Video Done!

Okay, maybe the title is a little misleading. Technically, my video component is completely done; however, I still plan on receiving feedback and going back to change some things. Overall though, I basically finished editing today, and I'm dedicating this blog to my process of this final post-production stage.

Similarly to my last blog posting, I'm going to be making sections and placing what I did in order, so it makes more sense for you guys.

Organize:

        The first thing I did today, was organize my piece. In my last blog, I talked about how organizing the order of the interview clips and intertwining the two interviews was the next task on my plate. So, I began organizing. I didn't have a lot of time to edit yesterday, so while I began to edit yesterday, I simply organized the first minute or so and added the matching B-roll right away. Typically, I would have waited until after organizing everything to add a B-roll, but I wanted to have at least one section completed before going to bed.

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        Something else I did yesterday that would help me today is make bins. I had done this in several past projects, but since I had such a grand variety of visual and auditory footage, I decided to implement it into this project as well. If you're not familiar with Adobe Premiere Pro or bins in general, they are basically little folders you can create within the imported content that can help you organize more specifically your content. Below, you can see all of the folders I created to help me organize and be able to locate my content quicker and more efficiently.

        One thing you might find strange from the list of bins above is one called 'USED.' This was surprisingly my most important bin, in my opinion. One big problem I had while editing my in-class documentary project, was that I would accidentally use the same clip of B-roll twice, and not even realize it until way later. In order to solve this problem, I made this bin. Every time I used a new clip, whatever it may be, I took it out of its corresponding bin and put it into the 'USED' bin so I made sure to not re-use it.

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        Anyway, today in the morning, I started editing again, and I simply spent some time organizing the interviewee clips in an order that I thought was good. This was a little complicated because although they both had the same questions being asked, both interviewees typically responded to the questions in unique ways. This obviously provided me with a greater variety of content, but at the same time, it made it hard for me to match up the content with one another and make the whole piece flow smoothly. So, after some time of deleting clips and rearranging them around, I finished the organizing stage of this post-production process and decided to move along.

Music:

        Surprisingly, I decided the next step I wanted to take was music. Music has always been hard to choose from due to the vast amount of options available through the infinite platforms online. The only problem was that the only idea I had for what I wanted the music to sound like was light-hearted and calm. Obviously, this very vague description didn't help me, especially with my very picky eye. I ended up scrolling through YouTube for about 45 minutes before giving up and taking a break. A while later, I told myself that no matter how much I delay it, I'm going to have to find a good music backtrack at some point, so I might as well get it over with. Around 30 minutes after fooling around some more on YouTube, I found one sound that I thought was decent. It didn't wow me at first, but I was so exhausted from scrolling through the search results on YouTube that I decided to save the sound just in case.

I'll get back to when I placed it into my project in a bit.

B-roll:

        This section title is probably pretty self-explanatory. This is the long process of re-watching my piece and my interviewees over and over again until I find a good enough B-roll piece that fits the vibe and feeling that certain sections of the interview match. There isn't much to say about this process since it's mainly trial and error, so I'll just add some pictures of the B-roll I added and I'll move on.

 

Back To Music:

        At this point, I had added the music to my piece (the long magenta soundtrack at the bottom of my editing clips above). When I first heard it matched up with my wholesome piece, I thought it was so cute and that it matched pretty well. That was until I heard the song fade out in one certain part where coincidentally, the interviewee also stopped talking for a second. After this, the song faded back in and started playing a new tune at the same time that the interviewee started talking again. This was when I realized that this sound could not have been more perfect. It almost felt like it was meant for my piece.

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Anyway, after that, I added my finishing touches and labeled my video component as done without counting any last-minute changes I may have to make after critiques from my friends, family, or maybe even my teacher.

-Dana