Interview Video: Student Perspective

Video link: https://vimeo.com/412929119

For my interview, I chose my roommate as the interviewee. Kim Conway is a second-semester Junior college student, 21 years old, and currently employed. The video was taken on March 29, 2020, during the day to incorporate the light fundamental of photography. I took 3 separate videos when filming because I wanted to use a variety of camera angles to portray emotion and keep the viewer interested. Some of the clips in the video are long and some short, I used the slice tool to cut the videos then rearrange the order to create the effect the angles are switching often. 

I wanted to tell the story of a normal college student and their viewpoint of Amachi. I believe the program is not brought to the attention of students specifically and it could be extremely beneficial to them. I believe it is important to bring awareness of Amachi’s missions and goals to encourage students to donate their time. This topic is personally interesting to me because it is located here, in Lexington and I know people that are apart of the program. The goal of the video was to get a deeper insight into why students do/ don’t get involved with the nonprofit organization. Kim was able to provide me with quality feedback on the discussion topics that allowed me to accomplish my goal. I believe I was able to collect rich information from Kim because she is my roommate and we filmed in our apartment. These two factors made her feel more comfortable answering and expanding on questions. 

I learned many things about video editing this time around because my goal was to combine 3 clips fluently by selecting specific scenes with the slice tool and rearranging the order to have many angle shifts. Each clip was taken from different perspectives by changing camera positioning. Prior to starting the recording, I made sure the camera was horizontal and stable. I also checked if the frame was properly focused and exposed. A combination of San Serif and Serif texts are used in black and white font depending on the background color, making sure the words are clear and easy to read. The on-screen graphics are strategically placed at the beginning of the first and last clips with a dissolve effect (Command + D) providing an intro and conclusion for the viewer. I used the hashtags, #StudentView #College #Volunteer to promote interaction with the target audience and individuals that would be interested in watching.

The audio in the background is light and relaxed at the beginning when I was asking general questions. I used the razor tool to cut off the music to change to more serious audio further into the video when discussing more serious topics. Toward the end of the video when the emotions start to shift and the conversation becomes less serious, the audio returns the beginning music. I adjusted the volume of the background music by using the audio gain tool and setting it to a negative number to ensure the conversation was clearly heard by the viewer. I also used this tool to bring up the volume of clips that are quieter by increasing the gain number to 5. 

Overall Kim was able to provide me with rich information that helps me further understand a college student’s point of view regarding the nonprofit organization, Amachi. I was able to learn more about Premiere software and video editing when creating this video by learning how to use multiple new tools. By using principles of video storytelling, I focused on the perspective and light principles of photography, audio clarity, shot sequence, and video editing techniques to achieve my overall goal of an impactful video.