After weeks of cultivation, I have turned 2 hours of video into 4:37 minutes – all about Heirloom Coffee’s brewing seminars.
I had the hardest time deciding what to use, and deciding to cut out a portion of interviews completely, even though it was more visually interesting.
Filming was fun, but because I had never worked with video before (well, that’s a lie. I shot terrible video of a turkey in Brighton for boston.com) I didn’t know what would be necessary and what would make good b-roll. When I sat down to edit, I had entirely too much from the interviews, and barely usable b-roll. Because I went out to Medford and the trip on public transit is over an hour each way, I couldn’t do much about it.
Getting the hang of iMovie was another thing, and I kept accidentally deleting sections or parts of the video I had selected. It was a lot harder because I had a bunch of long video, rather than segments of 3-5 minutes. But by the end of the project, I was moving through iMovie relatively seamlessly (at least the aspects I understood).
Though I had no idea what b-roll to use or when it was appropriate, I think the video is at best viewable and informative. I’m just happy I was able to branch out and not completely fail, and I know better for next time – shoot absolutely everything, and keep it short.
Also, I never want to be in front of a camera again. The stand up was terrible.
