The Documentary - Major Task

The changes

Implementing the changes was quite challenging and time-consuming, but I believe they were truly necessary. I didn't think of certain things, like the episode number and location names, which were so obvious. Without the feedback, I wouldn't be able to see these things and correct them. Firstly, to write the Episode number and title, I realised that I didn't have space in the intro. To combat this, I had another Idea of making the logo much smaller for a period of time, but still see-through. This will allow us to put the necessary text below it. Making this was challenging as I needed to go back to the tutorial to learn the movement of animations. Nothing too complicated, but it was time-consuming. In the meantime, Rianna created the text with the original handwriting; however, she had the genius idea of using the country's national flag as the background for the title. This will further connect with the audience and better differentiate the countries across the series. I played with the text positions, but I remained with it being under the logo. The text switches between episode, title, and director. They are all 3 seconds long and fade in and out quickly. They were also too bright, so I adjusted the brightness in their settings.

Going to "the interviewees' and location names being displayed", I had a recurring issue with selecting a suitable font. I considered using the handwriting, but it would have looked too childish and unprofessional. I searched for a font in Premiere Pro's library for the names and stumbled upon Mongolian Baiti, which looked both professional and elegant. I edited it by adding shadows and some depth, and then added the text with fade-in and fade-out transitions at all their corresponding places. Each has different meanings from Ovidiu Avram to Meron Gallery.

I rechecked the subtitles by watching them more closely and identified different spelling mistakes, which I immediately corrected. This was not difficult at all and was an easy fix on my part, as they were not particularly common either.

The feedback showed that my mistake of having the transparent banner under the transitional subheading text was actually a mistake, and that it didn't look good. Also, there were grammar mistakes in two out of three words, which I cannot understand how they passed between Rianna and me in the documentary. Considering this, I asked Rianna to redo the words on a black background and correct the grammatical mistakes. Then I reworked the original process in Photoshop, cutting the text out, and everything went smoothly as expected. I have placed the text in the same position as the other one, but I have changed the transition effect time and the duration of the text itself.

Rewatching the draft also made me realise the poor job on the colour grading and that some of the footage was out of focus, and it looked terrible. In particular, the main camera footage of Ovidiu. To correct this, I went to each of the footage separately and made a new colour grade individually without copying and pasting the settings over. For the corrupted Footage of Ovidiu, I played with the sharpness settings and made them -10, which has improved his footage, but it still looked poor. I couldn't do much about this as I really wanted to include the main camera footage in some parts. I have expanded the close-up footage in some areas.

I then added some audio transitions to smoothen the overall feel of the documentary and adjusted specific enhancements that had created distortion in the audio.

Final Documentary

Looking back

After all the changes, I am left with the final version of the documentary. Mostly, it turned out to be how I wanted. Except for a few minor inconveniences, such as the main camera being out of focus in both interviews and the discussed topics not exactly what I wanted. These are both problems that I created, and they can be prevented in future projects easily by checking the focus and the camera settings at the shoot and having more focused questions to direct the interviewee to the topics I want. I think the part I am most proud of is the first minute, with the intro and the opening shots with Oana and Ovidiu. It really looks professional, and it captures my vision clearly. Overall, it was a fun project that taught me a lot. After all the changes, I am left with the final version of the documentary. Mostly, it turned out to be how I wanted. Except for a few minor inconveniences, such as the main camera being out of focus in both interviews and the discussed topics not exactly what I wanted. These are both problems that I created, and they can be prevented in future projects easily by checking the focus and the camera settings at the shoot and having more focused questions to direct the interviewee to the topics I want.