Post Production Notes

Where to start? Planning my first 3 minute documentary about the music people listen to was exciting, drawing out the storyboard was the first step in making my mini-movie come to life. Shooting the actual footage used in our documentary was challenging, I learned a lot about framing the interview participant with concerns to lighting, I also learned that acquiring sound with the camera microphone isn't the best way to capture sound outdoors. I had trouble hearing some of my interviewees outside of Hunter, the ambient sound was too strong and during post-production, I had to edit these interviews out. I was surprised at how willing the students at Hunter were to be filmed, all interview participants were extremely friendly and I found the entire shooting experience to be fun and fulfilling. I was able to interview a number of people during the short time we had during class, which is something I was worried about during pre-production.

Editing the video was an entirely different story, I discovered that editing even a short documentary is tedious and requires a lot of time and effort. The first time Tal and I began editing our footage we worked for about three hours only to discover that we were unable to save our project. Due to this setback, we had to start editing all over again. However the second time we were able to edit, we really had an idea of which shots we were going to use and which ones were completely unusable. Our transitions between scenes really began working once we added our soundtrack to the piece. It made the documentary flow a lot easier and helped with our continuity. Overall, I thought the piece came out great! It was short and to the point and thanks to planning, it came out the way I hoped it would. If I had to change anything about the process, it would be obtaining a better microphone, a lavalier perhaps, this captures sound better than a camera mic. I have learned that capturing sound is just as important, if not more important than capturing images.

This whole experience really makes you appreciate all the hard work that goes into making a film or documentary. While watching an edited film or video, you never really even think about all the effort that took place in order to make the piece, now when I watch films and other media, I think about the steps someone made to capture that one shot and the amount of editing someone did to ensure continuity. Thanks to this project, I have a greater understanding of how films/videos are made :)

Jenni