Reflections on Recording and Editing a Video
Editing and the musical score are the best parts of visual storytelling—let the actors do their thing; prop making, though amazing, is not quite as engrossing; “presenting” the story is the essence—how best to make the writer’s vision come alive. I used to browse film school websites and occasionally fantasize taking film editing classes then switching careers.
If there is one thing every professor and every communication design course at CityTech has emphasized it is that virtually no assignment is complete on the first output—it might likely never be perfected or at least not in the allotted time. Even if one has all the time in the world I’ve found there will always be one more thing that could be tweaked, and then one more. Once again, here, in this video editing project, that was the lesson.
I believe the industry also expects designers to be ready to try things they’ve never done, but I wished this task away several times before it was actually assigned. I had not used a video camera and I was dreading the steep learning curve ahead with other final projects looming. As late as four weeks ago I had not even seen the inside of a video editing program. At that time for another course’s group project I contributed voice over and clipped about a dozen shots with a partner.  For the balance, my contribution amounted to being the production assistant on location.
Film (video) editing is like cooking. Each cook, having been schooled in the rudiments, inevitably interjects their individual creativity and twists into the process then voila, success or: “yawn”.  This is not exactly the way I experienced it on my first time out. My reality was more stress than success. I had heard that iMovie was the most user-friendly editing program, but even then figuring out how to use the tools for the first time, on the fly, was frustrating. I relied heavily on my oracle, Google, on the University of YouTube and on Lynda.com and when the going got tough I dialed a lifeline.
In Hilda, I had a photogenic and congenial interviewee but I didn’t realize how important it would be to hold the camera steady. I also took the zoom control way too seriously—at one point zooming so far in that I captured only her earring—ouch! Thankfully, the project was restricted to 3 minutes so I was able to cut out acres of shaky frames.  iMovie’s templates (intro and titles) were a godsend and not too difficult to incorporate once I got the hang of it.
Despite the hair-tearing-out struggle to produce my first video, I will absolutely try again.  I am already planning to add COMD 2320 – Introduction to Film & Video Production Design to my degree coursework.
