Staying Active When the World Stopped

 

I produced a video highlighting the benefits that the COVID-19 pandemic brought upon many individuals in the world. During a time of isolation a lot of people took advantage of the newfound time to improve their physical health such as my friends and I. 

In the making of this video, most of the time taken up was not through recording as I expected but rather in the extensive editing process. In my rough cut of this video the message I wanted to convey in my video was very much misunderstood because I failed to edit clips in a way that provided a clear cut message. Video wasn't the only thing that took a lot of editing. Audio was also something that I struggled with as in many clips audio had to suppressed and raised to highlight what was being narrated. 

To my surprise, my video and editing skills improved in such a short time and I learned my way through the iMovie software in a quick amount of time. My ability to do so allowed me to deal with the things I was struggling with, such as editing and learning how to use the camera equipment, in a more efficient manner. 

In my rough cut I had a heavy dose of low quality GIFs that were imported from the internet and with Dr. Liu's help, I realized that if I wanted to convey my message effectively I needed to import clips that I recorded of myself and my friends. The video was ultimately about how my friends and I found different ways to be active so including clips of that was more important to do rather than having GIFs of the same acts being done by different people. 

That editing detail ultimately turned my whole video around and I feel that it was more effective in conveying my message after those changes were made. I now realize the importance of effective B-roll playing over the A-roll of myself narrating. The narration on its own wasn't effective because it became very easy to get lost in what was being said without a visual depiction.

This process in all was very challenging but learning of all the nuances that come with producing a video was important as now I can see the importance in editing. Before all this I looked at video making as just standing behind a camera and telling a story but I learned that ultimately if you want your story's message to be heard correctly then a lot of work has to be put into editing it in a way that makes the message clear.