1st Draft ( Raw Montage ) + Feedback - Major Task

The Process

After the story was straight with a good production plan, we began cutting even more into the combined 15-minute footage to reach the desired 5-minute mark. Rianna and I focused on showing the most engaging and interesting footage that relates to the 3 main topics. We also wanted to pick footage that we can visualize with J-cuts, B-rolls, and Cutaways. To do that, the interviewer needs to talk about places or art of which we have footage. For example, Dali's museum or the museum of art in Cluj. In those 15 minutes, we have a lot of illustratable footage, therefore I do not stress over this topic.

When it comes to producing the Raw Montage, it was pretty straightforward. On short, Rianna and I were just cutting more and more and comparing footage between them, then eliminating the inferior one till we were left with 6/7 minutes of raw footage. At first, I wanted to get a convention out of my way, and selected all the 15-minute long footage and cropped it 8% from the top and 8% from the bottom. This way I managed to do letterboxing, which made the footage look that much better, exactly how I expected.

Then Rianna told me to start by leaving a 10-second blank segment where the intro effects would go in the future, then I took the starting footage of both of them and smoothly segmented them as they introduce themself in order. I saw this in multiple interviews, for example, in "The Social Dilemma", and our structure goes perfectly with this way of introducing the characters. We wanted the introduction to have straight and fast cuts in between the discussion. I managed to achieve that desired look by using the different angles that I have synced already in an eye-pleasing way. Initially, both of them entered the scene by going to take a seat on a chair, but then I remembered the storyboard and I realized that it would be better off if Oana was directly seated rather than her coming up to the chair. Also, we did not have secondary close-up footage of her going to take a seat, which left us showing only Ovidiu's process of taking a seat. This will signal that the interview is about to begin in a structured, focused way.

We decided that I should focus more on editing as I was more familiarised with the interface of Premiere Pro, therefore I was faster at editing than Rianna. In the meantime, she looked and helped me with advice.

After playing with the footage, I arrived at a perfect combination of frames that looks amazing ( in my opinion ). I also mistakenly did a convention by having audio of Ovidiu talking over close-up footage of him not talking. Then a straight cut to the conversation using the main camera. I am proud of how it turned out as it looks professional and engaging. Later, I noticed that I have huge problems with the audio and color grading that would need solving in future edits.

After the introduction part, each of them would start discussing the given topics in one way or another, with multiple branches where graphics can be displayed. Then I imported a lot of footage filmed in the first days to show the viewer: Cluj-Napoca, the art museum, Dali's exhibition, Sebastian's vernissage, and others. It was a challenge to cut and place everything in its right place, but after a few hours, I managed to sync everything with what each interviewer was discussing. Instead, a problem that occurred at Oana's studio that made me film the close-up footage with my phone made pasting secondary footage hard, as there were multiple short videos that did not have time codes, which made me manually listen to the footage and sync it with the main camera footage. I tried to put as much of it as I could, but I also only filmed fragments, which did not help. In the end, I managed to have many parts with close-ups of Oana, but it was a challenge. Excluding this, everything went smoothly, and I ended up with 5 minutes of footage with the 2 characters that also had illustrations and different angles. I marked the zones where different graphics will show the next topics by using a tool that Photoshop has for marking certain time frames.

Feedback

Immediately when I finished, I asked my teacher and family for feedback. I was aware of already existing problems, but I specifically told everyone to keep in mind the fact that this is the first draft, which included only the arrangement of the footage with the letterboxing effect.

The feedback the teachers gave me was mostly positive, and I was proud of myself for that, but they also told me that the main camera footage in Ovidiu's Interview is out of focus and that I should have more close-ups of him rather than the out-of-focus main shot. I rewatched the footage and they were right. Besides that a few minor changes in the cuts and positioning of the footage. For example, at minute 3:00, there is a black screen for a second, which I missed out on. This is an easy fix as one of the footages needs to be dragged over it.

My Family told me that I did a great job and that they find my skills amazing. But they mentioned the awful audio and video quality of certain parts. Together with some editing mistakes