How could I give the answers when I didn't even know what questions to ask?
I was able to conduct a few successful interviews with various students, and thought I had decent footage to work with, but again, the format was all wrong. I tried presenting each interview separately, but soon found that the clips weren't strong, or fast-paced enough to stand on their own. Each interview had its own issues. My interview with Abdallah Burnett, a Muslim student, had multiple sound and location issues. Essentially, his voice was almost completely eliminated due to background noise. The interview I conducted with Esther Chung, a Christian, was slightly less problematic; however, the location was still not ideal. Once again, the issue of background noise came up. Specifically when editing my interview with Kevin Dean, an Agnostic, I realized first, how dull watching someone sit in a room for six minutes is, no matter what they're talking about, and second, how difficult it is to think of b-roll footage to put with video when the subject is talking about things like a "metaphorical idea of God," and "transcendence."
Some of my classmates were kind enough to take a look at my project and offer advice, however everyone seemed to be telling me the same thing. They wanted me to mash all three interviews together, or include video from my "Wells Hall Preachers" video. The advice they were offering was not what I wanted to hear. I ran into countless technical problems throughout the semester as well. The first problems I had were with my "Wells Hall Preachers" project. There were issues of compatibility with my camera and my computer. After purchasing an external hard drive I was able to overcome these initial issues; however, the problems didn't stop there.
Working on a PC, I soon found that Windows Movie Maker was inadequate for creating the project I had in mind. The video editing program that came with my external hard drive, Pinnacle Studio, was much better. This specific program has advantages concerning sound, music and transitions. After editing my "Wells Hall Preachers" video, and working out all of the kinks with that project, I found that I had learned a lot of valuable techniques that I was able to use when editing my final project. It may seem simple, but learning how to change the font, use a different variety of transitions and alter sound levels were all surprisingly difficult things for me to do on my first project. The experience of working against these issues helped to improve and smooth out my overall editing process for the final project.
One of the main technical issues that I ran into, however, had little to do with digital technology. When conducting my first interviews, I chose not to use a tripod. This made it extremely difficult for me to pay attention to what the interviewee was actually talking about, and caused me a lot of grief over my interview skills. However, after I decided to use the tripod, my interview technique improved tenfold. I found that when I didn't have to multitask as much, or fuss with the camera, that I could concentrate a lot more on the interview itself, which was really the most important element.
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