Idea and Inspiration
For all of the fall semester, I have been slowly recording a compilation of all the things we have been doing at ArtX. I knew I eventually wanted to make a video of everything we did, and this assignment worked out perfectly. I decided that a recap video made sense for this assignment because it showcases everything that ArtX has to offer and more!
I took inspiration from other videos online that follow a similar flow and pattern of footage that makes the final cut look somewhat like a collage of everything that has happened over a period of time. I chose to focus on the plain transitions because they yield the fast past result I wanted to match the tempo of the background music. I find that too many transitions can take away from the cinematic effect because they are too flashy and rarely make sense to use. Elements used in this design were all from times that ArtX did something as a group, whether they were moments during the club or for those who stayed a little longer to socialize.
When it came to the design process, I tried my best to follow the initial script I had written up. I then matched the content to the beats of the song and lined the voice over with what was happening in the videos.
EDITS
Based on the peer feedback, to make this recap feel more personal, they suggested my voice be louder than the music and to include original audio from the clips. I’m really glad they suggested these things because I think that is what pushed my design to the next step it needed to go.
Technical Detail
Since our first day tabling as a club on August 30th, I took photos and videos of things that ArtX had done. I considered using other students’ footage but decided it would make my video compilation less cumbersome, and overall cleaner because I wouldn’t need to ask for permission to use their photos and videos. The main process for constructing this project was placing down the general videos in the places that I knew they belonged in sequence to my storyboard. I based the videos on the duration of the song even though it was about 15 seconds longer than my storyboard, I was able to fit a few more clips in of things that we did as a club. In Adobe Premiere, the tools I used were the cross dissolve for the intro title, and outro video and credits. I used a gaussian blur for the beginning of the video to reflect the idea of “coming into focus” on what we did this semester. I also used a lot of jump cuts because they paced the dialogue to be fast and stress the idea that we did so much, and there isn’t time for decorative transitions.
Technical challenges weren’t too bad for this project. A common issue I have is placing a video in a space that is too small and then cutting out the previous footage. My solution to that is ctrl z and then placing my video on a different layer and then visualizing what part I want to trim off a bit more.
EDITS
To make my changes that were suggested above, I started by unmuting the orginal video audio track and went through and muted each clip by hand that didn’t need to add to the auditory noise. I chose parts where I wasn’t narrating or saying anything critical to enhance the “dead” space between my words. It took some finesseing but eventually I brought in more of the natural audio. Sometimes the sound was too abrupt which meant I had to ease the volume in for some scenes so it wasn’t such a harsh contrast between my voice and the activity.
Sources and Materials
Footage by Elsa Temme
Music from Uppbeat
Go With You Darlin’
License code: 55MEDN464YYRAXBL