I was given 4 days notice that I needed to edit a 2-3 minute trailer to screen at the YEUF project event in Romania... Unfortunately 3 of those days I was travelling to and from Scotland for an exhibition - which meant I only had 1 day to edit this video... It is what it is.
I've been keen to make more documentary style videos, and develop my filming and editing skills, to support my creative practice. I'm starting to realise that my creative practice is all about connecting people, community building, raising awareness and facilitating dialogue and as part of this work I get to meet many inspiring people. Video is the perfect medium for capturing these exchanges and using other's insights to inform my own knowledge, understanding and resulting creative work. It's also the perfect way to document and produce a record of collaborative projects on which I have the privilege of working.
In 2020, I discovered the power of "capturing stories" through my "Brexiles" project. As it was the pandemic, I opted for written interviews for this project, from which I produced a book. However, for my Master's research focussing on migrant identities, I have decided to interview my participants using video, so as to more holisitically capture their personality, identity and expression. So, my current work on the YEUF project, for which I am producing a documentary is the perfecting opportunity to develop my editorial skills. Personally, I think the most important skill in editing interviews is the ability to pick out the impactful and attention grabbing quotes and then weave them into the overall narrative of the video. This is something I am trying to get better at.
As I have yet to finish filming interviews for the YEUF documentary (the remaining footage will be shot in Romania), this trailer is dominated by the Polish footage - which has a highly pertinent context, since the youth turn out (nearly 75%) at the recent Polish elections led to a change of government - I then tried to relate this discussion to the EU elections. The YEUF project's aim is to mobilise young voters for the EU elections, so the interviews are dominated by active young people, but there are also interviews with older people who are discussing youth empowerment.
Since the purpose of a trailer is to grab attention and engage interest, I took an approach to editing this video, which is more similar to editing a music video - lots of short, quickly alternating clips containing relevant "sound bites". I also included some more "fun" and joyful footage, to communicate the project's ethos of using creative actions to be more engaging for young people. There were some issues with the sound (probably because the equipment I have isn't very high quality) which I can't do a lot about - other than adjusting the levels to try and make it more tolerable to viewers. I realised that filming interviews outside may be unwise as strong winds interfere with the microphone. I kept the trailer to 2 mins 20, so we can share it on Twitter - and subtitled the video to make it more accessible. Next job will be to edit the full length documentary video in the coming weeks!
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