Last week, Andrew Careaga, director of communications at Missouri S&T, shared on his blog a really great video his team had developed to be played at convocation at the request of the alum association.
Didn’t get a chance to watch the video?
Take 4 minutes to watch a really cool take on 140 years of history at Missouri S&T:
This video was the result of the hard work of Mindy Limback (who wrote the script) and Tom Shipley, Mr. Video Production at Missouri S&T. Tom was nice enough to answer a few questions about how this video was produced, so you can enjoy a behind-the-scene look and learn from the following interview.
1) What was the purpose of this video?
The purpose was to give new students a brief summary of the history and traditions of the university to help them feel a part of the Missouri S&T family from their first day. To do this we decided not to do a traditional, serious recounting of our history but produce a fast cut and hopefully contemporary look at our university’s history in the context of what was happening in the rest of the world. The video will also be played at alumni section events to show what we are doing to bring new student’s into the S&T family.
2) How long did it take to produce this video? Can you please describe the process including the time each phase took?
The process took about 6 weeks from initiation of the project to the finished product. This included many evenings and weekends as I was under a hard deadline. Being a “one man dept.†and having experimented a lot on this project it would be difficult to come up with an allotment of time for each phase.
Many hours were spent online looking at video currently being produced for the age group… roughly 17 to 18 year old engineering students. There was also a lot of time spent looking for royalty free resources such as fonts, frames, grunge marks, paint splatters, backgrounds and other graphic elements for use in the project. I selected many more “parts†and images than I needed knowing that once I got into compositing some would work and some wouldn’t. In the process I also looked at a lot of tutorials and other materials for the various effects plug-ins I use with my compositing software, finding several that had elements I could modify to match what I was seeing in my minds eye. Not surprisingly some of them triggered new ideas for the final look.
I began with the the narrative and a rough storyboard describing the images I would use for each sentence. I did this in Excel. I then started with the audio track. I use voice talent from ProComm as they have a broad range of voice styles to chose from, are reasonably priced, and delivery is fast. After an afternoon of online auditioning of voices I booked a session, emailed the script, and directed it via speaker phone. Shortly after finishing the session I was able to download the completed narration and imported it into Final Cut Pro. At that point I cut the narration into short bites and loaded these into discreet bins along with the images I had selected for the bites. This is a great way to organize a project, especially if much of it will go to compositing, and it helps establish the flow of a piece from the very start.
At that point I began auditioning music tracks and added anything I thought would work to a Final Cut music bin. All of my production music resides in iTunes which helps speed up the auditioning process. I import music into iTunes as .aif files for fidelity. After selecting several cuts I listened to them with the narration. It usually required several tries and occasionally going back to iTunes to get music beds that I felt worked with the narration. While the music bed often comes as an afterthought to many producers, I feel that the influence music has on the emotions is so strong that I always lay it down with the narration and edit to it. I believe this further enhances the flow and sets a mood as I edit, adding an additional emotional component to the process from the beginning. In education we seldom have the luxury of having music scored to our edit so we must edit to the music to keep our work from having a cold “industrial†feel.
Once the rough audio track was laid down I began bringing in the respective images. While some of the images used in this project were video clips and needed no manipulation, the majority of the images were stills and would end up being composited in Adobe After Effects. I brought these stills down to the program line as place holders. This, once again, helped establish the flow and aided in determining if the image really did work with the narration. This also addressed any issues regarding the length of time an image would be on screen. It also exposed any “holes†that existed. Because these were to be composited I usually brought down only the primary image at the beginning. Using this method also makes it easy to move parts of the narration forward or backward in time to match the music or interact with a shot, greatly enhancing the feel of the piece.
At this point the project was comprised of narration, music, video, and placeholder stills. I then began to import the still images to be composited into After Effects. Because the project had been broken into workable segments and placed in bins it was easy to use Final Cut’s “reveal in finder†function to find and import the images, even if I had misplaced them. I also brought into After Effects the rough mixed audio which I had laid off as a mono work track for the purpose of timing. After the composites were complete and rendered I imported them back into Final Cut, placing them in a “render bin.†Then I brought them down to the timeline for final trimming and editing. At times it was necessary to go back into After Effects to make adjustments or create a better transition. There were also a couple of composites that were totally re-done once I saw them in the context of the finished edit.
Once the edit was completed I used Apple’s Soundtrack Pro to add some sound effects. Whooshes, thuds, crashes and anything else that was appropriate. In this video I even used gunfire, a police siren, and a telephone busy signal to add touches of humor to shots that needed to be bumped up a bit.
3) What tools/software did you use?
The tools I used were pretty standard fare. While I am fortunate to have a fairly powerful production package, any Macintosh capable of handling the above software will be sufficient for a project of this type. It just means render times will take a little longer.
Editing hardware:
- A dual Quad Core 3 GHz Intel Mac with 2 Apple Cinema Display monitors and 32 gigs of memory
- A Kona 3 card for preview to a broadcast monitor
- An XServe Raid for storage
Editing software: Final Cut Pro 6
Image creation and manipulation: Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
Compositing: Adobe After Effects CS4 with the following plug-ins.
- Trapcode Particular
- Knoll Light Factory 2
Audio: Apple iTunes and Soundtrack Pro
High Definition video was shot with a Sony XDCAM HD and Sony XDCAM EX1
The project was produced in HD 1080p. DVD Studio Pro was used to make the standard definition DVD for distribution. Producing in HD 1080 assured that the project would not soon be orphaned by the public’s move to high definition video.
4) What advice can you give to people planning to work on this kind of projects?
In today’s video production environment, especially in education, all aspects of a project often fall to a single person. In my case I am a one person department. I shoot, edit, do graphics, composite, do sound design, and author the DVDs. I am fortunate to have good writers in our public relations department to provide me with scripts but it falls on me to make them come alive. Given that, I find that my projects are more successful if I allow them to take on a life of their own. In fact I feel a project that doesn’t take on its own life ends up being lifeless.
Once started the video may tell you that you need to take an element in a totally different direction than originally planned. Following that path rather than sticking with the approved plan or storyboard inevitably results in a much more effective product. In an educational environment this can often lead to some gnashing of teeth but in the end it is worth it, because the product is better. A producer should have a good grasp on what does and doesn’t work and how a video can be made better but often the case must be made for making changes. Sometimes it even requires cutting a section both ways to demonstrate a point. This can be time consuming but after a few successes clients generally begin relying on the producer’s advice.
It is also important to continually experiment. I try to spend 1/2 hour every day looking at new video and techniques. I read the online trade publications, go to online peer group forums and blogs, search for new sources of royalty free design elements, and generally try to keep a clear vision of what the successful people in production are doing. While much of it involves production values that are way above what can be done in an educational environment, it spawns ideas and results in productions that don’t look like yesterday’s video. Not constantly investigating and experimenting with contemporary styles, looks, and feels is a guaranteed pathway to the obsolete. Today more than ever.
If you want to check out another behind-the-scene look at video production in higher education, Mike Richwalsky — who will present a webinar on how to create better online videos on September 15, 2009 as part of the Online Videos 360 webinar series — has just posted another one on his blog about a video of his produced in just 3 weeks and targeted to the class of freshmen.