60 Second Documentary Brief

Brief

A 60 Second video/moving image documentary on your chosen topic.

Format: mobile media friendly (tall/portrait)

Work independently.

Make it about something meaningful and relevant. 

Focus on contemporary culture.

The audience: everyone.

Consider that it's for social media.

Ideas

- Cooking tutorial (Lazy Cake, Cold Soup)
- Make-up tutorial (Winged eyeliner, eyeshadow)
- Home Décor/DIY
- DIY Christmas decorations
- Drawing/ Art tutorial (using tinsel, paper)
- Information about constellations/ stars (astronomy)
- Different myths/legends
- Lithuanian language tutorial (basic words)
- House cleaning (best products, easy techniques)
- Origami/ paper folding (flowers, roses, swan)
- Lithuanian alphabet (funky letters, their usage)

Main Ideas Feedback 

Idea 1: How to make 'Lazy Cake/Bake'
- Think about how you would film it. Stop motion? faster speed?
- Think of the angle - birds eye view, from the side?
- Include price of products, show how easy, cheap and fast it is to make.
- Maybe try and make it in 60 seconds.
- Speed video up/time lapse?
- Keep in mind Graphic Design, and don't make it just about the cooking.

Idea 2: Basic Lithuanian language Tutorial
- Do the main words like 'hello', 'bye' and etc.
- Keep in mind the non-audio element of the video, maybe have written pronunciations.
- I like this idea better than the cooking one, it is more interesting and 'Graphic-like'.
- This is better because it's more personal to you, which makes it more interesting. You're the only one who can do this with Lithuanian.

Chosen Idea: Basic Lithuanian language Tutorial.

Preparations

Word translations:

Hello - Labas

Bye - Ate

Good Morning - Labas Rytas

Goodbye - Viso Gero

Yes - Taip

No - Ne

Please - Prasau 

Thanks - Aciu

Sorry - Atsiprasau

See you - Iki

Pronunciations:

Labas (Lah-bahs)

Labas Rytas (lah-bahs) (ree-tahs)

Viso Gero (vee-saw) (ghea-raw)

Ate (ah-teah)

Aciu - (ah-choo)

Prasau (prah-show)

Atsiprasau (Ah-tsi-prah-show)

Taip (Thai-P)

Ne (Na)

Iki (Ee-ki)

Pronunciation Feedback:

Realising that my pronunciations may need some adjusting, I spoke to my peers and tested them out with them. Some of the pronunciations she said well, whilst others were slightly off. 

Using their help and feedback, I changed some of the pronunciations so that they were easier to understand and say. My peers' perspective was very useful to me because they were able to look at the pronunciations from an solely English language perspective, whereas my knowledge of Lithuanian seemed to misguide me beforehand. 

The adjusted pronunciations:

Labas (lah-bus)

Labas Rytas (lah-bus) (ree-tahs)

Viso Gero (vi-saw) (ga-raw)

Ate (ah-ta)

Aciu (ah-choo)

Prasau (prah-show)

Atsiprasau (ah-tsi-prah-show)

Taip (ti-eep)

Ne (neh)

Iki (ee-keh)

Design

 

I knew I wanted to use After Effects to create my video, this was because the video was going to be very typography orientated, and I knew that After Effects would be the easiest tool to use to create the video in time/in 1 week. The format for the video was set as tall/mobile. So I began a composition on After Effects in mobile screen dimensions. I worked roughly 5 minutes and soon realised that nether the tall/portrait format, nor the use of only typography is interesting enough. The white background of the first frame (above) was too boring and minimal, and I knew that if I wanted to 'teach' something, it had to be a lot more visually engaging and personal.

I knew that I wanted to make the video more personal to me, and in this way make it more engaging for the viewer. I then had the idea of creating a background, something that could represent Lithuania and be interesting to look at. To do this, I decided on creating a composition of objects that were typically associated to Lithuania, as well as objects that I personally associate to Lithuania.

