These last two projects have been kind of a roller coaster ride, and not just because the world feels like it’s in shambles.
I started out wondering how I was ever going to pull off putting together compelling stories, and then somewhere along the way it kind of hit me- telling stories is what I do for a living.
Really when you look at the bare bones of what a teacher has to do, at the basic level we have to be good storytellers. We have to get information across to people in a way that engages them and bonus if they walk away feeling like they learned something. Some days I’m great at it and the other days, well I try to learn from them and do my best not to repeat them.
Since storytelling is what we do, I guess it was a good thing that all my source material came from my coworkers. My goal was to create a “College Talk” video that we could show our students, which is part of our criteria for being an AVID school. I sent an email out to a handful of my coworkers and asked them if they would record their answers to a few questions. I got responses back from 4 of them and then I decided I should be fair and shot my answers too. When it came to putting this together, I really struggled with picking just one question to focus on. I went with our answers to why we picked the colleges we attended because I thought it had the most diverse responses to it.
I started by watching each clip and marking out the sections where we discussed what college we attended and why we made that choice. While I’d like to say I was really strategic in how I ordered the clips, really I just put them in the order of which the clips were imported. I realized later that the order fit nicely, because it broke up the two clips of people who picked WSU and the two that picked Western.
Watching it through with just the interviews, I realized that it wasn’t very engaging watching the interview clips. I decided that it needed some pictures to break it up. Ideally I would have liked to throw in some pictures of each interviewee while they were at their college, but that material was hard to come by. Since the intended audience is eventually our students, I decided that any time a college was mentioned that a picture of that college should be shown. Even though our kids hear about these schools and they know they exist, they have absolutely no idea what any of them are actually like. I thought showing pictures of the colleges would help keep their interest. I used a combination of Creative Commons and Wikimedia Commons to find images. The image of Jasmine with Willamette’s mascot she sent to me along with her interview. The only other material I had to ask permission for was the WSU Game Day picture; my husband oh so graciously gave me his stamp of approval.
Once I had the interviews and the pictures lined up, my next step was to go in and use the razor tool to cut down the time. I cut “ahhh”, “umm”, and pauses to save as much time as possible. The good news is, that since these are all interview clips, it was pretty easy to cut stuff and it wasn’t noticeable that the video cut to a different scene. For the ones that were really noticeable, I tried to cover up with a photo in place of the interview. My next step was to go in and add transitions anytime the visual changed. I played with a few different ones that weren’t used in tutorial, just to see what they looked like. I decided that it would be best to just pick just a few transitions and use those repeatedly throughout the entire story. Then I created an introduction graphic before the first interview and a credits graphic using the graphics panel of Premiere.
After doing all of that, I got my rough draft, which ended up being like 4:28. I knew that was way over the limit, but was fine with it since it was a rough draft. Based on the feedback from my peers and the suggestions on the class website (plus my own pickiness), there were a few things I decided needed to be changed for the final:
- Cut down the amount of material since I was over the time limit.
- Add some kind of background music.
- Fix the transitions since some of them didn’t work and others the timing was off.
- Adjust the titles at the beginning of each interview- Make the font bigger AND add some info.
When it came to working on the final, the first thing I did was scoured over every clip to cut out every possible “ahhh”, “umm”, or slight stall. This brought me down to 3:58. I asked Misty if, teacher perspective, 3:58 counted as 1-3 minutes since it was technically under 4. She dashed my hopes and dreams, so I had to pick a few interview chunks, that while interesting weren’t vital to the story, and cut them. I realized that I could save a few seconds by overlapping some of the interview with the intro (J-cut) and credits graphics (L-cut), so I made that adjustment. I considered cutting one of the interviews to achieve the time crunch, but then I realized all of them had a purpose. Mine showed that sometimes you have to change your plans and sometimes people make a choice for not the best reasons. Misty’s was an example of doing a distance degree program, which most of our kids don’t realize is even a thing. Bob’s was an example of letting your career path drive you; plus he was the only male perspective. Jenevive’s was an example of deciding based upon lifestyle, as well as educational reasons (having solid reasoning behind a decision). Jasmine’s showed the importance of actually visiting your colleges ahead of time. I decided to go back to the clips and see if maybe another question could be sequenced into a story that would work within the 3 minute time limit. I looked at our responses to why we became teachers and with the unedited clips I was at 4:02. I realized I didn’t really have any good visuals that would go with these clips, so spending time making a new sequence probably wouldn’t be worth it. I went back to my original idea and again considered how I could cut time. My heart couldn’t make a decision, so I kiboshed the idea of cutting an interview. When all was said and done I got it down to 3:23 (without credits); I know it is technically past 3, but I thought I did pretty good for already cutting out a whole minute.
I went back in and adjusted the transitions and title sequences. I bumped up the size of the fonts on the titles from 100 to 125 for the large font and from 50 to 75 on the smaller titles. I added a stroke around the words too just so they popped a bit more. I added another line with our alma matters on it. When it came to transitions I decided all of the photos should have a Dissolve transition to them to be consistent. Watching my rough draft I learned that if the transitions don’t have the little Lego brick-looking logo next to them it is very possible they won’t play, even in your exported version (I’m looking at you Page Peels). That led to a fun little research project about what the colors in the time code meant. I decided to use the slide transition between interview clips because it didn’t turn the timecode red and one of the readings mentioned that it suggests a change in place or time, so I thought it was appropriate.
