I am currently busy with trying out ways to record and edit content about science-related arctic topics, focusing on coming up with content and editing ideas I then can apply.
I have made a list of suitable topics and am currently working on the first reel which is all about the size of Greenland and the related topic of map projections.
My learnings so far are quite extensive and mostly related to my workflow and my personal approach, because I realized that a lot of time has probably been lost because I was (or am still) partially unclear about which edits I want to use on which sequence and how to actually produce my visual assets. I will finish this current edit now with how I already started but am aiming to have a clearer plan set up for the next videos. That includes a much more detailed shotlist and thought-out transitions as well as having exact timing frames (as especially for social media, timing is extremely important)
In more detail – the first approach to creating my video was rather messy, as I was mostly drawing on edits/videos I had previously researched and saved, matching those visual ideas loosely to the text/explanations I developed.
I tried to create somewhat of a shotlist to accommodate each sentence/explanation but while doing so I realized that the amount of information and text might just be way too extensive for the intended purpose of the video.
Ultimately, I ended up recording a couple of sequences so I could try out some of the editing styles I found interesting and am currently in the process of editing those clips, matching them with text and hopefully generating a cohesive final result.
I am also still figuring out which kind of text/voiceover would be most suitable for my videos and I might possibly just end up with two versions – one with voicelines that rhyme and have a more rhythmic, fun approach and one with a more „natural“ voiceover / text animation, to test out how they are perceived by viewers and which has the better overall information factor.
Current (faulty) Pre-production process for Video 1
- Choosing topic – Greenland and map projections
- Researching information about map projections and the special case of Greenland in that context
- Researching video edits I would like to try out.
- Coming up with the text / voiceover (which, as we now know, is probably way too long/would require many shots)
- Creating (somewhat of) a shotlist
This would be the lyric draft I created and used to base my shots on:
For the shotlist, I used a Notion template and essentially based my shots on the respective matching text. I have to admit, however, while writing this list, as mentioned above, I felt that I didn’t have enough clarity as to how I would actually do/produce/set up each shot and how long each sequence would have to be. So, coming back from this first attempt, I aim to make this list more of a priority in order to have a much clearer plan for the recording and editing process.
