I created a brainstorm of all the interests i could think of to help narrow down the process.
I decided to select an interest of mine which I don't usually have the opportunity to express. It is for this reason that i chose 'baking' as my subject matter, and decided to demonstrate a new favourite recipe, coconut cake with a jam filling and a butter creme topping.
Before i started filming i drew out a little storyboard to show the different stages and wrote a little caption for each. I wanted the purpose of my film to be to not only illustrate something that i find really interesting, but also to show how easy home baking is. This cake takes 20-30 minutes to prep, 25 minutes to cook, and 20-30 minutes to fill and top.
Filming was a little daunting and difficult as for the first portion of film i had nobody helping me. My Fuji SLR that i was hoping to use alongside a tripod decided not to work, so i had to sellotape my iphone to the tripod instead. I took 22 videos in total, and partially edited them on my iphone before exporting (clipped off beginnings and ends with nothing in them).
I then had to transfer them to my computer which i did using the windows photo and movie capture. I had to rename all of my files so that i knew which order they were in. Once imported i came across a new problem: windows XP movie maker is incompatible with .mov files. I tried everything from COREL VideoStudio to Adobe Premier, but the latter couldn't handle ..mov files, and Premier wouldn't work on windows XP. I then tried to convert them using zamzar.com and it took forever just to convert the first one, so that idea disappeared. I then tried to upload them to youtube, with the intention to link the 20-odd videos together using interactive tools in youtube, but the uploads were slow and kept failing.
I then discovered that windows movie maker on vista supported .mov files, so i borrowed a laptop and got started. Once I'd imported all of my files the process was quite simple, and i was able to add titles and caption and transitions which i feel improved the final outcome.
I hadn't realised how difficult it was to make cooking videos interesting as not a lot is happening on screen, and i had to edit my footage down massively as there are lots of long, repetitive tasks such as mixing and cracking eggs. I realised once the video was made that i skimmed over the addition of the dessicated coconut and single cream. I don't have the footage for it, but i don't think that its too much of a problem, but if i didn't it again i would correct this. I would also try to make the commentary a bit more interesting, and have a larger variety of shot angles/distances.
There are lots of other things i could have shot that weren't demonstrations:
- Cake shops
- Documentary
- footage of people eating cakes
- A mixture of all three
My original final video was too big for the web, so i burnt it to CD for presentation and uploaded a smaller version to youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcbHviSBIug
The recipe i used (from bbcgoodfood 101 Cakes & Bakes):
