Given all the issues highlighted in the previous post, we decided to make a second draft of the video. We were supposed to add subtitles, change the voiceover, and add an additional talking head - Myiesha, posing as a fan of the duo Rameen and Sameen.
First Change: Subtitles
The subtitles had to be readable and coherent with the video, so choosing the size, font, and colour was extremely important. I opted for a Serif font (Times New Roman) because it felt more professional and cinematic on the screen, and a white font colour with a black border to ensure it remains easy to read.
I had to replay the video multiple times and synch the subtitles to the voiceover in the timeline:
As to not be a complete tyrant, I asked the team for their approval, and they liked it.
This was me attempting to translate the urdu words in our voiceover because Tashfa, our resident writer was occupied:
This is how the subtitles ended up looking on a frame:
Second Change: The New Shot
Here is the first shot we took that planned to use. Maroosh took this shot of Myiesha in school, and it was a clear and very stable shot, however I realized some issues with it: 1, The audio was quite muffled, considering this was shot at school, and there was a lot of background noise which was hard to remove.
2, It was quite evident that Myiesha was sitting on the floor, which didn't put the best impression, given that we were trying to portray an interview.
This is the second shot option we had is one that Myiesha recorded herself. Needless to say, this was definitely on par with what we were looking for. The slight grain also added to the found-footage effect we were trying to portray.
Editing The Shot
The shot the Myiesha sent me was in the portrait orientation, so the first step was to fix that in Filmora and then edit it further.
The second step was to colour correct the video to black and white, and adding a vintage viewfinder effect from Filmora to give a camera viewfinder impression. Additionally, I added a title that read the fans name and title on top of the shot following typical faux-documentary conventions which said "Himawari Mika" and "Fan".
The colour correction:
The final outlook:
Note: I misspelled Himawari Mika approximately 100 times.
Third Change: The Voiceover
To ensure that an interview scene at the start didn't feel out of place, we added a line to the voiceover at the start, which was "so, how did you feel?". This gave the viewers context, and the set a dramatic tone. I decided to have the voiceover on a black screen which would be able to hook the audience 5 seconds into the film opening, which is one of our essential targets.
We started scouting people to do the voiceover. I convinced one of my friends Moosa who was into dramatics to do it. We decided that this was quite rushed, and didn't match the tone we were looking for. This is his take:
This was a voiceover that we got through Maroosh, who knew a professional anchor. Although we initially wanted to have a male voiceover to ensure fair representation, we realized that we liked this much more than both our other option. This was however, slightly long, therefore I had to review the script and trim one line out of the audio.
There were more alternatives for the voiceover, as highlighted in the Audio Conundrums post, but these two were my top picks.
The Second Draft
Here is the second draft of our film opening:
Although this was definitely a more polished version, we ended up revising this further. Check out the next post to see the changes we made.
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