Fieldnote Fun

I’m knee-deep in fieldnotes at the moment, so I thought I’d share a fun excerpt. This comes from the second day of a video training I did with an organization. I’ve made some minor edits for clarity and anonymity.

Last time I said they should think about some things they would like to learn in editing and tell me today. Some things from the first day were how to show multiple videos on top of each other at the same time (ex. by lowering the top layer’s opacity), or how do you show multiple videos separate from each other at the same time like they do in 24. Today, Mike asked how to add photo sound effects like I had in my video about Kibera. Then, the questions started getting a bit more bizarre. Tony, in particular, had a bunch of questions based on stuff he had seen in music videos. One thing he asked was about a music video where it made toy cars look like real cars, and he wanted to know how to do that in editing. Then he said he saw a music video where there were beams of light that went in front of the video. Then he asked how editors make someone look like a zombie. Then he asked if there was a way to make it look like the ring he was wearing had a glare on it so that it was shining in the screen. Someone else then asked if it was possible to cut someone out of a video like you would do in Photoshop. Later in the training, I was showing how you can speed up footage by taking a video of someone running and changing the speed. Someone then asked if I could make this person fly. No, no I cannot.