Capstone progress

Working through Capstone this past week has been quite a heavy load as I continue to produce this documentary. I have basically been searching through font types and music in order to see what works best in the final product. I continue to look through the theories brought about in Alexander Cook's The Use and Abuse of Reenactment as it focuses on critiquing how reenactments romanticize nostalgia and help us to understand a different kind of culture. I've been able to work through the footage better with an outline in hand as my director suggested it to me. I've learned how to merge several sequences into a master sequence as many tapes had been logged in separate areas. I am not a master of Final Cut Pro, but I will say that working on this has helped me in becoming better at three point editing software.

Battle of Sunken Road (Bloody Lane) Reenacted

As I have mentioned before, video editing is a very time consuming task. I've spent hours simply trying to pick out certain shots over others. The trick is finding what is relevant to the research I have in hand. I'm learning a great deal about which kind of dissolves might work over others for particular kinds of films. A consistent use of dissolves can be what makes or breaks video through edits. I have a lot of battle footage that I'll be using. Underneath the footage will be Civil War music that I've recently discovered for free. Some of the raw sound bytes that I have from the event itself will also be used as some is in fact music while other is ambient. I cannot stress how important ambient noise does for a project such as this. It's elements such as raw sound bytes that make can bring a documentary film to life.

I'm really focused on what the viewer will think as this project is intended to be for every audience.  This upcoming week is going to be very strenuous as my presentation to the faculty is coming up very soon. I really need to have some kind of copy of this completed for them by next Monday, March 4th. I'm curious to see what they will think of it as I am expected to represent the Communication Department professionally.