Editing CCRs

Hey Blog!

My CCR videos have officially been filmed in their entirety which means that now it has been time to edit them to make sure that the video is not boring, that my ideas flow nicely as I talk throughout the video, and to include any credits necessary—either citations to sources used or to people who helped me.

Beginning to edit my CCRs, however, was a horrifying thing to begin. This wasn't because it was going to be overly difficult or that I was lacking time or anything of the sort, it was simply the fact that I did not want to see myself pretending to be professional or serious, but, alas it had to be done. So after procrastinating for many hours yesterday, I finally opened Adobe Premiere Pro back up and it turned out it wasn't such a big deal as I was making it out to be, so it went fine.

For my first CCR, I added name tags that specified my friend's name as she helped me, as well as her role as "interviewer," and on my side I did the same and labeled myself as the director. As I started talking about the genre conventions that we chose to stick to I included a screenshot of the paragraph from which I learned most of my information, and added the citation for it near the bottom, stating that the article and author. When I further explained how our opening used these conventions, I made sure that my answered included detailed moments from my opening where I followed conventions, so, in editing, I included clips of the opening that showed what I was talking about. I included our storyboard drawings and behind the scenes videos of us making our props as I described ways in which we did not use technology and in which we did. Adding one more behind the scenes of testing out our camera, and a couple of screen recordings of how our editing process went, allowed me to make my explanation much more visually interesting as well as detailed as it is possible to see what I am talking about over only listening to it.

Editing the second CCR video went similarly well. I started out my answer explaining the beginning montage in our opening to describe the friendship that our characters have as shown through the colors and light in our film, so I made sure to include part of the montage with me as a voiceover. I did make a mistake in my video where I said words wrong or in the wrong tone, and I tried to fixing them in editing, but it looked bad and too sudden that I chose to leave them in instead to not sacrifice the video quality over my responses, though I think that my stuttering does add to that teenage look I chose as I pretended to pack for college, to tie into the themes of my opening. As I addressed the question of distribution, since this was a very research-based question, I included screenshots of the article from which I learned possible ways to distribute films as a small and independent filmmaker, once again, including citations for them. My favorite addition to make while editing was definitely when I talked about how I got sick right before filming I included actual messages I sent to my partner Sofia where I told her I was scared I wouldn't be able to join her. It's just a quick fun thing I thought would be good to add. Throughout the CCR video I also added the questions on screen to further add visual interest and to make them easier to understand as it is only me talking for four minutes straight.

 

If I hadn't realized it after editing the entirety of the film opening, editing these two quick videos just proved to me how much fun I have editing. It is always such a rollercoaster as the video often does not help in looking good, but it is such a satisfying process to see your vision finally coming to life through the work of your own hands. It was a ton of work producing these videos, but I enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.