Some Improvement

Here’s the revised video for our 21st Century push.

Improved 21st Century Plea from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

Old Version

Another 21st Century Plea from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

I find video work to be incredibly time consuming and difficult to do right. After I watch something 1000 times, it’s gets far harder to be objective and not let my mind fill in gaps. I’ll have to figure out a trick similar to reading an essay aloud that will give me fresh eyes. Until then, I’ve found getting other people to watch the video and give me feedback to be invaluable.

This minor clip still has many ways it can be improved but it has improved thanks to the comments offered by people on this site. Thanks for that.

There is now one continuous track in the background that helps unite the disparate clips and improve the mood of the piece. The tricky part about that was trying to lay that track down behind clips where people were speaking and the clips themselves had background music. I tried removing it the original background music in a variety of ways using Soundtrack and Logic but had no real luck. I did, however, get really good at making Ken Kay sound like a robot.

Another issue that was hard to deal with was video formats. Since I was getting them from other sources I didn’t have much choice in the matter. I did learn that Final Cut does not like editing the mp4 format. It does not like it at all. It will stall and balk in horrific, patience shattering ways. Do not attempt this. I ended up using Apple Pro Res 422 and it was good for editing but the files were large and not as clear.

Finally, I’m going to have to watch film critically a lot more than I do. I learned a lot about photography by submitting my shots to “Hit, Miss or Maybe- Why?.” It’s not that I believed all the comments I got from that group but there were things that made me think and I also had to critique three other people’s work for each picture I submitted. It helped to look at other images and analyze what made them work/not work. I need to do that with video.

6 thoughts on “Some Improvement

  1. A wise video. I am curious to hear teacher reactions to it.
    Do I sense a new career path on the horizon? Should I keep an eye out for Bionic Films?

  2. It had mixed reactions today. Some extreme anger, some blah and some people liked it.

    Surely, you’ve seen the long line of Bavawood productions? I’ve been in the movie business for years.

    1. The point about needing to create community around content didn’t go over well with one person. A number of people were annoyed with the idea of 21st century anything (which I can understand). Some people liked it. I have mixed feelings myself. I think the main thing is people feel like doing those things is the right way to go but they feel boxed in and contradicted by the focus on standardized testing.

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