Video Project essay

I enjoyed how the creative process in this project worked. Eric and I went into this project with ideas on how we wanted this video to turn out. We each had visions in our head of what the video would look like. When we went to film, we got a good amount of footage and (at least I) realized that the final product would not be a carbon copy of the original image.
My first idea was to follow the day of a Division-I athlete: from earlier morning workouts, through class, the practice, then late night studying, and everything in between. When I talked to my friend, Vince, got permission to film him, and found out what I could film the idea began to change.
When we shot the footage, we got something’s that I was expecting going into the shooting, such as an interview with Vince and footage of wrestling, but we also got things we didn’t expect, such as an interview with Coach Johnson, and didn’t get things we did expect, such as hard core conditioning.
We both began thinking of how we wanted to edit and mix the footage to get it as close to the new ideas that came into our heads. This technical part of the project is the part I personally found most difficult. I am not a very computer-savvy person and I am even more uncomfortable with Mac’s but we were able to create a good project. This was also the part were we had to take all the raw footage that we had and mix it together to create the idea we were going for. It was a very long process to take the clips and make sure they transitioned right and were didn’t cut off.
I found it interesting how my idea changed from walking through the day of a D-1 athlete to the documentary style final product. With the exception of the basis of the project, the project definitely had significant changes through the basic conception, shooting, and editing. Some ideas that were a major part of the final product did not come about until after the shooting happened. For example, I had no idea how I wanted to end the film until we saw the clips of Vince when he said he wouldn’t not wrestle, him jogging on the mats with a determined look, and Coach Johnson’s clip of saying that through hard work good things will come.
Overall, the most interesting part of this product was the changing ideas through the different steps in the creative process. From my original idea of how this would turn out with my basic conception of the project, through the shooting and what footage I wanted to get, to the editing and forming of the final product, the ideas of how the project will turn out changed significantly between and during each step.