I recently made a post about the minidocumentary I made about our trip to Notre Dame.
Here’s what the finished project looks like, broken down into audio and video portions. The pink sections are ‘stills’ — which are still images, hence the name. I included some stills for variety and to also show what sort of environment Notre Dame was.
This is a screenshot of one of my clips — I used this as an establishing shot and to also provide context as to what Notre Dame looked like. I made sure to use a variety of video clips to make sure I documented every aspect of our trip to Notre Dame.
This is a screenshot of one of my still images — this shows the students sitting in a classroom with Dr. Archie. I made sure to place an audio clip over this so the background noise would still be present and contribute to the atmosphere of the minidocumentary.
Here is a look at some of the clips and stills in my bin after I finished my project. I made sure every clip had audio, and for some clips, I turned the audio up and my voice down so that the viewer could get an in-depth experience.
This is the overall look at my project after I was finished. As you can see, I had a lot of clips and stills to piece together. However, the thing I liked the most about the minidocumentary was the freedom to tinker with audio and video — that way, I could make a unique and intriguing video just by altering the volume or duration of some clips.
I learned a lot from this opportunity, and making a minidocumentary helped me improve my speech skills as it taught me to work towards speaking more slowly and calmly — this minidocumentary also taught me how different elements all contribute equally to the overall atmosphere of a minidocumentary, even background noise!