Introduction

The exercise is to create an audio-visual slideshow of my work.

Production

For this exercise I used Adobe Premier Rush which is a very lightweight consumer orientated video production package.  I found it very straightforward to use but quickly hit the limits of its functionality when it came to precision editing. 

Some of the areas that I struggled with were:

– editing the durations of each image, for which there was no global setting and no precision dialog box, one has to drag the edge of each image in the timeline to finish at the point one wants it to.

• Control of text.  Whilst there are ways to add text, they are consumer orientated, aimed at fancy graphical effects rather than precision control

• Insertion of blank frame for text, it is possible to do this but then the text one is adding is subject to Rush’s effects again.

Creative Process

Sound. I wanted to a soundtrack to evoke the feeling of a mill.  This I was pleased to find and obtained from a royalty free source.  I think the track is perfect for what I want to show and the whistle at the start captures ones attention.  With Rush’s limitations I was disappointed not to be able to fade down the sound at the end.

Sequencing.  I constructed this video after having produced the book and so stuck with the same sequence, which I think works.  

Signposting.  I am still undecided wether to signpost the different phases of the images.  In the book I have done this on facing pages to the images (Preservation, Destruction, Incorporation).  Given the limits of Rush, I was not easily able to experiment with or without and so currently the video has no signposts. 

Duration.  The duration of the image is not easily adjusted in Rush.  The application defaults this to 2.5s which is too short.  I painfully adjusted them all to be 5s which I felt was just too short, I then moved to 7s which I think is just too long.

Size. I have shot my images in a 5:4 format as I have found that I like the proportions in print form. This is not however the format of a TV screen and so when viewed there is the choice zooming in to fill the screen, or having black lines down each side. On a projector, this would not be an issue. I have decided to go with the black lines in order to avoid, in particular, cropping the tops of many of the chimneys when zoomed in.

The Video

Evaluation

I was more pleased than I thought I would be with this video.   Before carrying out this exercise I was fairly sure that my assignment would be presented in book form, which is what I used for my last final assignment.  This exercise has made me think again.  I really like the effect that the soundtrack has on viewing the images.

I did find Rush too restrictive and so if I do choose to use this approach for my assignment then I will switch to full blown Adobe Premier.   Items I will focus on is durations, soundtrack alignment to image transitions, and captioning.

Lastly, I did notice that a video seems to require a larger number of images than a display. Fifteen images displayed in a gallery is a reasonable amount. In a book, this feels a little sparse, but in a video, even with my current 7s per image which feels slightly too long, the video is only just over 2m long which sounds like a long time but I feel goes quickly when watched.