Final Video Abstract
My goal for this video was mainly to tell a story--two swimmers each training individually, and then the big race between them. The video was also a way for me to explore what I could do with underwater shots--I wanted to experiment with the unique symmetry that the lane lines, walls, black tiles, and surface all create beneath the water. After three hours of shooting both underwater and above-water shots (split between two days) I had enough footage to put together a story. To give the race a dramatic feel I then found a song that I thought would work and set the footage to the music. Color corrections in FinalCut Pro was the longest and most tedious part about editing the video, but in the end I think it was worth it--I managed to somewhat synchronize the above-water and underwater color tones, as well as bring out the yellows and blues in the flags and lane lines. The following post details the process of creating this video.
Storyboard
Below are the two storyboards I planned out before shooing the video footage. The first thing I did was sketch a bunch of pool landscapes. What I wanted to do was establish the setting with a myriad of shots of the pool from different angles--looking out from the bottom, an aerial shot, looking up at the surface, etc. Then to establish the two different swimmers, I sketched out a close-up of each of them facing the opposite way. My hope in doing this was to let the viewer know that there were two different swimmers in the video. The rest of the sketches are of the back dive and of the race, and the end is also where I had the idea of quickly alternating shots between the two hands as they touched the wall.
Production Log
Week of March 25: Write storyboard. Get waterproof housing for camera.
Week of April 1: Corrected final storyboard. Filmed some preliminary shots--swimmers racing above water. Filmed wide aerial view of entire pool. Later in the week I filmed most of the underwater footage: the underwater dive, the flipturn, the underwater finish of Swimmer 1, the jump into the pool of Swimmer 2. Also filmed the underwater scenery shots for the beginning of the video, as well as Swimmer 1 falling backwards into the pool.
Week of April 8: Edited the footage I had so far into a pre-production video and figured out what I still needed. I also color-corrected some of the footage I had already. Then I finished the filming--I filmed the aerial shots of the swimmers, the above-water views of the dive into the pool, the close-ups of the swimmers' faces, and Swimmer 2's underwater finish. I also chose the song for the video.
Week of April 15: Made the rough edit of the video, but still needed to coordinate the colors. I used the proc-amp in FinalCut Pro to make the water look less green in the above-water shots, as well as synchronize the lighting in the various shots. For the underwater and above water footage I used the color correction to bring out the blacks to fix the color of the water, as well as bring out the blues and yellows in the lane lines and flags of the pool.
Week of April 22: Some final color editing, mostly with the lighting and water color, as well as fine-tuning the music coordination.
Pre-Production Video
Here's the link to the pre-production video, which was put together with the music and color-corrected for the water and lighting. The black screen with text is what I did to replace the footage that I still hadn't shot by this time.
Final Video
Here's the link to the final video, which has all of the footage, color corrections and music, as well as the credits.
Self-Evaluation
I'm happy with the way the video turned out. The music may be quite over-the-top, but it makes the footage dramatic and interesting. My friends and I also had a lot of fun shooting the footage, and it was a great feeling seeing the video come together. The hardest part for me was learning how to use the color-correct tools in FinalCut Pro. It took me a few hours just to find the proc-amp, never min figuring out how to use it. But once I got a hang of it, I saw clearly why it was worth the trouble. The lighting in the video came out looking much better than originally, and when I showed the final version of the video to my friends they said that the lighting in the video looked better than it does normally in the pool.
I learned a lot while making this video--not only about FinalCut, but also about techniques for shooting video, how lighting is so important, the different types of shots and angles, and of course, all the problems that you could run into while shooting video. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm very interested in continuing to shoot and edit video.
