For this video, I took the footage that I had already shot, my shot list, and my knowledge about the video editing program I’m using to create the first couple scenes of my film. This first portion isn’t finished (by a long shot) but it does illustrate the direction I’d like to take the rest of the film. I’ll go over how it relates to the central question of my treatment, the technical elements I used in the editing process, and what I think will happen next in the movie.

The central question of my film is: What kinds of knowledge do people need to produce their own food?

In the opening shots, you see the car going up the mountain, with a voice over by one of my main participants talking about how they’re on “a recon mission” to look for signs of animals. The scene shows the effort of getting to the location, and we enjoy some shots of people hiking, looking over the terrain, and examining some deer tracks, all while Khoi (the voice actor) is talking about the species composition as we climb higher up the mountain. I may need to have Khoi sit down for a more formal interview so that we can explore the kinds of knowledge needed more explicitly, but for now I think this is a good start.

I found that the technical elements of the editing process were really exciting. First I was able to figure out how to add a title to the shots, which was a breakthrough for me cause I had a hard time figuring it out. I definitely enjoyed that small victory. Then I had to figure out how to have the voice over work because when Khoi was talking to me, he was quite far away. I cranked up the volume on that recording to 500%, and reduced the volume of the shots being shown by varying degrees, but usually to about 30-50% of its initial volume. In the transition shot from the music to the car pulling the log I used a one second fade on the music just so that when the music ended it wasn’t an abrupt end.

I did have some trouble however with the program I was using. Some of the playback features weren’t working properly and I couldn’t figure out why the playback was using sound which I had cut out of the clips, and why it wasn’t displaying the overlain scenes in the way that I wanted. I’m still not sure what caused this issue, but I think that the program I’m using isn’t meant to be for larger file sizes, only for short videos. So this may be an issue I encounter in the future.

That being said, when I “finished” these scenes those issue were not present, and all the sound came through exactly as I had intended.

For the next scenes I think I need a couple things:

I need a sit down interview with Khoi so I can get him talking more explicitly about hunting, and the kinds of knowledge one needs to have in order to be successful at it. I also want to include some actual footage of deer (which I don’t have and will need to get).

One major issue I have is the length. Initially I thought that this film was going to be around 3 minutes in length, which is not very long. This section of film is already a minute long and we haven’t even explored the central question yet! Either I need to extend the length of the film (probably in the range of 5-10 minutes) or significantly cut back on these scenes.

From where I finished the video I want to transition to another form of food production like vegetable gardening, and get some footage of that process. Some of the same participants who were present in this portion of the film will make a reappearance in that section.

So that’s where I’m at with this project.

Here is the footage: Going out for Dinner: An Ethnographic Film Scene 1 Draft 1