FMP - Making of Video - Output 2

I was inspired by one of the videos Derek showed us during our first lecture about the FMP brief. It was a project showing the design process and the making of behind the scenes. I planned on filming myself to show my process and journey and to put it into video format. I began documenting key points in the project from researching websites and other charities trying to raise awareness of Cleft Lip and Palate (Smile Train, Clapa, Operation Smile, Changing faces) I knew that after looking at how operation smile wrote their stories, I did not want to focus on the negatives. I understood the reasoning behind it was to get people to donate, so they could perform more corrective surgeries for children who may not have the same access to it like here in the UK. However, I still found the way they were written was offensive and insensitive as well as over dramatisation of a fact with a bold statement of 9/10 children born with cleft could die! However you could see the target audience they were approaching and targeting. This was the same for many other charities, especially Clapa. Their website did not house any sad pictures of children what so ever. They were happy and cheerful. I wanted to capture this in my project and execution. It is not a thing to be sad about, you just got to get on with it! Below you can see screen recordings of me clicking through the sides and exploring the information they housed.

I was then going to try and film interviews from my primary research. When I interview Ryan I will film him and his responses. Even if I do not use all the footage, it would be good to look back on and reference too as I develop the project further.

I filmed the interview with Ryan. This was really insightful but the only problem was the footage. For some reason I had a problem with my camera, I focused it at the start of the interview, however, I did not account for how much Ryan would move throughout it. As such I set up the lens on manual focus, but due to movement he moved out of focus, as such I should have left it in auto focus. I needed to figure out a way to make the footage look good. I didn't know how to salvage it. I spent a while trying a few different combinations of sharpening, colour contrasting and noise control. In an attempt to make it look better than how it originally turned out. I found that if I placed a coloured layer, drop the opacity down and put the text over the top, it made it look better. I wouldn't want to have to do this again, as I would hope next time, I learnt from the mistake of leaving the lens on manual focus instead of auto and that I have another person assisting me on shoot like a runner of some sort as it was really difficult getting the mic timed to the footage and then linking them together because they started at different times.

To get the best content I cut the footage down as much as possible. But I realised I didn't want the process video to be too long otherwise people would loose interest. As such I put a funny clip in from the interview, where I asked Ryan, please could you introduce yourself, say your name and age and a bit about yourself. He gave a funny and sarcastic comment to lighten the mood. I wanted to add this in to do the same effect, it showed and highlighted the fun I had interviewing and getting to know Ryan. It was crazy how we didn't know each other, and were complete strangers, but we were able to connect on such a personal level about finding out that both our first operations were performed by the same surgeon.

The next bit of footage I collected, was from my interview with Claire (CEO of Clapa) this was a pain to cut down as the interview went on for 45 minutes and I had to rewatch through to make the creative decisions of what content I needed and what I did not. I went through two cuts of the footage. This was because there was so much valuable information said and discussed. However, I managed to get the main nuggets of information that helped to create a narrative. I wanted to show the journey and narrative of the project in its true forms.

I also had problems with this footage, but this time it was down to using new equipment. I collaborated with James Pang on this shoot, as I learnt from the last, I would need help setting up and filming. I thought James would be able to able because I admired the films from his previous projects like Co-lab. I learnt on the day of filming though that it wasn't him that filmed, that it was Harry. Never the less, he helped me out a great deal. We set up two cameras as I wanted main shots filming Claire as well as behind the scenes of me filming and interviewing her. However, James miss interpreted what I meant by this and filmed Claire from another angle, which worked however we didn't have a second tripod to place the camera on and had to improves with a suitcase as a stabilizer. The main issue was just cutting the shear amount of content filmed down.

I colour graded the footage and cropped into the shot as I deliberately shot wider to be able to do so. I had recorded the sound exactly in time with the film recording so it was easier to sink up this time round compared to Ryans interview. It was hard filming this second interview because of the office space. It wasn't that big and we needed to make the most of the space. We moved a lot of tables around, used a wide banner they had already in the office as a nice backdrop. I blurred this out to create depth between Claire and the background and to pull focus to her instead of the faces behind her. There was not a lot of natural lighting either as it was a really miserable day. However, I got the interview and really valuable insights, and I think James learnt a lot too. We had a light explode on us with a battery back leaking mid shoot which wasn't great and we were confused why it did so as we were using led panel lights that did not require connection to mains nor did it need filament lightbulbs.

Now that I had the main elements for the film I started storyboarding how I wanted it to look and build the narrative within it.

With this, I was able to build structure and start dropping assets and footage into the video. I wanted to continue my illustrative style I had created for the main logo and instagram posts. I wanted to keep the continuity throughout as it would look nice when placed into my portfolio along side the design. It visually explains the journey in a shorthand way. I wanted to keep the video at a max of 3min /3min 30sec. As I wanted it to have a degree of detail to it. I would then be able to cut the ending of the video into a 1 minute short explaining what: WHATULOOKINAT was. It was a length that I could then share onto my instagram account and other socials such as linkedin etc.

I added elements in as I went along, I wished I had more time to add in the footage I filmed from making my tote bags and leaflets. However, I had established the length of the video with the track and the timing and pacing of the video went to the beat of the track. I found that if I was to try and put this extra footage in, it would throw the timing of the video off, and make it less polished and refined.

Final Output: