This week we recorded the a-roll interview for April. Plans had fallen through in regards to travelling down to Ballarat. In solution to this April had helped us book a room in one of her RMIT studios. We were able to put April’s work up on the wall to give the background more life/versatility and to give the audience an understanding of her work. One issue that we did run into for the room was the echo. Once we recorded a clip of her talking and reviewed it we decided that we would fix this issue in post-production as well as not being able to fit in another time to film the a-roll because of push back. 

In regards to the set up, we were all aware of our roles because of how many times we’ve done it before. We made sure to give us time to set up, for any issues that went wrong and for as much depth to April’s answers as possible, which was 2 hours. We did run into the issue of our camera equipment which took up a lot of our time. The issue with the footage was that it was very grey and no real depth of colour was shown. Kiera ended up fixing this issue and we went straight into the interview. In regards to Thursday we were able to show Seth where we were headed and record more b-roll informed by the a-roll interview. After this we all got copies of the footage ready to be edited. 

Over the weekend, we were able to log our footage and rate the footage individually. This was helpful because even though our process was individual, we got to see how each piece of footage was rated by others in the group. Most clips from the b-roll had more variety in the ratings as we have different visions for the outcome compared to the a-roll interview, which had more clips that were agreed on because of the story aspect. 

After this I started on my paper edit. I’ve never done a paper edit before so I didn’t understand the use of it until now. In understanding it, this step was helpful to arrange the story and give a sense of flow to my video edit. This step also cut out time for editing as my story structure was set and only had to look for the parts that I outlined. I also think that reading over the transcript of the a-roll in this step was much faster than listening to our participant talk and deciding how to structure the editing then. This is helpful in a real life documentary film because of how a roll footage can be and the complexities of different shots. Furthermore, I gave comments talking about the reasoning of why I removed parts and why I kept things in, as well as b-roll footage ideas I can put over the a-roll. After this I started on editing. I haven’t gotten much experience using Premiere Pro before so editing took me a while to figure out but I believe it is a powerful tool to understand and edit with for the future. 

In regards to next week, I would like to have my final edit done before Week 11 finishes so my group and I can deliberate on the pros and cons of each other’s edit and figure out which one tells the most compelling story visually and audibly. We also get the opportunity to present to a panel which will further help us with the flow of our story.