Wednesday, April 3, 2024

The editing labyrinth

Today I went over to Lauren's house to continue the editing journey introduced in one of my previous blog posts. While working, we realized that producing the middle of the episode was far too confusing for us, thus preventing the editing from appearing coherent and Josh and Sai's stories from being successfully expressed. As a result, we began once more, completely from scratch, this time focusing on the beginning of the podcast episode instead.

Amidst discussing ideas for the episode's introduction, Lauren suggested a voiceover introducing and describing the topic of podcasts as a whole in order to expose audiences to the medium we hope to represent in a broader manner before diving into specific examples (Josh and Sai). Below is the script Lauren and I were able to quickly draft thanks to her mom's assistance (shout-out Giselle).


Lauren and I felt it was important to include a mixture of colloquialism and professionalism within the script, both facilitating the information for audiences and maintaining the credibility necessary to capture viewer attention. In addition, we concluded that the story-telling aura of the text required a soothing voice rather than an upbeat one, and thus we contacted our good friend Valentina to help (thanks Vale!). Here is a snip-it of the beginning of the episode and voiceover, which we paired with a Canva edited audio effect alluding to the medium, followed by the documentary intro Lauren formulated last week: 



Although I vehemently defend that the voiceover was a necessary addition, the idea caused a further obstacle for Lauren and I to overcome: b-roll. Of course, we gathered b-roll for Josh and Sai weeks ago in preparation for the editing; however, considering the voiceover was thought of today, we had nothing. Attempting to alleviate the problem, I turned to a technique that has immensely helped me in the past: storyboarding. Below is the short (and horribly drawn) storyboard I created for the clips we will place over Valentina's narration.


Due to the desperate nature of the conditions in which I created these visuals, this storyboard is a *very* rough draft and many of the clips illustrated may be altered later on as we conclude our final revisions. Yet, almost immediately, Lauren and I set out to gather the b-roll described in the first 2 boxes, concerning the microphones and filming equipment, at a local elementary school's morning announcements room. Luckily for us, the equipment was beautifully set and we were able to film a few amazing shots that work extremely well with the voiceover. Also, we succeeded in capturing the staged director photos of Lauren planned in a previous blog post for our magazine article. Here are some pictures (of the many she made me take) of Lauren doing camera work:

        

Finally, after conducting our new business, Lauren and I were able to return home and fully commit to editing the documentary, including both the new sections and Josh and Sai's original parts. So far, we have been able to complete 3 minutes out of the 5 mandatory for the documentary excerpt, a status I deem successful following the chaotic sequences of last week and today. Lauren and I agreed that we should finish editing by this weekend (preferably Saturday) in order to ensure Sunday through Wednesday may be dedicated to writing the magazine article and our critical reflection essay. 

School is cancelled tomorrow (hallelujah); I need to sleep in after today. 

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