Self Evaluation

Self Evaluation

Logging

Logging the shots was so helpful especially for the b-roll as later on I could locate exactly what kind of shot I wanted based on the interview content.

1st Assembly edit

This was actually the most time consuming part of post-production as the interview rushes had to be cut and trimmed in many places. Assembling the interview was a little difficult as I had to edit out a lot of the interviewee talking to trim it down to 5 minutes and then rearrange to make logical sense for an interview. The main assembly decisions were based on the audio to try and make logical sense. The b-roll assembly was quick because I had done the logging and could locate shots quickly.

Rough Cut

Trimming the audio to make the flow seamless was the most time consuming part, I tried to get the edits as seamless as possible then added crossfades to make them unnoticeable. One shot in particular I edited a way that she mispronounced the word “workshop” and said “Workssssshop” I zoomed into the waveform and found the “ssss” sound and cut in the middle and trimmed both sides of the “sss” sound as so It sounds natural with no stutter.

I positioned the b-roll footage over any edits so the video didn't jump between two shots of the interviewee, this work very well and gives a seamless flow to the video. I would have preferred to have more b-roll footage as I had to repeat some shots and some shots of the ingredients needed to be longer to suit the topic. Also I had no footage to place over the part where the interviewee leaned down to pick up items this could have been better

Fine Cut

Timing the shots and adding transitions was a little time consuming but not too much. Used a lot of opacity keyframes to do artificial fade-to-black for some shots. I wanted to have transitions as smooth as possible to give a soft feel to the interview to suit the topic.

Final Cut

I missed a couple of transitions I should have put fades and cross dissolves on but on the whole it went ok, not too much had to be done here, but I wish I looked over it before I reached picture-lock to take notes and correct the transition issues.

Colour

The colour correction was a little easier for this interview as I got the white balance right on set, It was too difficult to darken the background wall to make the face stand out so I left it as is. I used RGB curves and only did minor adjustments. Preferably I wish I could have made her face a little less red but whenever I tried it looked a little weird so I removed the corrections. For the colour grade I wish I de-saturated the shots a little but on the whole I think it’s ok as is.

Audio

The audio post was relatively simple, except for one problem that couldn't be fixed was when the interviewee bent down several times during the interview. The video is ok as I covered the shots (except one - see rough cut) with b-roll but the audio loses a lot of high frequency content when she turns away from the microphone. And also would have made too much clothes rustle with the lapel. For the voice I added two compressors the first compressing softly only about 3dB at the ratio of 2:1 then the second doing the same. After this I added a limiter to limit at -6dB to make it broadcast safe. Next in the chain I placed an EQ with a low cut set at 90Hz and then raised the high frequencies by +3dB with a high-shelf from 3kHz upward. The music a quickly placed only at the start and end as I didn't want it to distract from the interview. I chose soft piano music to suit the subject which I think worked well.

Export

Remember to check the spelling in the titles before you export!! Otherwise you have to come back and redo it all! I made my own presets for the TV and web broadcast standard which made the export process faster especially as I had to do it more than twice. This was very helpful.