We began by sitting as a band and brainstorming ideas for where we wanted to film, what we wanted to film, and how we were going to make it look as professional as possible. We ended up deciding that we would record in the cafe at college, in the practise rooms, and various other places, getting footage of us talking as a band, performing, etcetera. This footage would be used as side footage that would be laid over the audio of the interview in certain places to vary the final product instead of just showing the same interview footage for the whole video as it would be quite boring.
Before recording, we had to ensure that the camera settings were correct, using the highest resolution, recording the audio and video separately to make editing easier, and setting the gain on any external microphones for the cameras properly as to not have clipping audio.
Heres some examples of the the raw footage we recorded:
(A few videos I used in my final edit and extras)
After this, one of our tutors Lewis took us to the Bradford College Camera Studio where we filmed an interview with each of the acts in our level, whilst the other acts controlled the cameras or the mic, camera selector, and mixer in the control room. This gave us the ability to see and learn the way an interview would be filmed in a professional situation.
We began by listening to the usual controller there about standard procedures and how to be professional in the environment we were in. The most important thing I picked up from this was how he expected everyone to work, everyone needed to know what all the hand signals were, when to be quiet, how to use each of the cameras, etc.
We then went into filming three interviews, one with ‘Lea Rose’, ‘Shades’, and my band ‘The Funky Ones’, all the performers from our year. We began with our band, and the first thing we did was remove bags from the shot and got an extra chair for me to sit in as we were too big for the sofas and I wasn’t in shot. We then waited for the camera controller to assume his position in the control room ready for recording. He then said over the ‘Speak Through’ system for us to be ready to record in ten seconds and to look for the hand signal through the viewing window for the control room to know when to begin. He then put his finger up in the air to signal that we were recording and Lewis asked us some pre-prepared questions we had decided on before we had gone to the studio. We then answered the questions as a group and ensured we got all the information in that we needed to properly introduce our band and the event.
We were then sent the raw footage and audio from the studio to work with and edit into our final product.
(Raw footage and audio from studio)
We then began editing the footage and audio we had together to make a professional looking interview in IMovie. I began by putting the footage we had first recorded into a sort of introduction to the interview, using black and white fades to quickly transition between each of the clips. I then went and found some audio to put underneath the introduction and the interview itself as the raw audio of the interview and now audio from the introduction wouldn’t be professional at all. I then added a panel transition in between the introduction and the interview and edited the faders on the audio and video so that the audio didn’t just cut in and the transitions weren’t randomly lengthed. After this I went through each of the clips and audio files and added shake reduction, white noise reduction, colour filters and EQs to make the video and audio look and sound cleaner and gel together as a proper product. I then finished off by adding titles at the beginning and end of the interview to introduce our band properly and end the video properly.
(My final edit of the interview)
At the end of the video editing process, I believe that my final product looks very professional, and I have learnt a lot about video editing and how important it is to representing yourself as a band or artist. Throughout each step of this process I have put considerable thought and attention into trying to make the final product as clean and professional as possible, even going into each of the clips and adding anti shake effects, etcetera, to make sure that every part of it looked and sounded how I wanted it to. In the future, however, I will put much more effort into planning and getting resources ready as we quite limited on what we could use when it came to recording ourselves. If we had planned multiple weeks ahead, we would have been able to use much more scenic spots, with much more structured interviews and recording sessions, we would have also had more time to ensure that we had all the equipment we wanted instead of using the colleges cameras and facilities. But during the time scale we had, I believe that we actually did the best that we could with what we had, and at the end of the process I had created, what I found to be, a professional product that properly represented my band in the way we wanted.