Production Diary

Test Interview Video

28th of March 2022: I started by doing test interviews for the documentary that is coming up soon in production as I began with recording 3 of my classmates and asking them 5 of the same questions and having them give different answers when the camera was recording. The questions that I asked was, how did you first get into football, what are your strongest memories of football, do you think football has a more positive or negative impact on people, what do you like most about football and finally how do you think the culture of football links to the subject of identity. When this was done I managed to organize the footage after scrolling through the footage that needed to be cut from the video and when I got them together, there was an issue with getting them uploaded to my Computer and after getting a few recommendations from others I decided to use google drive to upload them footage so that it wouldn't get deleted by accident.

30th of March: I then rewatched the footage to see if there was anything that needed doing again and after investigating into these clips, there were some things that needed to be redone which wouldn't really take long when looking at the things I had left to do but what was a concern was getting the footage onto adobe premiere pro and having not being able to do that was certainly an issue that needed to be resolved so getting help from one of my college lecturers was helpful as they gave me a USB to transfer the footage onto the editing software and getting most of the clips onto premiere pro was good enough for me to start the editing by having edits come up thanks to premiere's various edit clips that was available for use and getting a part of the interviews onto there was certainly a start. 

4th of March: I continued making my test interview video as I added on the next part of the video by including the question "Do you think football has a more positive or Negative impact on people." as I added in one section of the interviews I did with one of my classmates although, there had to be a reshooting on some of the questions that were asked as some were too short to be included into the video when being edited and after that I uploaded the videos onto Premiere Pro and added them into the footage that would soon be the finalized video. 

5th of March:  Today was the last day of editing the test interview video as I began this morning by working on the footage that covers the last two questions of the interviews and first I began with working on the 4th question that being "What do you like most about Football" as I used the same two interviews I did a bit ago and by adding in that clip into the editing, I focused on capturing the right moment on where the clip should start and how it will conclude and by having looking into the footage of the two interviews, I noticed one clip was a bit too long to include in a part of the video so I thought about it for a bit and figured out how I can make it shorter in a way and what I did was cut certain parts of that clip and mixed it in with the other to make it like it was going from one to another and back again. For the final question, it was like the other edits where it was one clip going after the other but this time I let one clip go on for longer so that the duration would go on for longer, while all the video was done and exported; I uploaded it to YouTube and published it in order to make it appear on my blog.

https://youtu.be/G3Q4FhRNh04

Regional Identity Documentary

7th of April

 I began with recording two A Level students in the recording studio, the lighting of the room was a normal scale and was lighted on the roof of the studio which was at the right level as the camera would be set up right in front of a chair which would be the main set up for these interviews. The Students that were being interviewed were given sometime to rehearse the questions before the footage was about to begin which was good communication to make sure the actors or interviewees knew what they were going to be asked. The 3 questions that relate to the topic of football and culture were asked and it would provide me information what the Students knowledge and facts about the sport. Each recording was around a minute and that was depending on how much the person being interviewed wanted to say.

Before the recording could begin, both of the A Level Students needed to fill out a form in order to grant their permission to be in the documentary that will eventually be made in the future and as they were fully done with their interviews, one person who is in my class who had already signed a form to be in the documentary; did their side of the interview which was handled good like the others due to having a good camera to operate with along with a tripod which could handle the camera well, the camera was a DSLR and was running on 1080p along with 24 fps which was right for filming specific interviews that were shot in a studio. When that was all completed, I made sure to go back to the computer I was operating on and was able to upload the footage that was recorded onto a USB stick that was provided by a college lecturer which was helpful because it would save me having to use disc space on the Pc. 

13th of April

On this day, I scouted around the area of where I lived to find a good possible place to begin my recording for the documentary and having an advantage to where I lived was good because there was a park area that is mostly surrounded by trees and nature was great to film and take pictures in and so with that I set up where I would be recording the footage and before this began I used my iPhone 11 to write down the lines of the clips and made sure I was using the correct words I needed to use to make sure the audience knew what they were going to be watching when the documentary progresses. 

While recording the footage, I had to do multiple takes in order to get the correct wording into the clip because if the lines weren’t 100% correct, the clip would have went for a longer duration than it had to be. Getting the footage was a task that was complete but I got pictures of the area in order to gather more evidence in where I had gone to. 

14th of April

 Today I was more focused on going outside to other places to get the footage I required, first by getting the bus down to Sunderland, I had my sights set on going to the bridge and the stadium of light where I would be doing my main footage and the clips from the bridge would just be used for background footage for when dialogue would be explained to the audience. Whilst getting the clip of the moving cars, I had slight issues with the camera and mainly getting the brightness to function well with the current film and it was a day of sunshine so getting the right brightness was going to be a challenge but when having a talk with one of my lecturers, they suggested a check of the settings and looking at a particular setting called ISO and when going through that, it didn't seem to be working but when looking through YouTube, I found a video that would help me with my problem and the solution to this was to check the shudder on the Canon DSLR and when testing that, I got very good end results as the footage was good enough to use in my Documentary.

