After the pre-production stage, the goal was to assemble all
the pieces of the puzzle: interviews, pictures, sounds, and drawings. Adobe
Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro were my tools to get this. I did not know
anything about Photoshop, and the necessity of creating my slides as I wanted, encouraged
me to learn a lot in a few days. Regarding Premiere Pro, I already knew a
little bit of it because I had created an audio slideshow some days before in
another subject (Production of News and Social Media).
I understand that I had a limited time frame and that many
of the steps of my plan took longer than I thought in the practice. For an
Adobe Photoshop beginner like myself, it has been hard to get its logic. Every
little piece of knowledge learned was exciting because it opened up a new set
of possibilities to improve my video. I can’t wait the end of the semester to
further explore Photoshop and Premiere Pro.
FIRST SCENE: LITTLE GIRL WAKING UP FROM A NIGHTMARE.
Initially, I made two sketches of the girl. Later on, I realised
in Photoshop I can start off with only one sketch and modifying it accordingly.
To colour my slides, I mainly utilised the Lasso and Magnetic tools to select certain
areas and Paint Bucket to spread colours into them.
To choose my music, I browsed into the Creative Commons
website in which there is a lot of options to pick from. To make a nightmare
scene, I combined two chaotic tunes and an alarm clock sound in the end. To
pick the voice of my girl I needed a childish voice. So, I asked the grandson
of the star of my video to say the lines of my first scene. His voice sounded
even funnier than I thought.
SECOND SCENE: SALSA MUSIC STARTS, PARTY MOOD, MY STAR
SPEAKING WELL ABOUT THE RADIO PROGRAMME.
There were many good tracks that would have been ideal for
the video but, due to the copyright restrictions, I was subject to a limited
number of choices. Luckily, I found a decent track for that in Creative Commons
too.
The slides I designed originally were not enough, but to
create more would have meant to invest additional time. In essence, my video
was very close to what I had planned. The challenge in this part was to
effectively synchronise the slides with the music and the voice overs. The sound
of the interviews was not good enough. For future work, I will try to use a
wired microphone. However, in journalistic terms, I liked the way I prepared
the interviews. The interviewees really said what I wanted.
THIRD SCENE: “GIVE ME MONEY”
This was an unfortunate stage for me because Premiere Pro
failed when I had already finished my project. Suddenly the screen went white
and I didn’t know what to do. The next day, I had to start the project from the
scratch. The positive thing is that I had the process so memorised that I made
it again very quickly.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I learned more about software for filming and
editing, crucial in journalism. The great impression I had about the Adobe
software was toppled by the technical issues I got through. I learned how to
make a project, from the previous research to the final result. I learned how
to be more organised in my studies. I learned the basics of taking video and
photos.
