Stourhead Evaluation
We were assigned with the task to film a promotional video for Stourhead, a historical house owned by the National Trust. The topic of our video was "Conservation and Restoration" and had to include interviews of people from Stourhead speaking about this topic.
Throughout the trips to Stourhead, I learnt how much planning can go into a project to make sure everything is doing what they are supposed to be and are gaining useful footage. I was tested with this when our tutor was ill, his self putting Gonsalo and myself in charge. We had to organise where people were for interviews and what group had to be there to record that interview at a specific time. It was difficult managing people's times and hoping for them to keep on track with where they were supposed to be. I told everyone in our class to write down their times and the locations for what they were doing so they could keep track of these times and so that they had the times with them, otherwise people would have forgot.
The filming processes went well, the team I was in working well together and taking each others ideas in for consideration. Everyone helped each other with the equipment and carried out their roles professionally, being professional and polite with the people we interviewed. The group I was in worked well together, taking in turns to carry equipment that was heavy and taking turns to get different shots. We were all able to direct another to get the shot we imagined and that could be one of the best shots we could think of.
All groups also gained a lot of footage for editing later on, meaning we weren't low on raw footage for the editing. It also provided us with different shots of the same object to choose from or cut away to. By gaining lots of footage, it allowed me to find relative footage that others may not of recorded and is relevant to what the person is speaking about in the interview. It gave us enough footage and meant that we wouldn't have to go back and get more footage to fit to the final video.
Some difficulties for the first trip out to Stourhead was the amount of ground we had to cover because we were mostly filming outside. We managed to resolve this by splitting into groups to cover as much ground as possible. Another problem was the weather, the ground being frozen and very cold wind. This made it more difficult for us to be outside for long periods of time and carrying equipment with metal. We managed to resolve this as a group, one carrying the metal equipment before swapping to be able to warm up their hands. The ground was also slippery which was dangerous for us but also dangerous as we were carrying expensive equipment. We made sure that we were cautious when walking around the grounds and stuck to the path to be safe.
For the second trip, there was no problems out filming, apart from batteries running out of power, but it was more when we came back. Some of the cameras didn't record audio, meaning that some of the microphones weren't checked. This made it much more difficult to sync the audio in editing and made everyone's editing process a bit more tricky. Another problem was that one group did not turn up to one of their interviews. This was resolved quickly and my group went to film the interview instead.
The editing process was difficult to find relative footage to the topic and sift through all the footage we gained over the two trips. Syncing audio was the most difficult task at first, having to make the footage line up manually as some of the cameras didn't record audio. After making sure all of the audio was synced with all of the footage, I had to sit through the interviews and find information about conservation and reservation.
Audio levels were also a problem, making sure that all of the people's voices could be heard over the music and that they flowed naturally. After getting the voices and the music to equal levels of clearness, I managed to make the audio flow smoothly in and out, making it sound natural. This was only a problem from the initial get go but became easy after the basics were set.
Some of the shots we filmed also turned out shaky, meaning that they had to be stabilised in editing. This wasn't a problem until the stabilisation would not work on some shots, meaning I had to delete the clips out or overlay it with another piece of footage. Some of the shots were also out of focus, meaning I had to remove those as well and avoid using these clips.
One of the most difficult sections was finding the footage I needed from the files. In the shared file some labelled the cameras and which trip it was, making it easier to find the footage whilst others just put them in a camera file. It made it difficult to match up the two cameras from each interview and to find the Tascam audio for each interview. After a while of sifting through all the footage, I managed to correlate all of the footage and could start the editing process.
By the final edit, I am pleased with how it has turned out and am happy with the final results. If I could improve this project next time, I would try to make the audio levels better between the voices and the music and would try to get more questions about the topic we were interviewing about. I would also try to make the whole video look a lot more smoother but the capabilities of this with the footage we gathered is at its best in my final edit because of the shaking of the camera. Overall, I am pleased with how this project turned out.
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