I’ve made a lot of progress since I last updated here, and have overcome a number of issues I was having previously, while also encountering new ones that need to be solved. In this post I’ll talk about the progress I’ve made through the narrative and technical issues I’ve solved and discovered, and where the next portion of the film will hopefully go.
Narrative Issues
In my last update I wrote how I was struggling to insert a narrative into the footage I had edited. After watching that footage, I realized that no one would know why I was showing this footage without directly knowing the characters or the motivations for why we were on that journey. I also never introduced the characters, so no one even knew who these people were and while Khoi gave a nice voice over for what we were doing, there was no explanation for why, and so the whole thing fell flat.
In this update, I added a third video track and used it to add text to a shot of Khoi riding in the back of the truck. I used this same video track with text later to add an introduction for Tim to enter on screen. I hope that the text gives the film some of the structure that it needs.
I added about two more minutes of footage that I shot this morning with my friend Tim who took me fishing on the Capilano river. This was a great opportunity to film because it was just the two of us, which gave me greater control of what kind of film I could get. It helped that Tim was incredibly enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge with me, because I got some amazing footage that I was able to put voice over.
I was fooling around a little bit with the kinds of shots I was taking. Tim was really eager to talk to me about his fishing knowledge and his equipment, so a lot of the footage I took included long recordings with shifting camera positions. Some of these shifting angles were fairly successful, others were not.
I do have a pretty significant regret though about this morning, which is that I left my lavallier microphone at home. A lavallier is a wired mic that transmits sound to a receiver attached to the camera. I bought one because I wanted to use it during this project, but of course I forgot it this morning.
The loss of the lavallier microphone basically meant that the camera was picking up the sound of the river the whole time. At first, I actually liked that. I’ve been using the sound of the river as a bridge to connect scenes. The only problem is that the river is super loud (obviously). The lavallier microphone would’ve narrowed in on Tim’s voice instead of picking up every sound in existence.
The footage is still good and usable, but using the lavallier would’ve been better so I’m kicking myself a little bit.
As for the question of why I chose to show this footage, and as to the why of the story; I’ve decided to add a narration at the beginning to give the story some context. I was discussing with Dr. Menzies the idea of using narrative “bookends” to frame the stories that are being shown on screen. One of the major issues I was facing in my last update was that I didn’t know how to tie all the stories in the film together in a way that would be visually and narratively satisfying. In this, you’ll notice that I used footage of rain on a highway to act as a bridge between the hunting and fishing trips which took place a few weekends apart.
This draft video doesn’t yet have the narrative bookends because adding these bookends presents some technical difficulties which brings to me to the next part of this reflection.
Technical Difficulties
Well you don’t know what you don’t know.
Right now my only working computer is a Google Chromebook, which I bought out of necessity for school, and which has been invaluable for my assignments.
The only issue with Chromebook is that it runs on a different operating system that is incompatible with software meant for Mac or Windows. This means that I don’t have access to Final Cut Pro, or Adobe Premiere, or other programs which are the market standard for video editing.
As such, I’ve been using a subscription based program available to Google Chromebook called WeVideo, and up until now it has worked perfectly well! I’ve really enjoyed using it and found it really accessible.
The issue with WeVideo though, is that as your movie gets longer, the less the editing features function properly.
As a result, after importing the footage I took this morning to my original draft version, the video tracks got all messed up, the audio was out of sync, and the preview playback feature completely stopped working.
This meant that I had to restitch all the footage I had for the film back together from the beginning, undoing and then re-doing all the work I already done.
It turns out that WeVideo is mostly used for short company featurettes to be used in conferences and the like. It’s not exactly meant to be processing the amount of footage I’m trying to put together.
I did find a work around however! The work around is to restart my computer and delete the cache of files and cookies whenever the preview playback function starts to lag.
Nothing says “I know what I’m doing” like turning it off and back on again.
What happens from here
So far I think I’ve done a decent job of getting the footage I need to make a decent ethnographic film. Honestly at this point I could add the narration at the beginning, tie it all together at the end with a few shots of folks sitting around a campfire having a good time, and call it a day!
Really though I want to practice with more filming techniques, learn how to properly do sit-down interviews and frankly, I want to put that damn Lavallier microphone to use. I feel really good about where I am with the project overall given the constraints forced upon the class by Covid-19.
Going out for Dinner Draft 3 (Working Title)