Blog 26
20 AUG 2022
After my second project, I decided to give my app-to-computer editing pipeline theory a shot. For context, the theory was that I could optimize my workflow by editing the video first on my phone and then editing the colours my laptop. I still had a bunch of videos I didn’t add to the second project and I wanted to make a short video of the trip we took to Korea. The issue was that my camera wasn’t exactly HD and I also took a lot of blurry videos. I decided to work around that by playing into a vintage camera effect, essentially utilizing grain and flickers to make it less obvious.
I still had to time the music to the footage, so I had to roughly plan out where I wanted each shot to be. It was much easier to work with the footage this time as I had a variety of shots to choose from. I figured that if I had shots in different lightings, I would still have to edit the colour for each clip, which was where this method wouldn’t work. I decided to narrow down on videos that were all taken in natural lighting so I could edit everything at once. I then started assembling them, basing the order on what made sense narratively and also interspacing close-ups and far-away shots so it wouldn’t be so boring. I had observed that in other videos before, and wanted to test it out myself.
I figured the whole theme could be based on a summer day out with friends, which wasn’t too far off from the truth. For some reason, I had taken alot of videos zooming into things that weren’t exactly aesthetic. Actually, my main goal zooming into things was because I found them funny, so I quickly figured out I couldn’t make this whole video very pretty. At this point, I had two options: following my previous projects, I could cut corners to figure out how to make the video exactly as I planned or I could just utilise what I had. Based on what I’d learned on my first personal project, I decided to just go with the flow. A funnier video would be closer to my taste anyway, so I committed to that decision.
I like the final outcome. I think having the shots in a frame and edited in the style of a Super 8 camera makes it look like a lot more effort was put in and the funnier videos (I picked the ones that weren’t too strange) gave it more personality. By editing the video on my phone prior to the project and with a little more foreplanning, I had effectively narrowed down the time I took to 2 hours instead of the original 4. It was much less CPU-heavy on my laptop to have fewer clips put it one by one and far less clips to edit individually. I still had to cut some footage a little to time it with the music again, but overall my theory was successful.