Moving Picture Magic

Hello everyone! Chris and I finally finished our video for class. It was a lot of work, but really fun.

Here is our video.

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Behind the Process

Since my last post, Chris and I filmed our video in the Advanced Media Production Studio. It took us about three hours to film everything. This is mainly because we would watch every take to make sure we had everything down right. After we shot everything, I took an hour trimming our videos down to make editing easier for us (this is a little trick I use because I hate how long Final Cut Pro takes to import/render). Chris and I then spent about 6 hours editing in Final Cut Pro. Chris had never worked in Final Cut Pro before, so I kinda threw him into it. For me, editing on Final Cut Pro is pretty easy because I have been forcing myself to learn it throughout the semester. Furthermore, we finished our video and published it v. late at night.

The difficult thing about producing this video was directing, shooting and starring in a video. Like I mentioned, it was only Chris and I doing everything for this video. So it was hard to make sure we got the shots we needed. Something I learned from this video was the value of a teleprompter. I don’t know if it was obvious in our video, but Chris and I were mainly reading off of a teleprompter. This little piece of technology really saved us time and *our lives*. I think that using the technology in the studio was something Chris and I did well. We really used the microphones, lights and green screen to their full extent to try and get a high quality product. I really did like messing around with all of the camera angles and the camera positioning.  

Because we edited the video very late at night, we actually forgot to add a clip to our video. My little angry rant was actually supposed to go a little longer. We had already published the video and decided to cut our losses and not re-edit the video. We got lucky because our video still makes sense. So, if I could go back and do this again I would check our video to our script to ensure we didn’t forget anything.

What really resonated with me about this process was seeing how an idea turns into a full project. It was truly amazing to see this process through and have an actual product.

Moreover, I think our story was compelling. We tried to relate back to our radio show so that we already had a base of characters to riff off of. We also tried to create a sense of place through our use of green screening and the director character. We tried to draw in our viewers by giving them tiny details and then building on them later. These little breadcrumbs drew our viewer into the story Chris and I created and is something we did really well.

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Trailer

Chris and I also this week produced a trailer for our documentary. We got special permission from Martha to do our trailer a week later. We asked for this because we wanted to use footage from our documentary in our trailer and we didn’t have time the first week to film. Below is our trailer.

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Behind the Process

So, after we filmed everything and released our documentary, we made our trailer. I used footage from our documentary and some premade titles from Final Cut Pro. I also used some photos of Chris and I to incorporate into our trailer. I found it easy to create the trailer in Final Cut Pro because I have a lot of experience in it.

The difficult part of this assignment was trying to find music to use. I decided to look at Martha’s resources from audio week and discovered this little gem. On there I found some great tense drum music that fit my vision well. Something I learned from this process is how to use text and videos to create a trailer. I really forced myself to use text and not depend solely on the videos.

Something I want to improve is trying to tell a story in my trailer. I found it hard to create a trailer and not reveal too much. I used the “Icarus” trailer (amazing documentary by the way) as an inspiration for my trailer. The way they establish the characters and context really guided how I made ours. I tried to establish some sense of characters through the flashes of our footage. Doing this also interested my viewers. I still think I could do better with the storytelling aspect of my trailer. If I could do this assignment again, I would try and focus on creating a sense of place as that was lacking in our trailer. However, I think I did the best I could with what I have.

I did like making a trailer as I have never done it before. I enjoyed creatively using my footage so I could capture my viewers attention.

Well, making this video has truly been a labor of love. I’ll catch you on the flipside folks.