This was one of the hardest videos to convert because when it first

downloaded on the computer it was an MTS file rather than mp4 meaning

it was not compatible with iMovie which is what I was using.  Originally,

this video was supposed to include two interviewees – one from Thailand

and one from Paris – but due to technical issues and lost data, I was only

able to include Nicole from paris. Creating this video was a lot faster and

easier than before – once I was able to convert the file into an mp4 file.

I gave her an overview of what I might ask prior to the actual

interview and I think she did a pretty good job of making her thoughts and

words flow together.  She talks about the great amounts of independence

she has and we get a look of how it would be to reside and remain isolated

from your family.

Beginning the process of editing an interview with pictures that go along with it, was a lot more complicated then it seemed. As I prepared myself to edit the shots of Olivia – my partner – that I took, I believed it would only be about a half an hour process but boy was I wrong. I learned a lot through using different applications in order to complete the piece and discovered that for me, iMovie was a lot easier to use then other things such as audacity.
When I was editing this piece I found it difficult because as I completed one step of the process I already had ten other complications that came along with that one step. The first thing that had to be done was editing the interview which included taking out the unnecessary words such as “like” or “uhm.” The was a tedious process itself although it got easier as I went along. After that was done, I went on to put the pictures I had taken of her, into the interview in order for them to flow with what she said. Unfortunately, the pictures were sometimes irrelevant to what she was saying. As I completed that step in the process, I continued on by adding room tone and the room sound into the interview in order to make the listener feel as if they were there as well. I did this by selecting the piece of sound that I wanted to use and dragging it to the part where I wanted to place it an then chose the option “audio only.”
Some of the problems that I encountered were downloading all of the material onto one single program. My computer did not support the documents and I therefore had to switch computers a lot. Through playing around with the program, I learned that putting pictures within the interview had to be done directly from where the pictures where taken rather then just sliding them in there because if I did it that way, it failed to give me the “cutaway” option. Also, when the interview was taken, the video camera was placed facing the wall which is something that I could not cover up in the video at times due to lack of pictures.

This video is about how Kat’s mom came to the United States from Colombia. She did not do this for her own benefit, she did this to give her children better lives and a better opportunity. It is amazing how someone can be so selfless; she had to give up a good job and come to a country in which she wasn’t familiar with the language. She moved back to Colombia two years ago, leaving her family behind here. She discusses the hardships in this whole process but all together she is happy with her decision and proud of her children. This video was difficult for us to work together because of the language barrier between me and Kat’s mom. We came up with questions together but Kat had to ask them to her mother in Spanish and we had to keep stopping to translate for me so that we could ask more questions. The b roll was surprisingly easy because since Kat’s mom was coming to visit, we were able to film in the airport and film her mother seeing her children for the first time in a year. Our audio is somehow off in the beginning and we did not realize while filming, however, this isn’t a huge problem because there are subtitles at the bottom. After everything was translated, we edited the interview to what we felt was relevant to our video and then we edited the video within the interview.

By Cameron Alexander and Matt Apollonio

Reflection:

I feel very proud to present this multimedia piece as not only my best piece but also my last piece of this course and the turning point in my time spent here. I’ve always had problems with editing and learning how to use the software but after a while I got a hold of it and learned to use everything I was taught to my benefit in making my work even better. Although I put in a lot of extra work in on my last piece it was definitely worth it because now I can make up for all the things I was unable to do before.

During the editing process I found myself a lot better off than I was before. I had to do most of my editing process on final cut express and kept saving my work as I went along. There were certain things I didn’t know how to do in final cut express so I had to do them with other programs. For example, I wanted to put more special effects and text in my piece but I didn’t know how to do that in final cut express. So I exported it as a quicktime movie and made all my extra special effects using iMovie, which is one of the most easy and understandable programs to use for the editing process.

The larger “So-What?” question I planned to answer with this topic is to state that everyone things just because twins look alike, it means they live their lives and act the same way but they don’t. Each twin is a whole different person from the other. I divided this story into 3 parts to drive the storyline. Overall, I enjoyed doing this one the most and can’t wait to show it in the coffeehouse.

