Finally!

The last few days have been very hectic, to say the least. Despite a lot of issues cropping up along the way, we have a finished film, ready to be put up in the museum in the next few days! When we last posted, we had all our clips and audio ready to go and somehow in the last 4 days we've managed to edit them into a final product.

Astrid has been working on both the interview recordings and her own voiceover clips to ensure they were concise while still providing a coherent narrative. After having worked on this for so long, and having listened to it over and over, it was really hard to decide what more could be cut from the film, and the feedback we got from the rest of the group was very helpful. This made us able to cut some parts that did not really contribute to the narrative. Making a film that is both factual and engaging is a real balancing act, but we hope we have managed to reach a middle ground.

Until now we have to a large extent worked on different tasks, based on what we are good at. As Lizzie is the creative one, Astrid has focused on the planning side, including editing. Until yesterday we had lots of separate bits of drawings, animations and audio files, which could then finally be put together. In this editing phase we really started to see the limitations of Movie Maker, regarding how audio and video are put together. However, after some frustration, Astrid was able to make it work, and we think it turned out alright.

One of the drawings before and after colour editing 

Lizzie then finished off the drawings, adding to the colour and including some final details. She also added very simple animations using Movie Maker, for example the fire glowing. We did discover an issue with using Movie Maker to create the animations in that they aren't entirely smooth. However, they are as good as we could make them considering the time constraints and limits of Movie Maker. While the animations are subtle we believe that they, along with the ambient sound, add an immersive quality to the drawings without distracting too much from the narration.

By yesterday we had finished a rough draft of our film, although there were still several issues that needed to be worked out. We sent it off for feedback and received several constructive comments overnight. These comments included issued with the sound being too quiet in some places, and the ambient sound overwhelming the narration, and some of the transitions being too jolting. However in general the feedback was very positive!

We had our own list of small issues to work out with our video today, including adding the finished animations, ensuring the timing between the audio and the video/animation was correct, changing the title and cutting some of the unnecessary interview clips. Sorting out the timing was particularly difficult, as every time we edited a clip or added a transition everything became out of sync again. However, as mentioned, we managed to get it to work.

While it's been difficult at some points (and we're starting to get very tired of Movie Maker) we've solved most of our issues and are very proud of the film we've produced.