Final Project Documentation

Abstract:

The plan with this video was to do a short tongue-in-cheek advertisement for a made up product called "Mandles", candles marketed to men.  The equipment I used included a lighting kit, a 10.1 megapixel digital camera, and of course Final Cut Pro.  Originally, I had rented a Panasonic 3-chip Camcorder, but they supplied me with the wrong battery charger for it.  Luckily, the digital camera footage came out fairly well (thanks in part to the rented light).  Before actually shooting the video, I made some prop candle labels for the scents of bacon and beer that I wrapped around a regular candle to use in it.  I also made the Mandles logo used in the opening of the video.

1. Raw Footage

There were a few places in the raw footage that had a few pixelated lines running horizontally that showed for about a second in the clip (see first still).  This happened within the camera; even the source footage from the camera itself has this problem.  Also, most of the shots could have been framed a little bit tighter (see second still).

2. Basic Edit

The basic edit I did was unrelated to my final project.  It consist of some footage of my band at practice.  I cut it together, added some cross dissolve, titles and credits. 

3. Storyboard

4. Rough Cut

The initial rough cut of the video consisted of all the good takes, put in sequence, with a few cross dissolves in between certain clips.  I also had the Mandles logo placed in the beginning of the video.  At this point, the edits still needed to be tightened up, editing of the footage itself needed to be done, and credits needed to be added.

5. Final Edit

For the final edit, the cuts and dissolves between clips were tightened up and fine-tuned, most of the clips were cropped to tighten up the framing around characters and remove some unnecessary background objects from view.  Music was added to the beginning and end, and credits were added as well.

Self Evaluation:

Despite the problems with the footage and the time restraint under which is was filmed, this came out fairly close to how I wanted it.  There were a few things which I could have done better, however.  One obvious mistake I made during the filming of this is in the opening shot, where "Tina" is walking in the door.  You can see the light and umbrella in the reflection of the glass door.  While there wasn't really anywhere else to put the umbrella, it would still be wise in the future to figure out how to avoid this.  It ends up being pretty distracting from the content of the video itself.  Another good idea, would be to pay more attention to the framing of each shot.  The raw footage all could have been zoomed in more.  Paying more attention to this would have saved me some work in the editing process, and if the quality of the footage was an issue, it could have rendered the shots unusable.  All in all, however, I would consider this a successful project.