Tracking the Trailer

I hope everyone who's following this blog has had time to check out the theatrical trailer that we recently edited together. You can see it here:

http://wbbrenneman.iweb.bsu.edu/VBC/trailer.html

The more I watch it, the more I really like it. Considering the amount of sleep lost to get it ready, I would really appreciate any feedback from our collective viewing audience. Be it good or bad, I would really like to know what you think.

Working on this was exhausting and exciting. Evan, Jon, Audrey, and Blake put in a lot of time and thought towards the storyboarding and editing.

I worked primarily on editing the music to fit the trailer. The music was a nearly complete idea that me and my esteemed colleague, Adam (the Wilsonian Man), had been working on for a couple of weeks. As I was frantically trying to decide how to score the trailer, I grabbed this musical idea and threw it onto the first thirty seconds of the movie. It didn't fit perfectly, but it was pretty close. Most importantly, it had the right feel. So I consulted with Blake, and we agreed that this was the music for the trailer. We then hashed out specific edit points where the music had to line up with the video, and decided to meet each other half way. I began to cut up and re-orchestrating the music to accommodate the different scenes while Blake finished editing the video using the rough cut of the music as a template. Once we were happy with our work, we combined it and did some final edits to nudge things into perfect sync. Then I did a mix down of the music and we adjusted the dialog to sit on top of that, and presto chango, it was 4 in the morning and it was done. It was pretty fun. Once we got really rolling, we didn't want to stop until it was totally finished. I'm really excited about the final editing of the whole film. Seeing all the pieces of the puzzle lock together is going to be extremely satisfying. And it'll be intense!

I totally dominated Final Cut Pro!

Yep, you read right. The philosophy/psychology major has mastered professional editing software. Well, maybe I didn't master it, but it feels like I did! This past week I spent most of my time working with Teri and Samantha D on the behind-the-scenes documentary. During the all-nighter we started to pull together all of the footage of the class that has been taken thus far. We soon realized that while we had lots of footage of classmates doing things, we didn't have anyone talking about our project. We decided at that point to do a couple interviews with Aaron L. and Rachel. We also created a list of all the subjects that we needed people to speak on so that we can 1) use the footage we already have and 2) create a documentary that is representative of our creative process. At this point we want to interview our classmates on the subjects of interviewing, the reunion, the Tennessee trip, frustrations with the project, learning new skills, our own attempts at playing volleyball, and our enhanced appreciation and excitement for Burris volleyball. I'm sure we will add more subjects as the semester progresses.

On Wednesday, Samantha D. and I discovered that Kecia expected a clip of the behind-the-scenes documentary by next Tuesday. We looked at the mess before us and decided there was no way to we could create a trailer that hit on all the subjects that we wanted to cover. We had been working intensely on a small section devoted to the all-nighter narrative meeting and came up with the idea to just focus on that section for the Tuesday screening. It was very important to us to create a trailer with structure as we need to get used to envisioning the project, itself, as a story. We added an introduction and a nice wrap up, as well as a few surprises of which I am quite proud. By the time we were finished we had created a trailer with a little story line and even some music.

The completion of a 3 minute and 42 second trailer might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but for me it was. I had spent most of the semester completely avoiding anything associated with technology. I was convinced that I would break or mess up any of the great work that was being done by my more technologically savvy classmates. Tackling this fear was a huge achievement for me. I also experienced the reward that comes from creating something tangible. Most of my college experience has been spent reading and writing papers. A whole semester may result in one paper that I actually like, but this was totally different. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I finally felt like I had something to show for all of the work I (and the others) had done. It is simply different from turning in a paper at the end of the year, or giving a presentation. I was so excited about what I had completed that I told everyone I saw and even called my mom. That's something I have never experienced with a good paper and it's awesome. I can't wait to continue working on this part of the project!

**And thanks to everyone who popped in and imparted some of their wisdom on us: Adam, Dan, Aaron L., Blake, Laura Huffman, and anyone else I have forgotten**