Shop with a Cop final video

Shooting is one thing. Editing is another. I had absolutely no idea where I wanted to go with the video the first time I opened iMovie to work on it. I started by pulling the usable clips and just placing them on the timeline hoping it would give me inspiration. But it didn't. When Smith came to help, it all seemed to fall into place. Practice makes perfect, I guess. Anyways, we started by getting all the sound like we wanted then we placed the pictures on top if that in order to match it up. The sound starts with the sirens, which makes since because that was the first thing that happened. We then decided to use Officer Erving's interview and then another firefighter's interview. Next we used the Christmas carol sung by the girl scout troop. Afterwards we used the sound of James talking about the toys he got that morning. We ended with another officer talking about the event in past tense so we wanted to end with that.
After we finished the sound portion of it, we rendered it out. Then we put all the photos on top of the sound file. When placing the pictures on there, I wanted to put them in chronological order so it would tell a story. I started with shots of the parade and the kids watching the cars come in. Then I went to pick out pictures of kids and cops getting paired up then them shopping. The majority of the video is them shopping. Once we got to the end I placed pictures of them checking out and talking at the doors.
Oh! I almost forgot to talk about voice over at the beginning. We wanted to do one that had a guy talking about what Shop with a Cop was and all that. At first we got Josh to do it but he just wasn't cutting it. So Rush and I had the bright idea to get Chris Keith to do it since he has a perfect voice to do the voice over. After he recorded the statement, we just plugged it into the beginning of the video. The sirens are underneath the sound of Chris but both are still clear.

While making this video,  learned a lot. First lesson, which I talked about on the last blog, is that I needed more sound. and a lot of it. Next I learned that when you get an interview from someone, you also need to make sure we get pictures of them too. Example one was when we tried to use the talking of James. We didn't have any pictures of him so I just had to use pictures of boys. However, I don't think we a problem with undershooting. Having 5 photographers plus a videographer was a good amount for a first experience photojournalism adventure. 

Shooting Shop with a Cop

I learned so much shooting video for shop with a cop. It was soooo much different than planning the shot and just shooting a portion of the video fifteen times until we get it right.. like the BIG 72 and ATPI video contests. When I was at Target I focused on the video aspect more than the sound..which was the opposite of what I should have been doing. The event started off with the parade of police cars and fire trucks into the parking lot. We needed the sirens because thats how we opened the video. After the parade, we went inside. I got video of the officers and children getting paired up, but I didn't get hardly any sound. Next I followed officer Erving around with his child, Stormy. And again, I didn't focus on the sound. I wanted to get cool video shots and be all creative and stuff, but it didn't work. The toy aisles were super crowded and there wasn't very much room to get wide shots of the two shopping. Also, there was one point were they were talking about a toy...and there was room for me to get the sound..and it was a long conversation. Where was I? halfway down the aisle shooting video. Its just really aggravating that I didn't get sound. But I learned my lesson. After following Officer Erving and Stormy around I decided to get videos of interviews. I attempted to interview stormy but she was really quiet and I couldn't hear her on the video so I decided to just interview Officer Erving. Rush then interviewed Santa, another cop, a firefighter, and a few kids while I videoed them. While waiting on Santa so we could interview him, the girl scout troop came to the front of the store and started signing Christmas carols. I was really glad I got a few of their songs because we ended up using them for the background sound in the final video. While we were all up front waiting for everyone to finish shooting, I noticed Caroline talking to this kid about the items he got. I wanted to get his reaction to the gifts with out just interviewing him like I had the others. We ended up using a portion of this as background to a few pictures. 

Overall, this assignment taught me that video isn't just about the video. Sound is extremely important. I also learned that I can't just stand far away and miraculously get the sound I need. I have to get all close and personal in order to get the conversations if I want to use them for background sound. This was a good experience because it taught me the difference between photojournalism video and creative video.