Assignment+3.3+-+Reflection

Reflection - Critical Decisions:

It took a while for me to come up with the idea that I wanted to create for this digital story. I was after something that was powerful, interesting and emotional. I went through a few ideas, interviewing my dad about this family business, or my friend about his stamp collection, but in the end found a great story with my friend about bad boyfriends. I thought this would be a great digital story as everyone can relate to this and there was a lot of drama involved. Included in this pdf is my initial planning, photo ideas and questions that I may ask in the interview.
 * The Idea **

Because of the last sound project, it was much easier to setup and record the interview as I had already came across a lot of problems. I made sure that the room was quiet, and that the interview was comfortable enough so they didn’t have to move and create noise.
 * Recording the Sound **

I then imported the sound to my computer and tried to create the transcript. The problem was that elly spoke very fast which made it hard to record. I ended up having to slow down the audio before I could do this. Once this was completed I read the transcript and highlighted parts which were interesting and made a story. I then cut all these bits from the original audio and decided which ones were of enough quality to use. From this I created the story. This was about 4 minutes long so I started to remove excess scenes (like the abortion scene) and also condensed and optimised the other sound bites.
 * Editing the Sound **

At this point I was happy with the interview and then started to storyboard the images that I wanted to take. Over a week I took the photos, sometimes changing the storyboard to suit the photos that I took or what I couldn’t take. The storyboard shown is the final draft. This process was rather time consuming as sometimes I wanted a particular angle but it was not available at the site. I also had problems thinking of photos to take for paedophilia-ism and masturbation. I really had to think outside the box and use my imagination to take the viewer on a journey but not too confronting.
 * Taking the Photos **

Now I had everything I needed (well I thought that) and I had to put it all together. I started to place all the images against the audio track. I initially had troubles with movie maker, as I could not be as exact as I wanted so I moved to Adobe Premiere. This was a steep learning curve, but well worth it. I placed all the images and used fades of black to separate the sections of the story, like chapters. During some parts of the chapters I used hard cuts to emphasis the story and create an interesting effect to engage and keep the viewer entertained. I also used a mixture of pans and zooms to make the story more interesting and give some scenes a sense of dynamics. During this process I found that I still needed extra shots as sometimes I only needed a short photo or another angle so I had to go out and get extra shots. Once my first edit was finalised, I showed it to a few people to get their thoughts. I ended up replacing a few of the hard cuts to fades, and decreased the black outs time. I also changed a few photos, (some drinking shots) as they were not clear and didn’t enhance the story.
 * Bringing It All Together **

I only used photos that I took myself, and tried not to get brand names or people’s faces in my shots. If this was for a production I would need to look at getting permission to use the photos from the bus and the police station sign. I acknowledge the piano backing from Garage Band where I edited the sound.
 * Copyright Issues/Acknowledgement of others work **

I feel very accomplished and excited that I created such a well-planned and interesting story. I was very pleased with the feedback that I received from others and the comments on the photography. The only things I am not happy with (as had been noted by others) is the ending. I feel that the story ends to abruptly and doesn’t come to a spelt out conclusion. It is obvious that Elly left him, but it would have been better to have her say that, or make a quick summary. There were parts of the interview that I was planning to use, but the quality was not there. If I had more time, or could re-do this project, I would spend more time creating the story with the interviewee before doing the interview.
 * Reflection **