Yet Another Roadblock...

So this project, which was supposed to be completed by now, is put off until September. At my rough cut meeting with Mr. McKinley, which went fantastically, we realized we had goofed on the dates of the presentation. The Chamber's July meeting was scheduled for the 18th and we thought it was the 25th. We thought an easy fix for this would be to just reschedule the presentation for the August meeting, but my professor can't make that meeting as he will be on vacation with his family. So now it looks like I will have to wait until September to present this video. I'm still waiting to hear back from Mr. McKinley as to whether or not that will work.

Until then, I'm still making corrections based on the rough cut meeting I had with Mr. McKinley July 16th. He liked the video so far, but did make some very good suggestions about more video, different audio effects, and adding some sports that I had in the first draft. Although the date for the presentation is being moved I'm hoping to have everything complete within the next couple weeks. I want to have it all finished and "forget about it" until the actual presentation gets closer. 

Something I'm also looking into as another way to post this video is with something called a "YouTube Channel." Not really quite sure how it works or what it does, but a friend of mine, Chris Norris, is using this to promote the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, the team he's working for. I need to look more into it, but this is something Mr. Weaver had suggested and it sounds like it might be another great way to bring more attention to the New Wilmington area. 

Now comes the real challenge...

Out of all the aspects of putting together a video, I would have to say editing is my favorite and my least favorite part, all at the same time. I love putting sequences together and I could spend hours making sure everything flows well, but at the same time it can be such a tedious task it drives me crazy. This is monster I've dealt with the last couple weeks. 

It's bad enough trying to put this thing together, but having to learn a new editing system has brought a new challenge in itself. Although Final Cut isn't that much different than Adobe Premier, there are a few differences, mostly in the shortcut keys, that makes the process take a little longer. Now that I've got the basics down, I can really start to play around with all the different features Final Cut has to offer. Again, most of it is the same as Premier, but there are some differences; that's what makes this project fun. I love seeing what I can do with the film in the editing stage of the process. The most difficult thing for me to figure out was how to get the text in there; that was a good hour long process.

The thing people don't realize about projects like this, is the time it takes to edit everything down. The final product may only be 3 minutes long, but it may have taken 3 weeks to get it to that point. I have a really hard time, and always have, trying to cut stuff out. That was my least favorite part about putting together news stories. With this project, I essentially have the freedom to make it as long as I want. But I can't make it too long or people will lose interest. I heard somewhere that 2-3 minutes is the average length of a promo video, because any longer and people will lose interest, but any shorter and they won't get the point. 

I'm at a point now where I'm just tweaking some stuff and making sure everything flows. I meet with my client next week and I'm a little nervous. He's been extremely helpful in this whole process and I'm sure he will have excellent suggestions for the final product. The rough draft will be up sometime next week...