My final touch was to add music. I picked a free download track from SoundCloud. They had a bunch of them, so I listened for a while until I found one that I thought fit. After adding it, I tried to edit the audio through Audition, but my computer has a hard time playing the audio and video at the same time (long story short, it crashed). So I sucked it up and did what I could through Premiere. I placed a keyframe at the start of the video and added a keyframe in the track when the first interview starts. I pulled the second keyframe down to fade the music into the background. I tried a lot of different settings, but settled on -25 decibels. I placed two more keyframes towards the end (one at the end of Jasmine’s interview and one at the very end of the credit). I pulled the final one back up to 0 so the music faded in after Jasmine’s interview was complete. Then I cropped the very end of the audio off because it faded out. I placed the cropped portion right after the credits so it seemed like the audio was naturally fading. When I watched the whole video through I realized that apparently Misty and I are loud, because it was hard to hear Bob, Jenevive, and Jasmine over the music. So for my final edit I went in and adjusted the sound for all three of the interviews. Bob’s had to be adjusted to +15 decibels, while Jenevive’s and Jasmine’s were brought up to +6.2 decibels.
I am really happy and proud of how the final turned out. The best news though is that after a year of pushing “College Talk” videos, I finally have more people on my side all thanks to my rough draft.
Also, fun story, starting this course I thought Premiere was going to be the product that would be the least useful to me. I have used it every day for the last 3 weeks and I already have a whole list of projects in my head that I am going to be using it for!
Anyways, here’s my final:
Storyboard-
| Time Stam | Visual | Audio |
|---|---|---|
| 0:00 | Intro screen: question that was asked | music |
| 0:03 | Intro screen | Music fades to background, first speaker starts |
| 0:05 | Interview shot of Kacee, with title- name, job position, alma matter | Faded background music and speakers response to the question |
| 0:21 | Fade into arial shot of Western Washington University | Faded background music, discussion of sister going to Western |
| 0:26 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, continued discussion of sister’s college experience |
| 0:28 | Fade to shot of Washington State University practice football fields | faded background music, discussion of other sister going to WSU |
| 0:33 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, continued discussion of sister’s college experience |
| 0:42 | Fade into shot of Boston College | faded background music, discussion of interest in attending Boston college |
| 0:49 | Fade into second shot of Boston College | faded background music, still discussing interest in attending Boston college |
| 0:54 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, discussing how experiences influenced decision on which college to attend |
| 1:08 | Fade into shot of Game Day at Washington State University | faded background music, identify which college Kacee attended |
| 1:13 | Slide transition to interview shot of Misty, with title- name, job position, and alma matter | faded background music, Misty discussing what influenced her decision |
| 1:26 | Fade into shot of Fisher Fountain at Western Washington University | faded background music, Misty discussing WWU distance program |
| 1:31 | Fade into shot of Whitehorse Hall at Everett Community College | faded background music, Misty discussing WWU distance program at EvCC |
| 1:35 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, Misty discussing decision for WWU at EvCC |
| 1:46 | Fade into shot of Everett Community College Campus | faded background music, Misty discussing reasons for college choice |
| 1:51 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, Misty wrapping up the discussion |
| 1:52 | Slide transition to interview shot with Bob, with title- name, job position, and alma matter | faded background music, Bob discussing visiting colleges and what drove his choices |
| 2:06 | Fade into shot of Thompson Hall at WSU | faded background music, Bob explaining why he chose WSU |
| 2:11 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, Bob still explaining decision for WSU |
| 2:12 | Begin fade in of Western Washington University Old main building | faded background music, transition from Bob’s interview to Jenevive’s interview |
| 2:17 | Fade to interview shot with Jenevive, with title- name, job position, and alma matter | faded background music, Jenivive identifying the college she attended |
| 2:24 | Fade to shot of Mt. Baker | faded background music, Jenevive discussing the environmental features that influenced her college decision |
| 2:29 | Fade to Alturas Lake | faded background music, Jenevive discussing the environmental features that influenced her college decision |
| 2:34 | Fade back to interview shot | faded background music, Jenevive discussing 3rd reason for choosing Western |
| 2:45 | Slide transition to interview shot of Jasmine, with title- name, job position, and alma matter | faded background music, Jasmine discussing colleges she considered |
| 2:53 | Fade to shot of Brelsford Visitor’s center | faded background music, Jasmine mentioning visit of WSU |
| 2:55 | Cut to shot of Colorado State University | faded background music, Jasmine mentioning visit of CSU |
| 2:57 | Cut to shot of Willamette University | faded background music, Jasmine mentioning visit of Willamette |
| 2:59 | Fade back to interview shot of Jasmine | faded background music, Jasmine discussing choices |
| 3:03 | Fade to shot of Willamette University Welcome Sign | faded background music, Jasmine discussing reasons for choosing Willamette |
| 3:08 | Fade to arial shot of Willamette | faded background music, Jasmine discussing reasons for choosing Willamette |
| 3:12 | Fade to shot of Sakura trees on campus | faded background music, Jasmine discussing reasons for choosing Willamette |
| 3:16 | Fade to shot of Jasmine with mascot | faded background music, Jasmine discussing reasons for choosing Willamette |
| 3:21 | Fade back to interview shot with Jasmine | faded background music, Jasmine discussing reasons for choosing Willamette |
| 3:23 | Interview shot fades out, credits start | faded background music, Jasmine mentioning how Willamette influenced her career decisions |
| 3:28 | Credits roll | Music fades back in, interview stops |
| 3:34 | Credits end | Music begins to fade |
| 3:38 | screen black | Music ends |
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