Deployed Soldier needs Documentary help (Post Prod)

C

Christopher Feder

Member
I am finishing a deployment film from Afghanistan and need some more help.
I am in the Post phase of the film and the project is starting to come together as I connect the interviews and video and such. When and how many times should I put a (Name and Rank) title under the person as the introduction? Is that something I need to only do once or should it be done more then once. This will be one long film and I have picked the best eight people I interviewed to tell the story the best.

I am editing the interviews in such a way that as one story is told, we cut and transistion from one to another telling the story, kinda like the Military Channel does when that are conducting a "re-anactment" of something.

I am using background music to make it a bit more interesting and to cover up some of the hissing in the audio. Should I stay away from music that has words and only use instrumental?

Any suggestions, ideas?!?!?

Thanks,
Chris Feder
 
Hi Chris,

You want to identify the folks as often as you need to so the audience will know who they are. What that means is up to the content. Too often is too repetitive, not enough and the audience is lost. If you have a voice-over narrator commentary going on naming them as the story goes on, then that will help keep the repetitive titling down.

Music should further the narrative, not cover bad sound. Vocals tend to distract, especially if over spoken word, but that's often a decision that has to be made. Clearance for your music could be a problem, too. A lot will depend upon what your show will be used for. If it is a morale project for your unit, it might not matter much. It it has a market, you'll need to really concern yourself with bigger issues.

If I recall from your other posts here and at DVInfo.net, your story is about what what soldiers do while not directly doing in their deployment's mission, and the unit you're in is the focus of the project. I one piece of advice I'd hold as golden. I'd make sure that everyone in your unit is in the video some how, some way. An easy way to do this is to weave in a 'J' cut with music and a montage of photos with everyone doing their thing leading up to the music at the dining facility where the music playing - familiar, but it works.

You can be forgiven a lot if you give everyone their moment.
 
Here's my advice. Just watch the history channel. When they identify someone, they do it every time there's a new section of them in the show. They rotate the speakers so it doesn't happen too quickly, but every time someone comes back up, that ID tag is there at the bottom for about 10 seconds. Just my observations, and hopefully of use to you
 
If I were you I would stay away from music with vocals when you have someone speaking. Depending what post software you are using there may be a way to reduce a good amount of the hiss before adding music. For example in the adobe suite, the soundbooth tool can, at times, do a really nice job at reducing noise.

I agree with the others that you will have to find the balance that works in the context of your piece regarding the titles. You will probably have to identify the subject more than once, but not every time they are shown.
 
Wow, Alot of good advice.

Mike, greetings, you are correct about my film, this is a "Behind the scenes" look at one units tour with a little bit on the misisons we run. There are 3 photo montages (Slide shows) if you will and thats the bread and butter of the film to get at least everyone in there at least twice. I have A CRAP load of video and still photos (500hrs, 18,000 videos and around 20,000 photos) so I have alot to work with. Video and Photos are not the problem, putting this all together is. I am interviewing 11 people including the unit commander and going to pick the best interviews to tell the story. After watching boogie nights there is alot of music in that movie. Some of that music has the vocals while there is dialog going on so I know it can work, but I just dont know when and where. In this stage I am not too worried about clearence for music because this is still an internal project. If it goes network then I can worry about that then. Whats a "J" cut??

RandomHero, I think they tend to put the titles up alot because of the commercial breaks. maybe if the introduction has them "introducing themselves" and I also put the name card below them in the begining that should be it. Its about a 50 min film. Another idea was to only put the name card up when they are answering a question and not just telling the world who they are. What do you think?

I am using CS3 and I do not have soundbooth.

Chris
 
Christopher Feder said:
RandomHero, I think they tend to put the titles up alot because of the commercial breaks. maybe if the introduction has them "introducing themselves" and I also put the name card below them in the begining that should be it. Its about a 50 min film. Another idea was to only put the name card up when they are answering a question and not just telling the world who they are. What do you think?
Click to expand...

It's possible that is the initial reason they do so, however, after seeing 6 or 7 different people in a row, then going back to someone, with my memory and most others, it'd still be nice to see that ident again. Commercials are usually in 3-4 minute chunks... you could have way more content than that in between the first time someone speaks and the second or whatever, so I'd say it's just as relevant to this type of project. However, I suppose you can't really go wrong. Redundancy isn't really a bad thing in that arena... It's not like other things (music, etc) that can get annoying. Someone can know who that speaker is if they start it halfway through, etc. You get it. I'm being redundant :0)
 
Hi Chris,

Making music work is part of shaping the story in the edit. I think I mentioned to you in another forum that you should be using your bins to put all your media and outline your content based on ideas.

A J-Cut is a cut that has audio lead into the video. On a Premiere timeline it would look like this:

jcut.jpg


The linked audio precedes the video. Of course you have to have enough head in the audio for this to work.

At the dire risk of shameless self promotion, I make my living teaching Premiere, Photoshop, and other Adobe, Sony software, and my biggest customers are the US Army, US Air Force, the National Guard Bureau and other government agencies and universities from California to New York, as well as very large companies. You might want to see if you can squeak a tiny bit of TDY money (I'm a retired Army officer and Air Force Civilian) and bring up your materials for a few days of wickering with them at our classroom here in Montana. You might be surprised at what money is available for something like this in your unit funds.

Regardless, good luck with it.
 
Mike, Just so I have a clear understanding, a "J-Cut" does what excatly? I have some video with audio and music but all I did is adjust the audio and video db level so it sounds good with the music.

Also, If I need to make a sound louder that it will let me how do I do that? I have an interview and the person speakes very quietly. I raised the db to 6.0 and it still needs to be brought up some more, any suggestions??

Chris
 
Hi,

A J-cut is Asynchronous sound leading into synchronous sound as you can see by the graphic. If your narrative is talking about what people are doing and you see them doing it while the person is talking then we are with the person talking, it might make the film more interesting.

How clean is the sound? Is it noisy? Do you have Audition? If it is clean, bring it up another 6db, see if it distorts.
 
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