The document provides a production reflection from filming interviews at a primary school to editing the footage. It summarizes the key tasks completed each week:
- Filming interviews at the school and bringing clips together in Premiere Pro, though there were issues with crashing software and dark footage.
- Adding title sequences and captions, but problems arose with adjustment layers. Additional b-roll footage was captured.
- Colour correction was applied to b-roll clips and music was selected to play in the background.
2. 10th to 14th December
10th – emailed Acomb Primary School to confirm the filming date and time for filming
on Wednesday the 12th having emailed the previous week to discuss when was best to
film.
12th – on the 12th, Toni and I went to Acomb Primary school to film. The interviews
went well and the camera and audio was working fine. The b-roll didn’t work quite as
well as I had hoped since we were starting to lose the light and some of the footage
ended up looking a little fuzzy.
13th – I started to bring together clips from the interviews and manually syncing up the
audio from the recorder to match. This was difficult at first but did start to get easier
over time with each clip. I did have a problem with the audio all being on one side but
fixed it by going into Audio Channels and selecting the right side to listen to the left
too.
3. 17th to 21st December
17th – I created three sequences for the main timeline, editing and cutting clips and
one to have each video I’d synced up with the audio before I had cut and edited just as
a backup in case I accidentally deleted the video so I wouldn’t have to sync them again
and be more organised. I had some problem with doing this and progressing with my
editing because Premiere Pro kept crashing which meant that the process took longer
than expected and it became very frustrating. The videos taken outside were also a
little bit dark so I planned to add an adjustment layer to brighten the clips up.
19th – on Wednesday I started to try an adjustment layer to fix the darker clips.
However I had a problem with the adjustment layers in that as soon as I added
something to the layer it just turned the video black. This became really frustrating
and I wasn’t sure how else to sort it out so I decided to leave it and hope that I would
be able to fix it later or I wouldn’t need it. The children mention seeing some animals
4. at Piglets which I decided would benefit from some text popping up about what it
is. I added a captions layer and added the text explaining that Piglets was a farm
adventure playpark that the school takes the children too for a trip and set it to
fade in and out when it’s mentioned.
20th – On Thursday I decided that I wanted to add a title or credit sequence using
the logo and a clip of b-roll. I chose one of the clips that I liked without it mattering
that it was a little blurry because the focus was supposed to be on the logo.
However, I wanted to have the video be inside the circle of the logo with the
picture and text over the top. I created several layers of the logo and used an
opacity mask for each component so that I could build up the picture. For the text I
could luckily get away with just changing the blending mode and creating a less
specific mask so I didn’t have to go around each individual letter.
5. 7th to 10th January
7th – the seventh was the first week back after the Christmas holidays. I started by
going back over the title sequence I had made. Our group then decided that we
preferred the other logo and so I decided to scrap the sequence I’d made beforehand
and remove the background for the new logo to use that. That was when I considered
trying a new approach to how I was going to set out my video. I created a new
sequence, taking only the names and the clips using the children talking about looking
after nature.
9th – on Wednesday, another group member and I went out to Askham Bog to get
some additional b-roll for our videos. While we had already shot some b-roll of the
children from when we had filmed the interviews but we felt that being so close to it
would give us more varied shots and we were unsure about the quality of what we
already had. I was really pleased with the shots that we ended up with and I spent the
rest of Wednesday going through them and deciding which ones I wanted to use
between the interview clips.
6. 10th – Thursday was similar, and I decided to stick with the new approach than
following my initial idea, since I thought that it still fit in with what had been
discussed with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust but just be slightly different than
the original.
7. 14th to 16th January
14th – on Monday, I started to add adjustment layers over the top of my clips to use
some colour correction on the clips, having found and fixed the problem I had been
previously experiencing with adjustment layers. I decided that the interview clips
didn’t actually need any colour correction as the lighting was optimal anyway. They
didn’t take too well to the corrections I added so I decided not to bother at all in the
end. The b-roll didn’t necessarily need a lot of editing as the greens were vibrant
against other colours as it was, so I only gave a small green hint to them that was
subtle but still effective and I liked how it looked in the end.
16th – The last thing I had to do for my project was find some music to play in the
background. Originally I had thought that the video might not need it but I thought
that I should try it to compare the two. I found it really difficult to find music that I
liked and thought worked well with the video. Being with children, I wanted it to be
quite happy where they spoke more light-heartedly, but also reflect the more serious
matter of the Askham Bog building plans. I ended up picking two which I had fade in
and out of each other depending on what was being said.