Post-production diary

 Post-production diary

Once wrapping up all things production, I am beginning to experiment with piecing it all together. As the interviews were the first shots I filmed, I will begin here. Although this will be the main body of the interview, I believe starting with the biggest chunk of footage will allow me to easily work around it and fill in any gaps.

5th May 2022

Today I imported the interviews that took place on the 7th April onto my laptop. As I am aiming to be working from home on this project, I decided to start editing on iMovie. This decision was not one I took lightly. Premier Pro is accessible to me through the college computers, yet I would only be able to work on this in class time, which is not ideal for me personally.  I have previously used iMovie on past projects, so although I will not be able to achieve more sophisticated edits, it is more efficient in the long term. 

Once my footage was imported and dragged onto the timeline, I began cutting the clips so that the interviewees answers were going back and forth. I achieved this using the 'cut clip' tool and the 'drag' tool. This was something I mirrored from watching existing documentaries, as it keeps attention spans held for longer. Having consecutive interviews with the same questions being asked may appear boring, and as the brief is catered to the younger generation, it is important to prohibit the chance of boredom, which can be done by using this effect.

6th May 2022

Overall today I played around with different texts and fonts to show the interview questions. I do not want the text to be the focal point of what is being shown on screen, therefore I chose a text that appears in the bottom left hand corner, meaning focus is not taken too much from the interviewees and the shot.

9th May 2022

Today I began the hunt to look for a suitable, copyright free background music. I do want to include music as it is something I personally find enjoyable when watching documentaries, as long as it is not too obscure or loud. In previous projects, this is a difficult step as there are so many things to think about - is it suitable for the mood and topic of my documentary? - will I be able to make use of it without receiving a copyright strike? 

11th May 2022

Still on the hunt for background music, I have scoured the likes of YouTube, Tunetank, Uppbeat, the list goes on. Common things I found myself searching for were "relaxing", "uplifting" and "inspiring". I finally found the perfect sound, which will not be too distracting and will fit perfectly, at a low volume, in the background of my documentary.

12th May 2022

I have now successfully pieced together all 4 of my interviews, whilst trying to maintain continuity. It was mostly easy to do this, as long as I kept answers in full sentences and what the interviewees were saying made sense when broken up. I also imported my introduction ahead of the first interview to start editing soon.

16th May 2022

Use of voiceovers and cutaways in documentaries is something I find enjoyable to watch as the audience. Today I played around with 'Quicktime player' which I have used previously to screen record. I liked the idea of having screen recordings / voiceovers to break up the footage and sort of come together before moving onto the next scene of the documentary. Every time I want to do this, I will have something appropriate behind the text - for example in this screen-capture I had just finished speaking with students of Sunderland college, so I have open the Sunderland College website. This was simple to obtain. Using the 'stickies' app on my MacBook, I typed the part of the script that matched with the voiceover, then pressed 'New screen recording' on Quicktime player and recorded. Using the 'adjust speed' feature on iMovie, I sped up the screen recording to match when I was speaking, or as much as could be done. 

17th May 2022

Now I have my introduction, interviews and filler footage edited, I am starting to play around with incorporating cutaways and how to make this look good. I have never officially used iMovies 'cutaway' feature, which allows you to cut to another clip, being able to adjust the opacity and fade length. I used this multiple times with my 3rd and 4th interviews to dip in and out of footage of their rehearsals. 

As seen in this screenshot, I selected fade to be "0.08s" with the opacity almost all the way up.  I am overall extremely happy with the result of this and think it will be extremely effective in cutting to other footage I have taken.

Furthermore, some of the main issues that arose included the fact that I was not able to achieve more technical edits because of the decision to edit on iMovie and work from home. As I was limited with my editing choices, it was hard to imagine my documentary being up to standard with my peers, but I was able to do the best with what I had. Time constraints were also something that may have stopped me from achieving the best. Knowing I had a deadline, which was something I struggled to keep up with during the last project, I felt there was more pressure this time around.