I recently completed a video project. It went over well:
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Below is a gigantic caffeine driven rambling explanation of the project from start to finish. Stop reading here if you don’t care for all the details. Knowing what I know now, the whole project could’ve happed in days, instead of weeks. So I’d like to pass on some things I’ve learned about working with video, in hopes that other college web guys won’t make the same stupid mistakes.
Spring Commencement (thats “graduation” for you non-acadamians) was a few weeks out, and I had an idea. That’s where things went south.
Having read about Nebraska’s enjoyable “Red Letter Days” video project from a post on college web editor, my mind was open to the possibility of attempting something similar. Of course “similar” in this case not applying to level of humor, or editing prowess. We’re talking “similar” as in involving a video camera and a college.
The idea though. Why not capture footage from our Spring 2007 Graduation Ceremonies? Graduates are required to arrive at the arena LONG before the ceremonies begin, and they invariably spend this time milling around backstage, getting lined up, taking photos, and waiting. Mostly waiting. Why not interview them about this special day and what it means to them? If you’re keeping score, scratch out the part where this college web guy came up with the original idea. A Vice Chancellor, in the form of my boss’s boss, had long ago floated the idea of doing this. Nebraska’s Red Letter Days video simply reminded us of his suggestion.
Back to graduation; multiple cameras already capture the ceremony itself, with live footage shown not only on the arena jumbotron but also simulcast on the university television station. If I could get a tape of that production, and combine highlights of the ceremony with recorded interviews, we just might have something. Something people could stand to watch.
I’ve a small amount of camera operating / video editing experience, but heading into the project it was easy predict several key areas where this whole idea could fail, and/or fall on it’s face.
- 1. My limited camera operating and sound capturing experience could spell doom. Great student interviews + horrible camera operator = unusable footage.
- 2. If I wasn’t able to engage the graduates in conversation or make them feel comfortable, there wouldn’t be a video.
- 3. So what if we get great interviews, and a quality recording? A video project can fail miserably without good editing. I’m not a Final Cut Pro guy, and I’m not an Adobe Premier guy. I’m an iMovie guy whose only previous editing experience involves home movies of wiener dogs and sophomoric acts of juvenile stupidity.
Taking all these scenarios of failure into consideration, I tried to keep everyone’s expectations in the low-medium to very low range. My boss was aware of the plan, and I didn’t want her to expect great things. Much better to expect failure and be delighted with mediocrity, I’ve always said, especially when you’re trying something new for the first time.
Enter Grover Rowan, the savior of our little project, and video journalist from the campus media services department. He offered to film the interviews and engage the students in conversation, …his previous work experience being a video journalist for a local television station.
He knew all of the “little things” it takes to get great footage. He was very particular about sound quality, was keen on lighting, and was prepared for every situation. Grover filled a giant gap in my doubts for this project.
The morning of graduation, camera ready, we talked to people, people wearing gowns. It went great. Not every interview was engaging and fantastic, but we captured a great deal of footage. Two tapes.
Then of course, editing. I obtained a copy of the ceremony footage from media services. They gave me a dvd instead of a tape, so I had to connect a camera to a dvd player and record the dvd back to tape before I imported it. I probably could’ve found a way to rip/extract the dvd contents to a video file, but there were too many unknowns.
So, 45 gigs of hard drive space later, having imported all the interview footage and all the ceremony coverage, there it sat in iMovie. All of it. Where to begin? I hadn’t the slightest clue.
Weeks passed. It would turn into a project that I worked on, in between other projects. In the same way a caveman would poke a curious object with a stick, I would fiddle with the video and, fiddle some more. Then came the realization that to sink my teeth into this steak, I first had to cut all the fat away and get down to the meat.
So I started cutting, deleting everything that wasn’t engaging. I don’t know how other people edit, but I like to start with the negative. I can spot the bad, much easier than the good. Sure, it’s probably more of a personality flaw, but I approach many a project this way. Strip something down to it’s essence. Get rid of all things boring and contrite. Leave only the stuff that makes you smile. I don’t think there’s a good way to be taught how to do this. It’s an emotional thing.
From there it was easy. I now had a much smaller pile of of small clips that simply required sequencing. Put them together, hopefully in logical order.
Real progress was made when I laid down an audio track, and started editing to music. I can’t explain it, but an audio/music track will almost TELL you what to do.
After it was all said and done, this is the final product. A six minute and fifteen second video, carved out of 2 hours of raw footage.
I was very pleased and surprised by the video, and by the reaction of people around campus. Lots of positive feedback. We’re able to track page views on most of our campus sites, and after 3 or 4 weeks, over 3,000 unique visitors had already watched the video. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to produce more video projects like this one in the future. And the only good way to substantiate the need for more resources, equipment, and time for video projects, it seems, is to have an initial success story that identifies a need.
People like video.
Potential students like video.
There’s your need.