This project was very close to my heart, it took a lot for me to cut it down to the place that i did however i got it done.  The hardest part for me was to sit through the interview and listen to things i had never heard before. I had no idea my uncle felt this way until this interview and it was a wonderful experience.  What i would do differently is get more pictures because I feel like the ones i have dont tell his story well enough. but overall i had ablast doing this video.  It’s just crazy how i went from not knowing anything about video editing to making it where i am now.  I have developed a love for it and it is honestly one of the best things in my life right now.  I would like to thank you Mrs. Mule for teaching me and guiding me through this class it was honestly a pleasure.  This video means a lot to me and i still think that i could be better but i think that the four hours that i put into this video will definitely pay off.

This video is about Mary Schaffer working as a an intern at the School of Juilliard. While I went to go and retrieve the interviews and b-roll, Mike went to go retrieve the photos. It took us about four hours to edit the whole thing with an additional hour to fix any of the suggestions made from the rough draft discussion. Mike was the one handling Final Cut Pro, while I “directed” what we should put in the video to create the story we wanted. In the end though, we both edited the final outcome to make it better than what it was before.

We fixed the jump cuts with pics and b-roll which was a challenge at first, because the video was already created but we figured out how to add in additional material without ruining any of the video.

I have to say we both made a great team in getting this done, and both him and I agree that this has been the best video both him and I have made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uaeYiS1Fwc&feature=youtu.be

A documentary on Bald Eagle Campground.

I did not add any interview footage as advised, as it is impossible for me to get in touch (face-to-face) with a person of interest to this story, as I only had a week, and was unable to make the long trip to central Pennsylvania. Before commencing with this project, I received permission to interview family members over the phone, and did not realize I was expected to record a phone conversation to use as audio for this project, since I would not want to use the recording of a phone or skype conversation because I do not believe the audio quality would be consistent with the rest of the piece. As both family members I interviewed helped build the campground themselves and could talk for literally days on end about the topic of Bald Eagle Campground, I thought it prudent to glean through and use the facts I thought most important to the story.

However, I did change the manuscript slightly, as I realized I had left out talking about fishing in depth, a main activity at Bald Eagle, and the driving force behind having so many water or stream shots. I also added more pictures of the forest and surrounding area. I only had a very limited time to shoot at the Campground and I probably would have tried to plan more shoot time if I was to continue adding to this video.

For my second project, I chose to interview my friend Jackie. Her life has been rough because she has had cancer, but she was fortunate enough to fight through and beat it. Because of her sickness, she has aimed to become a better person and more healthy. She finds happiness in running and feels it relates to her beating cancer because she never thought she could accomplish it but she surprised herself, similar to running, she surprises herself everyday by pushing herself and going beyond what she thought she was capable of. This video was difficult for me because I found that it was hard to get enough b-roll in a limited amount of time. I also am not happy with the lighting during the interview, but that was something I realized after shooting. Despite the difficulties, I had fun interviewing her and I definitely got a better understanding of how to use iMovie.

Making this video was two things, a nightmare and a good learning experiance. Olivia got the interviews from Sam and helped her interview the two people who were affected by hurricane Sandy. But, it was my job (Paul) to do the editing. Each interview that we got was about 30 minuets long and trying to tell the story we wanted was not to hard. But, the hardest thing about the whole proccess was what do we cut out? The interviews had very good material and every time I had to cut something out it did not feel good. For this project though it needed to be cut. Now, when it came to editing, whatever could go wrong did. I had to fix the audio because for the guy speaking, the sound was only comming out of the left side. So the only way you could change it is if you make it into a stereo to a mono track before you put it in the timeline. So, since my draft was already edited I had to take all the boy parts and edit them in a seperate project to get a mono track and had to re-edit the whole thing again. Now when I had finished editing the video I was so relieve, but there is more challeneges ahead of me. When I went to export the video, Adobe Encore Media had stopped working for no reason. I found out that there is a corrupt file and I have to delete it, but that will take me hours to do and I do not have that time. So instead of exporting it in a higher quiality setting, I had to convert the video into a youtube preset which is not the best quality. Also, I would have liked more b footage photos and had the names of the People in the video , but I emailed Sam and she did not get back to me. Even though there is not that much B footage I still feel that it is a good enough video. The emotional expression on their faces is what makes the video for me.