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Investigation 2/15: THON Factor Education

Over the past few days I have been working on a variety of different videos for THON factor this upcoming Friday. Working on these different types of videos has taught me some new things that I might not have learned through only working on personal films. Here is a few interesting things that I've learned over the past week.

Editing To Music

With most of my previous films, music has really just been something that I added in towards the end of post production. While editing the promo video for THON factor, I selected the music prior to working on the visuals. This put me in a different situation as I would now have to make the visuals fit with the music. The only previous experience I had of this was with editing last year's Mini-THON recap video on the night of. The music track was prepared prior to editing and Tech Chair Georgea Hall had mentioned the importance of cutting on musical beats to add emphasis. After editing the promo video, I think I did a fair job at taking this into account. I made sure to have text change on beats of the music in order to create emphasis. I also tried to add relevant visuals (Guitar, Drums, Etc) in the background to further support the music track. Overall, I think that the promo ended up fairly well. The promo video can be found here: THON Factor Promo Video

Formal Interview

In the past, I filmed a sort-of "interview" for my film The Game VS The World. That interview was meant to be joke-ish and the only thought put into it was really just to hit record in front of a backdrop. When I was asked to help film an interview with Four Diamonds Kid/THON Factor Contestant Nathan Smelser, I was excited to give interviews another try. While shooting, I made sure to have Nathan sit away from the backdrop in order to create more depth within the shot. This should in some ways hopefully make the interview feel less like "someone talking about some thing" and more like a real interview. I also used a lavalier microphone as well as my camera's internal microphone to record audio, with each microphone recording to either the left or right channel. Doing this gave me a back-up track incase the lavalier's audio ended up bad. Even though the interview was only filmed in a classroom, Nathan's story and the way it is presented make the whole video feel formal and heartwarming.

Music Videos

In the few years that I have been creating films, music videos haven't been something that has come up for me. For THON factor I have had the opportunity to both shoot and edit music videos. From working on these videos I've learned a few important things to keep in mind with music videos. First is that the music is always more important than the video. While the aim of making a music video is to make a video for music, the main form of entertainment is the music being played. A video doesn't need to necessarily look beautiful as long as the performance is what is highlighted. Another thing is that syncing video with your audio track is critical to the video's success. Being able to see the words being sung from the mouth of a singer help the audience to realize what they are singing. If the words being mouthed by your singer don't match what is being sung within the music, the audience will likely be confused. Lastly, having multiple takes of your talent performing creates more opportunities in editing. By having multiple takes, you will always have something to fall back on should one of your clips not work with the edit. Multiple takes also allows you to have more things to cut in-between, creating more visual variety within the video. If you are interested in watching the music videos I worked on and more, you can watch THON Factor Friday February 19th at 4 p.m. live on Cumberland Valley Mini-THON's YouTube channel.

Work Log

  • 2/8 - No Work
  • 2/9 - Began work on THON Factor promo
  • 2/10 - Shot Nathan Smelser's music video
  • 2/11 - Finished THON Factor promo
  • 2/12 - Shot interview
  • 2/13 - Began editing THON Factor music videos
  • 2/14 - Finished editing 2 THON Factor music videos
  • 2/15 - Edited 2 additional THON Factor videos
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