Making of preliminary task

I started by asking my mother if she could give me her trainer's contact for my preliminary project. I did this because I go to the gym alone and I don't have any trainer contacts because I don't need them. At first, I didn't want to ask my mom for help and just go to my gym and ask a random trainer to give me a short interview. After some thought and some attempts at going to the gym with this intention, I got struck with a certain social anxiety that surprised me.

Therefore, I called my mom and asked her if she could help me by talking to him. She said yes, and 3 days later, on 17th Jan at 10 am, we scheduled the shooting. For the shooting itself, I didn't use a professional camera because my dad had some work to do with it on the 17th, therefore, I used my iPhone 15 Pro Max to do the filming and my mom's phone to record our voices. I didn't have any costs as the gym is a 2-minute walk from my house, and the trainer didn't request any payment for the interview itself. I got access to the gym by talking to the receptionist about my intentions and the interview, and she granted me access without any hesitation.

Process of filming

As I mentioned before, I went to the Gym on the 17th and met Vlad, who is a trainer at Bamboo Gym and Spa in Cluj-Napoca. He was very friendly and eager to help me. After we discussed my project and intentions for a bit, I went to set things up. I did that by making an improvised set-up where my phone was supported by a gym rack, which was not very stable, but I did not have anything better to do with it.

After I pressed record, I called Vlad into the scene to make sure the frame was good. Using the cinematic mode that iPhone offers, the background got blurry, and the focus was on me and Vlad for the rest of the 7 minutes of non-stop filming. We took about 1 minute for each question just to think them through and help Vlad prepare an answer, eliminating as much stuttering as possible.

I used the Voice Memos app on iPhone to record what we were discussing. The improvised microphone was moved during the recording between Vlad and Myself to better capture our voices as we were speaking.

Process of editing

I started by purchasing an Adobe Premiere Pro subscription for 25.99 EUR. After opening the program and looking through it, I found a training program that Adobe provides for beginners. I clicked on it and started the learning phase before importing the Raw video. For importing the Video from my Phone to my Computer, I decided to use WeTransfer as it allows large file transfers of up to 5 GB. My video was recorded in 4 K and was 7 minutes long, and because of that, it got up to 1,24 GB, therefore, WeTransfer was necessary. The audio was not that space-consuming, therefore, using WhatsApp was ok for transferring the audio files from mom's phone to my computer.

After that, I finished all the beginner training tutorials from Premiere Pro and was ready to import the video onto the app. The video imported with no problems, and I began importing the audio files as well. By doing so, I realised a problem. At each question, I started a new audio recording without realising I had to make a loud noise when starting and finishing so that I could easily sync the audio with the video. I later ( now ) found out that this is one of the main purposes of a Clapperboard.

Click Me for Clapperboard image

I found an easy solution to this problem, as Premiere Pro has an automated syncing feature. Before I could use this feature, I needed to watch the entire video again and make the necessary cuts between each question. Once I made the cuts and the video went from 7 minutes long to 5, I could start the syncing process. After the syncing was complete, I started working on the interview intro by cutting a portion of the final 6 seconds and pasting it in the beginning. I did this because I anticipated the intro and how it was going to look when filming it, and I asked Vlad after we finished with the questions to come back into frame and just sit there for a couple of seconds.

With this shot complete, I knew I had a good intro. After that, I started looking for a nice effect to showcase the Title. I found one that I liked and pasted it over the intro segment of the video. After that, I went into editing the words from " Your Title Here" to "Gym Q&A". I thought about the title and what it should be, but I didn't find anything more suitable than this, so the audience can have a clear understanding of what the interview would be about. After doing this, I also wanted to add a subtitle introducing Vlad as the protagonist and trainer. To do this, I added a text layer and wrote " WITH COACH VLAD". Initially, I wanted another effect for this, but then I realized that I could implement the text in the existing effect, so I did that, and it looked very good.

The next thing I did was implement effects. I started by doing the intro transitions, and I used multiple effects till I found one that I liked, which was the most commonly used. The effects are called Film Dissolve and Cross Dissolve. Between questions, I added another kind of transition, which is called Additive Dissolve. I did this for all the questions and have cut the audio simply without any transition, as I didn't find that necessary. After I was done with all these effects. The next step was to implement some B-rolls, as I had seen in the interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, to give a more dynamic feel to the interview. I also decided that these B-rolls needed a kind of transition. Nothing too complicated, but again, I added cross-dissolve, but this time for a shorter period to create a smooth transition.

I completed the editing process with the final task of adding subtitles. As I previously mentioned, the interview was recorded in Romanian, therefore, adding subtitles was necessary. I started the process by looking on the internet about this, where again I was suggested to use an automation service that Premier Pro provides, which automatically registers the dialog and pastes it in a subtitle form at each sentence spoken. But because Romanian isn't such a commonly used language, the option of using this feature in Romanian wasn't available.

Therefore, I went and did it manually using the subtitles option from Premiere Pro, which makes adding subtitles pretty easy. In the end, I managed to find a tool that allowed me to transcribe the recordings in Romanian into text. From then on, I used Google Translate and translated the text into English. Then, I only needed to put the Text where it belongs according to the video and cut it in a way that will fit what they are talking about

1st Draft

This is the feedback that I received from my teacher

• Remove fade between images cross fade to sound

• Fade to white between questions constantly - mention in the description that this is a point

• Slightly animated text that highlights what you are saying there

• Constant sound (room tone)

  Related to conventions:

• What did you analyze as more complex animations, and why didn't you include them

• As duration (shorts with long videos)

• Focus on skills and the fact that it is an exercise