Next was the stadium and after traveling through the bridge and getting some more footage for that, I made my way to the stadium where there were no crowds that would cause some issues but there were some cars that were coming by though only 1 or 2 which wouldn't really be an issue for what I was going to record which was a clip of me explaining something about the stadium and then talking about other facts that would give the audience some more knowledge about the football sport such as fans and stadiums. 

24th of April

Today I had my 3rd and final interview for my documentary as I had been waiting for most of the week for this and when the day finally came, I managed to get an interview with a football referee and the arrangements to have this interview had to wait because the person being interviewed had a busy schedule during the week and only had the weekend to do this interview. When the day came, I had the conservatory set from my own household as it was the place that there was little noise level and there was a good spot to hold the interview, the equipment used for this was the Tripod and DSLR Camera that college let me borrow to record footage for certain interviews and other footage that would be included in my documentary. 

The referee getting interviewed requested that he would like to read the questions before the recording began so that he would know what to say before being asked about certain things and so there would be no need for re-records to make time longer, the duration of the interview was around 2 minutes long as the answers given to me were descriptive and well said enough to be included in my documentary and after the Interview concluded, the Referee and myself discussed about how things should be edited for when the editing begins and he requested that I should look through it carefully and pick things that should be included 100% and would make the duration good for its time. 

26th of April

This day was the return to college and for this day of production, I gathered all footage that I recorded over the holidays and organised which will be in what part of the documentary first or beyond. During the final lesson of today, I organised a recording session for myself to record some lines for some background narration for specific scenes and with these, I recorded myself reading out lines from my notes app on my iPhone 11 and with multiple takes done, it managed to go decently well for myself and I will be hoping it would go well for the Documentary when during the editing. After the conclusion of that recording, I organised the footage on Premiere Pro and had a look through some to make a good intro for the documentary and with that came the issue of not enough footage so I decided that I would request that I borrow the Canon DSLR Camera again just for some footage in the outside world because with that, my intro will be more well done and improved when the editing is beginning and so that I can move onto the other parts of the documentary. 

27th of April

The editing was the focus of todays production as I had gotten some new footage today whilst on my way to college this morning but this was mainly for the intro for the Documentary as there is not many places in my home town where football is commonly seen but there are some places for good scenery that captures where my home town is located and that is Sunderland. By using the Canon DSLR, I made sure to get some good shots and while some where a bit off by how some shots tend to shake a bit, it still captures some good spots and has a good part of scenery. On the day of college, I noticed that one of the shots that I took during the Easter break was on the blurred side so I had to redo that shot but with a better setting that would have a decent start to the documentary. 

28th of April

As for Today, I focused on getting more of the editing done for my final project as with this time, it was more focused on explaining facts to the audience such as saying "football has been around since 1863" which will give the audience more information about the sport they are either just getting into or have maybe forgotten about during the times. What was also done today was recording more voiceovers for the narration parts of the documentary and with these, I used the Canon DSLR to record myself reading out these lines which was done in the recording studio in the college building which is used to do all sorts of different recordings. 

With the footage required from the camera, it was captured onto the SD card that was in the Camera and with that plugged into the pc and while looking through the footage, it was clear to see that some parts needed to be edited out during the editing as some parts of the clips had voices where it was not part of the script that I had written on my notes so those will have to be removed. The progression of the editing has been well because I have gotten to the part where my narration and footage were well put together but there still needs to be captions to where the videos I used need to be credited otherwise it will be put down for plagiarism. 

3rd of May

On this day of production, I made sure to increase work on my documentary as today I added more onto the next part and that was including such features like explaining about certain topics of football like how long it has been around for and including examples of football games such as Leeds vs Sunderland in the olden times and more modern times like England vs Germany in 2021. The inclusion of Music was also added onto the footage and mainly focusing on the starting side of the video which was rightfully done when testing it out by playing the video back and forth until it was right, the website used was on Adobe Stock and they gave me more music that was non-copywrited which was good for me as too avoid copywrited music from being used in my upcoming video. 

What was also done yesterday was re-recording of lines for narration so that the quality of the sound was good enough for me to edit and when editing the video, I noticed that one of the lines said the incorrect date, so by looking into other clips; I found one with the correct date but with a mess up on the rest so by uploading the clip to Premiere Pro, I cut out the rest of the content and fitted that in with the original line which took some doing as I needed to make sure the clip was good enough for the next part to play but in the end I managed to get it done.

5th of May

The editing was the main focus of todays production as after some work on the effects had some trouble, I decided to make them later on and continue on with the main video and by doing this, it was time to finally move onto the first part of the video where each of the 3 people that I interviewed will get to say things in their own way and by doing this, I cut out parts that weren't needed and to keep the interviews well put together, I made sure that some parts of the clips were shortened so each of the interviewees had their own time to say their answer about the question that was asked to them. 