I had chosen a new format for the video. Instead of tall/portrait, I decided to make it square. This was because square video and social media content is more accessible/applicable and more engaging. It is still mobile friendly, and can be used across all social platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc). The square format also gave more balance to the way the composition and typography could be applied, and therefore made the final outcome more visually balanced. If the objects were composed to a portrait format, this would have left too much white space, and the same issue would have risen as previously, where there was too much white space which made it feel boring and cold. I wanted this video to feel fun, happy and have a personal warm touch, as it was coming from a Lithuanian.

Exploring different sans typefaces.

Exploring different hand-written/fancier typefaces.

For the typography, I choose the simple sans typeface URW DIN Bold. I choose this because it is a bold and clear typeface, which has easy legibility, as well as a loud statement to it. The typeface gives the video substance, and fills the white space boldly. I colours I used for the text were yellow, green and red. This was because these 3 colours are the colours within the Lithuanian flag. These colours also complemented my object/still life composition that I created for the background, as these three colours are re-occurring in some of the objects.

I knew that if I wanted my video to be engaging, it could not be silent. However, it needed to work without sound also. Because of this, I made sure to include spelled-out pronunciations of each word. In that case, if someone was to view the video without sound, they would still be able to learn from the video in a sufficient enough way compared to if they watched it with sound. Of course, having the sound on would be most beneficial, as the viewer would then be able to hear how the words are pronounced, rather than just read the pronunciations.

I knew I wanted to include spoken pronunciations of the words, as hearing them said out loud is the easiest and most efficient way in learning their pronunciation and what they mean. Also, repetition is an effective tool when learning anything new. Because of this, I knew that I wanted to repeat each word/its pronunciation at least twice within the video. To do this, I first attempted to record myself saying the words. I attempted several times to create a recording that would be played from start to finish, and include the reading of the English parts as well. Within the recordings I read everything on the screen as the video played. However, when I imported this recording into After Effects, and shifted the content until it was all in time, I realised that my voice over did not sound professional or clear enough. (I also felt a little subconscious in the way my voice sounded, and how it did not give the viewer clear enough pronunciation for them to be able to repeat the words back correctly).

To solve this issue, I got rid of my recording, and decided to use pre-existing Lithuanian word pronunciations. I found several videos on YouTube which I felt had the best pronunciations of the Lithuanian words I wanted to teach, and sniped those videos into only the parts/words I needed. When  I applied these professional recordings/pronunciations to my video, the video gained a far more professional and accessible feel. The pronunciations from the YouTube videos were far clearer, and gave the viewer/audience more of a chance to repeat the words back correctly than my voice recordings ever could have.

The YouTube Videos from which I took snippets of the word pronunciations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C01H1Afw3uw&t=6s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I47DHigURbo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_0YG-_qWs

Finally, I decided to add some music to my video. This was simply to help create the fun, happy and warn feeling/atmosphere I aimed for my tutorial/lesson video. The music would be quieter than the word pronunciations, and play in the background. This made the pronunciations feel less like they came out of the blue, and helped the smoothness/flow of the video altogether. The soundtrack I used I got from YouTube, and picked one that was the most light, warm and had a happy undertone.

The Soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YgAdSRwIwQ

Final Outcome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sark1W0XARI

The final outcome I am really happy with. This is because in only a week, such a short period of time I was able to create a 1 minute long video. I greatly improved my After Effects skills, and now am more comfortable with the software. I think the outcome has been very visually successful, because at first I was worried about it being too boring. However, since I created my own bespoke background/composition, it made the video far more intresting and visually engaging. Also, I believe all the elements within the video really work weel and complement each other, from the background, to the typeface, and as well the voice over pronunciations and music. The overall feel/astmopsher I was going for was personal, fun, and warm, and I believe I achieved this. Technically, I believe the video could use some more work, the timings of the transitions between the different text could be slightly neater, and the trasitions themselves could have been more interesting. However, overall I believe I achieved what I was going for and am proud of the outcome.
During the showcasing of all the videos, I was surprised that when mine came on my peers/classmates actually joined in and pronounced the words in time with the video. This was  a really nice and falttering surprise as I did not expect them to engage. The feedback then said that mine was one of the most successful ones simply due to the audience interaction. I had fun creating this 60 Second Documentary, and I believe the viewers had fun watching it.