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Camera
Operation > Camera Gimmicks
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ABOVE:
The mosaic effect. Completely useless.
BELOW: Sepia effect. Ditto. If you
really must do these kinds of special
effects, add them AFTER the footage
has been shot.
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Camcorders
have lots of silly gimmick buttons that seem cool in
the store, but are really pretty useless. The many "special
effects" buttons are typical. These come by a wide
variety of names: "strobe" "mosaic"
"posterize" "solarize" "sepia"
"overlap"etc.
What
all these effects have in common is they give you the
impression that with the push of a button you can be
creating MTV-like videos (Actually, MTV doesn't even
air music videos anymore, because even teenagers were
bored with all the repetitive special effects!) The
point is that special effects buttons are nothing more
than a novelty. They remind me of juggling: fun to look
at; fun to play around with for a bit; but it gets old
fast.
And
it’s worth adding that professionals ALWAYS add
their special effects later--long after the video has
been shot. I won’t dive into the complex technical
reasons for this, but if you really want to get into
the world of professional special effects, you’ll
need a computer and some specialized software--don't
do it with your camcorder.
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