While doing this, I asked a person in my class who was involved in one of the interviews to exchange some clips for my video to make it look more well edited and I offered that I would give credit by putting their name in that clip which they accepted and by getting the clips and pictures sent to me on OneDrive, I made sure to look through them to make sure which one would fit the best in that respected clip. When this was done, I organised the rest of clips and then continued on with editing by starting with actually giving credit to the person who sent the clips and pictures, then I rewatched the entire video so far on Premiere Pro and by looking through them, I noticed that the clips announcing the Interviews were a bit off at times so by doing some alterations with the clips, I managed to successfully make sure the announcement of the interviews were done properly.

9th of May

The main focus was finishing the first interviews for the documentary as the duration of the video was getting around to 5 minutes which was good but I needed to move onto other sections of the video so by having the last question being put in, I had a good mess around to see what clips would fit best and which would be better to jump cut to and after a few minutes of testing, I figured that I have a different order of each student that I recorded say their answer to the question I asked. When it came to placing clips together, I had to rewatch the full video time after time to fully get to the part where I wanted so that I could move onto the others and by using the razor tool on Premiere Pro, I cut out the rest of the clip that didn't need to be in that particular section of the video. I then decided to make the graphics different from each question and by doing this, I made the graphic for the last last question different as that would be better because the ones used for the other two were too long for me to write to the audience in what the question was and by doing this, it made things easier for me to edit as having different graphics in the edits would show creativity and would possibly make the audience more interested in the edits I do. 

12th of May

Today I was focused on rearranging somethings on my documentary and when doing that, I noticed that during some searches for music I found some that would suit the video better when it would eventually be fully made and what I used to get these soundtracks was Bensound as that provides a lot of decently good music to use in documentary films and can give that sense of creativity to the audience. What was also done today was recording lines for voice overs once more as I felt like an important note was to be mentioned about the football culture about how toxic it can be and I could not pass that opportunity up for inclusion for the documentary and with the help from my college lecturer, they provided me with a camera that could have a microphone equipped onto it which would help me with audio for the voice over with what was playing over the clip and when that was complete, I uploaded them to Premiere pro from the SD card that was provided to me and which has every clip that I have recorded onto it.

13th of May

On this day I made to sort out any thing that was mysteriously taken off the edit and replace it with that original clip or audio and when that was complete I moved onto working on the main edit as the goal for todays production was to get to the 8 minute mark and with that I managed to get the narration lines completed and uploaded onto Premiere Pro which was then added onto the edit after the interviews with the students was finished and after the main discussion about what had happened during each interview. When those lines were uploaded, I looked at clips online I could use and an example was said about a certain match and there was a highlight video where a part was perfectly right for the clip that was recorded and after a bit of downloading was done, I managed to use the cut tool to mark out the rest of the video and remove the parts where I didn't need them; after that was placing the video in the right place for when the narration was happening. Finally the last productive detail that I did was begin and finish the final interview for the documentary and this time, it was with a referee I had arranged a talk with for the video and how things went with that was like the other one where I used the cut tool to take out any footage that didn't need to be included and then used the graphics option to make sure that there was room for the showings for what questions that I asked the interviewee. 

17th of May

Today I focused on getting more things included onto the documentary so that the audio would have a picture or a clip from a video over it, most importantly I found music for one of my interviews and when this was added, I played around with different types of edits where the music came in and out but I managed to find one that would suit me and by playing this, I fully figured out that the one that I did was the right one for me and the type of music that I chose was a good fit as well as it was plain and casual for interviews. When experimenting, I noticed that the clips were a bit too quiet and so when I worked on it, I shortened the sound of the music to the right volume so I could hear them and so the audience could hear them. Finally, I managed to get some more pictures for the lines talking about how supportive football fans can be and by applying these pictures, I needed to make sure they made sense about what I was talking about otherwise showing them wouldn't make much sense. 

19th of May

On this day was the final day of editing the documentary until further feedback was provided as I had only two minutes of footage to use and when doing these, I used the new recordings that I did on this day and by recording these using the Canon DSLR Camera and by doing this, I along with some of my classmates recorded the footage for the final part of the documentary and when that was finished, I uploaded them to Premiere Pro. The locations of this footage was the back fields of the college as that was the best place to film the scene and the main plan was to have myself say the final lines and then proceed to walk away as the screen then fades to black, when the video would finish the end credits would then play as the effects used was the Video Transitions and the option that was chosen was the dissolve option which was a good option as it would have the name fade and then to the next one. After this conclusion to editing, I made sure to save the renders so that everything done was not blurred or removed and when that was complete, I exported the video to my one drive and then uploaded it to YouTube.