The first step in creating my video project was to import the video clips that I had gathered into a new Premiere project. With these I created separate bins to organize what I had and categorize the material into what I planned on using them for. Next, I imported an audio track that I had on file and inserted it into the track 2 slot. I wanted to edit the video to match up with the rhythm of the audio. Next, I reviewed all of the video that I had and using the razor tool I broke up the longer clips at times that would be logical transitions, such as when I asked a question or when they finished an idea. I then organized these sub clips into the bins and labeled them according to the pic they discussed. Later I came back and deleted the clips that would not add to the story line.
After choosing an appropriate scene for the opening title, I opened a new project in photoshop to do layers of text. I simplified the project from the photoshop tutorial we did in class to just two layers so that it wouldn’t be cluttered. I referenced the scene that I would be placing the photoshop text layers over for text placement and size. Once I have made the layers I imported them separately nad found that it didn’t look how I wanted. I went back and forth a couple times editing the photoshop project and checking how it looked in premiere before I was happy. I think that this process is a little bit too unpredictable and wish that I had understood how to create the still titles at this point.
From this point I started stringing together the interviews and developing a more clear story. I wrote down the three messages that I wanted to communicate to the audience and went from there. The three messages were that media shapes our ideas about fitness, that fitness is a lifestyle, and that people who are concerned with fitness can be considered art of a culture.
I wanted to create a crawling title page that was a long sentence moving from left to right, but the crawling text wasn’t working, I tried adjusting the width, but the sentence was too long, so I went with another idea. I created a still title page with centered text then created another title page with crawling text, adjusting the settings to start and finish off the page. I adjusted the length of the title page in the video to slow down the pace of the crawling text. I was happy with the result.
I went back through the footage I had to see what pieces of the story I currently had and what I still needed. So far I have a clip of Ramon talking about his resume, talking about how fitness is a culture, his belief on fitness, talking about how fitness is a lifestyle introduction to how he got involved in the fitness industry, why he chooses this lifestyle.
At this point I was moving across the state and no longer had access to a camcorder or to people who were good candidates to interview. Considering these limitations, I reconsidered how I was going to communicate the message.
I Wanted an exciting entrance, not just to jump into interviews, but to set the stage and hook the viewer with interesting and relatable material. That’s why I lead in with the media message, It gave a common ground too the audience and provided enough change to keep the eye interested. I adjusted each visual to fit the frame and scaled them down to half a second each. Next I introduced the characters. I used the title tool; title: create new title: default still and created three separate text boxes to be able to reposition the text groups easily and apply different fonts. Then I added a transition to the title for a smooth and finished look.
After introducing the first character, I wanted to keep with Ramon’s story, rather than going between characters, as it builds on itself and developed the plot well. The second interview complemented what Ramon said well and added to it. This character was more relatable to most viewers and brought them into the message. I wish that the audio didn’t have such high levels of background noise though…
For the credits, rather than doing rolling credits, I wanted to keep them in place and wrap the message up with two rolling images that surmised some themes of the video. I tried to insert these images into a rolling title slide, but that didn’t work so instead I inserted them as simple video and added a slide transition both in and out to create the same effect.
The audio was the biggest hassle of the whole project I think. First making it match up with the rhythm of the video was troublesome and then when I got a good match, there was a copywrite issue. I spent a few hours looking for podsafe audio, but there was none that I was happy with. So I went with one of the audio tracks that I had.
The next problem with the audio is that I had no idea how to edit it. I watched the tutorial but that focused on how to edit out the video audio, and not much on how to modify simple audio. Then I got the bright idea to move the audio track from track two to track one, and sure enough this at least gave me the ability to increase or decrease the volume of the track as a whole. So I broke the audio up using the razor tool at the places were I needed the volume to be different levels and adjusted accordingly, moving the audio back and forth from track 2 to track one to test and adjust. Note: I went back and watched the last 30 seconds of the audio tutorial when I was finished with the project and, wow, could have hit the “expand” button to be able to adjust volume and used the key frames to fade in and out. This would have been much more simple, but here is to ingenuity!
[after uploading my video to youtube, i found that even though I edited the audio, it did not permit me to use it. so i had to go back and add a different audio track and edit it to match the video properly. luckily this gave me the chance to use the key frame method and I was able to expand the audio and fade out at the proper points. The track that I had to use was no long enough for the whole video, so I copied it and it actually starts again in the middle of the video, but its pretty seamless. the audio actually matches up pretty well, although I liked the original audio more and im disappointed that all my work went to waste.]
Finally, I exported the file as a quicktime file and made sure to choose a small file size, as in previous exports I had been using a larger file size that literally took all day to upload to you tube.
I think that this video was a success. I think that it communicates what I set out to say, although I had to go about it in a way that I did not originally intend on. It was a great learning experience and I’m excited to used the skills I’ve learned in gathering and editing video in the future to tell even more impactful stories! Thank you, Dr. Beam, for sharing all of your knowledge with us this semester and being so patient with all of our roadblocks.
