• Joined: January 3, 2010

Topic: The pacing in a film. Help

This has been a long lasting problem with me from the very beginning, I always got better at animation, always found neat tricks etc, but the pacing the actual pacing of a film.

I can't for the life of me get right, Now I might be using the word pace wrong and could be an idiot but I believe pacing is the way the video moves along and what happens and when it happens.

In my videos it feels like 1 thing after another in an organized straight line, nothing feels smooth. I really can't explain it but everything just feels wrong when I finish it, I have everything in the video I want and the way I want it but when I watch it everything just seems off.

Eh, I don't really know if its "pacing" but I really can't describe it.

I wanted to link a video, but I don't actually have one to show, I tend to scrap them constantly because of this, and don't feel like throwing one together to show. um. Does anyone sorta of know what I mean?

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Re: The pacing in a film. Help

Ok, I have a question for you.
Are you doing animation before audio, or audio before animation?
This tends to be a mistake for many brickfilming beginners. Many of them tend to do the audio after the video, which is ok, but it is hard to pace your video right. When you do the audio first, you can then get signals from the audio frame by frame to tell you what to do in your animation. Do you get what I'm saying? mini/dizzy

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Lavamation's Website

  • Joined: January 3, 2010

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

I do audio after, but I can't really seem to find an easy way of doing audio first, it never really felt right.

  • Joined: January 3, 2010

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

I would like to do it, but trying it myself ends badly, probably from not doing it properly or over complicating something that is actually simple.

  • Location: London
  • Joined: October 28, 2009

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/4032/pacing_01_star_wars.gif

Here's a graph showing a great example of pacing int he original Star Wars, and here's a video that at some point explains the graph in great detail and pacing in general.

(I know it's talking about pacing in video games but it's really in-depth and a lot of it applies to movies)

http://i.imgur.com/WAr6hHC.png
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jstudios's Website

  • Joined: January 3, 2010

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

At first glance, I think you are having story pacing mixed with the animation pacing.

  • Location: London
  • Joined: October 28, 2009

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

Oops, sorry thought you meant story pacing because that's how the term is usually used, especially with 'but the pacing the actual pacing of a film'.

But really you should do audio first, if you have a program like Monkeyjam then you should see the audio lines aligning with each frame, so you can plan out how many frames you can for each syllable or major word.

http://i.imgur.com/WAr6hHC.png
BRAWL 2013 ENTRY Quack In Time
"Why in the world did you do a weird language if you know English?" - tenny1028

jstudios's Website

  • Joined: January 3, 2010

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

I know I "should" but its difficult for me to do. I completely forgot about MonkeyJam's ability to have a line of audio. Maybe should look into that a bit.

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  • Joined: February 21, 2013

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

When I started I had that same problem. The film looked like there is something going on all the time and it was just too fast paced. You have to have have some frames lasting longer than other. If you just take your pictures and then just stack them together and add sounds and export, the result will look bad.
After filming you should preview your film in MonkeyJam. Then you should try to make it more smooth by making some frames last longer. This is pretty hard to explain so ask if you have questions.  mini/wink

  • Joined: January 3, 2010

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

Its not so much that, its the feeling that no pauses are going it doesn't feel as real as it should. Personally I always thought it was like an assembly line, you get the feeling its 1 event to the next with no stop, when it should be real and smooth, I think doing to audio last was the problem. All I need to do now is practice practice practice. Because it isn't just the animation being smooth.

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  • Joined: March 22, 2012

Re: The pacing in a film. Help

jstudios wrote:

http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/4032/pacing_01_star_wars.gif

Here's a graph showing a great example of pacing int he original Star Wars, and here's a video that at some point explains the graph in great detail and pacing in general.

(I know it's talking about pacing in video games but it's really in-depth and a lot of it applies to movies)

This timeline has a waveform... connect the highs and lows and you have "Parallel scenes"

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