AV Short

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The A/V short project was my first experience making a digital story. I knew that I wanted to do something fun and entertaining that also highlighted real experiences of people my age. I first approached my friend and roommate, Jamie, about the idea of doing stereotypes of Bozeman’s nightlife—as we have often laughed and pointed this out. The entirety of the project came from a series of back-and-forth’s, discussing possible wardrobe and places we wanted to film. The process behind the final product was collaborative and constantly in flux with what seemed possible. My writing process was turned completely upside down in the best possible way. I took advice and was relaxed about getting ‘the shot.’ During my writing process of alphabetic text I’m usually a nervous wreck, pushing way too close to deadlines. Here, I took more time because it was unfamiliar territory. After compiling digital text for the introduction video I had an idea of how long the editing would take. Even with the extra hours I still managed to run out of time. Looking back now, I realize that I have the same problem across mediums. I try to do too much in a short amount of time. This resulted in over one hour of footage that got cut down to seventeen minutes, then to ten, and then five. My frustration within the creative process is not a new one, but not knowing how to fix my own problems with a text, or at least not knowing what questions to even ask was. I swear I’ve never Googled so many “how to” questions in my life. Video editing is so fascinating to me because I can discuss it rhetorically and analyze its functions, etc. However, when it comes to actually creating a product that displays my knowledge of digital critique I was lost. Over the week I’d talk to my friends about the project, each putting in their thoughts. My goal then wasn’t to make anything—it was just to get as much material to work with as I could, then go from there. From my deep knowledge of movie watching I knew a couple perspectives to use and try out, but setting up entire scenes was something I hadn’t even considered until we were standing outside the Molly Brown last Thursday night.

Filming in public was its entire own thing—you never think about the people in the parking lot staring at you yelling what you’re doing only to ruin the shot. These moments would have provided a solid amount of content for a blooper reel. The reality though was talking to a lot of bouncers, letting them in on the project so they would let me in with my camera. Everyone was very nice and even asked to be in the video (Molly Brown). Because of the public nature of the topic I needed to chose bars that I wouldn’t make a scene in. This eliminated most fancier places, including the Copper, which is why we never actually go into the restaurant area. The stares and constant explanations would definitely be something I consider if I was going to do something like this again. 

After hours of editing I realized that I didn’t need that much footage but I needed the right footage. This has to come with experience, I suppose, because the majority of the one-hour footage was repetition and unneeded dialogue that I didn’t end up using. Now that I sort of have an idea of how to narrow a topic in this mode, I would probably plan the logistics better so I didn’t need to spend hours just cutting unneeded footage. Honestly, I don’t know if this is right either because some of my favorite moments from the video were unplanned accidents that I happened to capture because I was rolling nonstop with fear of missing something. How do you command a good take? How do you know what perspective of the camera will hold rhetorical meaning when the text is combined with others? I’m sure these questions have any intro level film students rolling their eyes but this project was an absolute stumble your way through it until you get something you like. I am happy to say that I’m really proud of the way the video turned out. After making some heartbreaking cuts to my first edited seventeen minute video I was too attached to some things to let them go. (Please see the ending outtake/blooper jumble). The outtakes held zero purpose towards the topic as a whole, but they meant a lot to me so I kept it. Somewhere during this process, probably in the a.m. I stopped making a product for an assignment—instead I just wanted to pull off a slick video that I could be happy with.

   

YouTube didn't like that I used sounds that were copyrighted, so I avoided them. Take that, YouTube.