Ideas to Make Boring Street Scenes Energetic

[Scott Sheriff]

FYI
I know you already shot your footage, but the standard trick to make city streets crowded is to use a long lens. Telephoto compression and shallow DOF will ad some zip to crowd shots.

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Mark Suszko]

Time lapse never goes out of style, it just isn’t always used artfully or with purpose.

Think about dividing up the screen into a grid and then using an odd number of randomly proportioned rectangles and squares as PIP boxes, some showing the same scene in different scales, some tinted in a monochromatic shade, others showing some detail of the scene in tightly cropped detail.

Another way to go could be to give it the hand-drawn colored pencil or watercolor animation look. There are some new and improved toon shader plug-ins now available. Or you could use Synthetik StudioArtist to interactively paint with the footage.

Repost questions like these in the Art of Editing forum for more perspectives from people who have already seen that issue.

[Steve Crow]

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions and I will indeed check out the Art of Editing forum, didn’t know it existed! 🙂

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Harry Bromley-Davenport] “I strongly suggest Graeme Nattress’ “Earthquake” plugin with appropriate rumbling sound FX. “

Or some CG meteors! Volcano! gunfight! Lingerie sale!

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Sam Ellens]

I agree wholeheartedly. I hate most video effects that people use these days, and reserve a special hatred for white flashes and speed ramps. And then there are films like Standard Operating Procedure that use black so often that it completely loses its effectiveness. People trying to be fancy instead of letting the material tell the story…though for the OP’s problem it might be the only solution.

[Nicholas Bierzonski]

Hi Steve!

If you are familiar with After Effects you could use Time Displacement.

-Nicholas Bierzonski
Senior Editor/DVD Author/Java Boy
http://www.finalfocusvideo.com

[Keetat Tan]

I would try to use tighter shots of people that will fill up the screen, (you might even be able to get away with people from different location) some quick cuts of interesting shops and interesting features along the street.