AD5800 - Assembling my 3 minute video

Last Friday I have finally finished to shoot for both my projects and now it is time to crack on with the post-production. I had to change my plans for the second video, originally I wanted to do it about Shane, the blacksmith, but I completely overlooked the ambient noise that there is in a forge and the quality of the audio is not usable for that kind of video. Initially I considered to come back and do a formal interview in a quiete space and than using that and the B-roll I shot before to assemble my video. Unfortunately, Shane is based in an area that is reachable only by car and in order to come back I should have found someone to bring me back there again so I carefully considered if it would have worth it.

Everytime I met a new craftman I wished he would have spoken like Norah, the willow weaver, who is a natural story teller so I suddenly realised that SHE was the one I have always wanted to to the short documentary about.

I had a lot of footage about her, plenty of B-roll and very good and crisp audio. When I was shooting I wasn't thinking that I would have used those clips for my 3 minute video so I was not sure it would have worked.

I do not have any formal interview set up, she is never directly looking at the camera so it is very challenging to assemble it since I can't just rely on the subject speaking facing the camera and include B-roll when appropriate.

I have watched more and more videos online and I have found this guy, Joshua Davies, who makes video in a very similar style I would like mine to be.

Here some examples:

This one does not include an interview set up, so it perfectly represent my situation:

All his videos have a very consisted style and they follow a sort of pattern:

- Ambient noise

- Environment/detail

- Title

- Music

- Subject(s) speaking

- Lot of B-roll, often slow down

- Music gets faster, clips change quickly and no background noise

- Music get slower, clips change slowly

- End

This is the same sort of sequence I want, so I have wrote down the scripts with the quotes I want to include in the right order and I started to organise my B-roll, cutting the most interesting parts with Adobe Premier.

Story board:

This is where I am at the moment:

I was very worried about the fact that I never have Norah looking directly at me, but the video seems working and I am very happy with the audio and the B-roll. I am considering to include music ad some point and I have found some suitable one on Epidemic Sound, so I will try to combine my B-roll with it.

This is another video, from National Geographic that really suits my "wished results" :

I really like how it is used the background music here, it just adds a little bit of "drama" without being distractive.