Transitioning from loud clip to talking head

[Renton Maclachlan]

I'm just wondering if anyne has ideas on how to transition in the following situation.

I am producing a teaching series where the bulk of the material is me presenting my content. However I refer in the content to an event that lends itself to a very dramatic and loud footage which I have been kindly given permission to use.

It is easy to go from me speaking to the clip...I have just cut it in full volume, blam immediately I have finished the sentence...and it works really well...very impressive...love it...

However transitioning from the clip to me speaking again is difficult because it is going from action and noise to speaking. At the moment I have the video transitioning to black and the audio transitioning to quiet over a couple of seconds, but even so it almost seems like an anti-climax coming back to the speaking.

Originally I had thought I would put the picture behind the audio of me speaking, but once I had the clip and had played around with audio to go with it, I realised it was so powerful it needed to stand alone.

But then I had this transition issue...

I wonder if there is a better way to transition...

Any ideas?

[Don Palomaki]

Without seeing/hearing hard to say, but perhaps you could do something that amounts to a visual/audio re-awakening after the fade to black.

E.g., something like the music starting 8:40 into this YouTube clip.
[

The Firebird - Stravinsky - YouTube

[Greg Miller]

Does the clip end naturally on something that is a visually static image?

If so, you could just freeze that last frame, then use green screen so that you walk into the frame in front of the freeze frame. That would give a transition in the context, so that you are then "in front of" the clip, as if you have been watching it along with your audience. It would bring you back into the "present time" and put you face to face with your audience. And the action of your walking into the frame, as well as the few seconds of time, would allow for the change in audio level and "intensity" of the action.

[Renton Maclachlan]

Thanks Don and Greg. Unfortunately neither of your suggestions will work but one thing out of that video that you posted Don may...the fade in of the musician...and I have tried that...it has improved the transition.

The clip is a zoom in from a long way away, to a boat on a violent storm tossed sea. As received it had music behind it, which I have taken out and replaced with six plus tracks of storm sounds - high wind, rain, thunder etc, all of which I have very loud to amplify the audio/visual assault on the senses. It is dramatic. The video I have faded to black before I start the fading of the audio, and have now faded me in, rather than cut me in, right at the end of the audio fade. It works better...

Thanks

[Bob Hart]

Maybe the "anti-climax" effect is something you have to embrace rather than eliminate.

My personal preference might be the long audio fade to silence, then transition of your voice coming in over the last remnants of your storm vision track before you cut to the talking head if that's what you have and not a voice-over.

Otherwise I might try a hard cut to a brief mute and blackscreen, or maybe a quick fade to mute freezeframe of the storm ocean for as long as it takes the senses to reset.

Please heed the opinion of others far more valid to comment than I am.

[Renton Maclachlan]

Thanks Bob

I've done some more work on it and it is a lot better. One of the issues was that the zoom into the boat was from a looong way out so that you can hardly see it...then you zoom in alongside it and see the huge waves interacting with it...and the 'camera turns back on it as it it comes alongside and sort of starts to go around the front...then fades out...

What I've done is copy the last 7 seconds or so and pasted them on the end. Then I have mirrored them and reversed them so now it looks like the 'camera' goes right around the front of the boat and down the other side and way on out from the back of the boat on the reverse angle it came in on. The boat eventually gets quite small. It is like the sequence is complete now where as it wasn't before.

One thing I had to be careful of was that a large wave splash off the boat right at the end of the original clip, in the reversed clip had the splash coming out of the water and onto the boat, which needless to say looked odd. I cut that out.

So now, as the boat disappears into the distance and all the spray, I fade the video to black and the audio fades out as well...and the anti-climax effect is nowhere near as pronounced. Interesting...

It was quite fun doing it...

Now I would like a good graphic/clip of about 2 seconds to illustrate/represent claimed global warming...at the moment I have a desert shot but the connection to the words is not tight enough...

[Bob Hart]

Some global warming iconography stereotypes.

1. A crocodile skin of dried out silt on a lake bed or empty water reservoir - dead fish.
2. Dried up concrete irrigation aquaduct.
3. Abandoned rusting monsoon sprinkler head on a ruined citrus orchard or dead field crop.
4. "Big" sun in a sunset, with zoom, maybe with very "warm" optical filter for redness.
5. Same but with a smokeless fire or gas burner creating some ripple in the air. - Slow-mo ??
6. Dead and dried out corn crop.
7. Dead trees with hard or "big sun" sunset sky backdrop.
8. Bleached framework of a long dead domestic farm animal.

[Renton Maclachlan]

I picked up a very suitable photo off the web to illustrate claimed global warming...though I can't see who to attribute it to...or any statement re its use. What do people do in such cases? What should be put in the credits?

Would prefer a video but couldn't find any like it...