” things visually, without having to “say” a word.

Here is an explanation of how I did the effects in Final Cut Express, my video editing software of choice.

First, for the opening, I made the titles move using key frame animation. (Read this post that contains a free video editing tutorial for basic information on what key frame animation is.)

The sparkle effect I added to the bottom titles came from Live Type, a program bundled with Final Cut Express. All I had to do was take the pre-made sparkle effect and place it on top of the title I wanted to highlight.  I adjusted the size and position of the sparkle.

The opening was a composite of about 12 different sources, or “lines” of video in my time line. The red, white and blue background is an animated background I bought from Digital Juice, a leading company for royalty free animations.  (They’re great but they have NO affiliate program!  Boo, hiss.  Bad for me!  I recommend them anyway because their products are superior.)

On top of the background, I put several lines worth of titles.   Since I wanted the words to move when the narrator (me) said them, they had to be different and separate video elements.  If none of the words moved, they could all have been on one line.

The freeze frames of Grandma were put on top of the titles.  First, I went through my raw footage to find funny-looking facial expressions.  I made each one into a freeze frame.  Then, I matted out the background using an 8-point garbage matt filter.  This got rid of much of the background and made it a shot of just her face.  I adjusted the size and position of each freeze fame and placed them on the opening one at a time.

I go into the shot of grandma sitting there with an “implode” transition effect, one of my favs.

I had videotaped Grandma in front of a red cloth tacked onto the wall.  It was a very simple set-up.  To minimize the background and add the flag, I cut her out with a circular matt and put her on top of an animated, waving flag.  I bought the flag shot off iStock photo and edited it end-to-end so it would last throughout the entire video.  The original is only about 10 seconds.  Animations like this are designed to be “loop able” so they can be edited together to last forever.

I also put two name graphics up for grandma. One in the bottom third (called a lower third super) and one in the top left.  Each name super was composed of three video elements on three separate video lines in the timeline.    The rectangular background was the first element and it was just my Digital Juice background squished down using the aspect ratio and size functions.  Each line of text was independent because I wanted to make them different fonts and I needed to place them precisely.  You can not do that unless you make them separate visual elements.

To flush George Bush and Dick Cheney down the toilet, I used key frame animation.  I placed a jpeg of each man on top of a shot of a toilet.  I then put 3 key frames onto each jpeg.  I altered the center position and the rotation of each shot as I drug them along in a circular path.  I also keyframed the shots using the distortion tool, which is what made the jpegs looked like they were being tugged by the force of the flush.

To make the shot where Grandma was yawning and going back to “beddie-bye” I first made granny midnight blue by using the tint filter.  I thought this would make it look dark without actually being dark.  I then added two layers of matted black on top of her and brought the opacity (transparency) on them down.  This way, it looked like the lighting was dappled, leaving some parts brightly lit and other parts really dark.  The two layers of matted black gave me semi-transparent black objects in triangular shapes that I could place over granny to simulate the nighttime effect.  The original shot was taken with precisely the same lighting as the shots of granny speaking.  It was by turning it blue and placing the semi-transparent black mattes over it that I made it look drastically different.

When I videotaped granny, it was impossible for me to spit out the entire script in one take.  So I did it in chunks and then edited it together using a dip to color (white) dissolve.  I think if I had forced myself to learn the script better and say it in one piece, I would have had a smoother performance.  Doing it in chunks made it a little choppy.  But hey, I never claimed to be Tina Fey and I was videotaping at about 2 in the morning.  Editing helps me rescue myself from my poor acting ability!

I carried the waving flag animation as a background underneath all the other graphics.  When I had the Monica Lewinski and FDR graphics up, I added a Gaussian blur filter to the flag.  This takes the flag out of focus so you can better read the words on top of the flag.

This video is only 2:12 long.  Guess how long it took me to edit? 20 minutes?  An hour?  Two hours?  Try 6 hours folks.  Yup, video editing is a time consuming process if you want to add lots of effects.  I had to do the flushing effect 3 times before I got it looking OK.  I could have fiddled with it longer, but didn’t.

So there you have.  Is it a video editing masterpiece or just another silly online video?  YOU DECIDE.

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips.

Lorraine Grula

Internet Video Gal

Related posts:

1. Online Video Marketing: How we made this Video
2. Using Sound Effects in Video
3. Video Editing Techniques- Keyframing
4. Video Editing, the Basics
5. Fake News and Funny Videos