Montage Reflection
During February vacation I traveled to Florida with my friend, Jessica Turcotte, and my family. I have been inspired to create video content by YouTubers like Eva Gutowski, Modern Health Monk, and Matt D’Avella. I have always found travel vlogs and montages to be entertaining and a great way to capture precious moments.
Since this was my first travel video, I did some research before I began filming. I used my iPhone because I wanted to be as mobile as possible when we were on the go. I found out that I needed to keep my phone in landscape while taking videos to avoid the sides being cut off in editing. I am so glad I found out about this because I know I would have been upset had I ended up with black siding on my videos. I originally planned to make a vlog, where I talked to the camera. However, I found that vlogging made me feel uncomfortable in public because I was randomly talking to a camera. Simply taking videos of things I saw worked out much better for me. Since I was the filmmaker, there was a lot of footage of Jessica and the other people around me. However, Jessica did end up taking some videos of me so I could incorporate my experiences as well. I found my iPhone to work very well for filming, especially since I did not have much extra space to carry a camera. After making this video, I would definitely use an iPhone to film in the future.
After gathering all my footage in Florida, I came back to school and uploaded it to the Mac and used Final Cut as my editing program. I have used Final Cut for past art projects and it was a great fit for what I was trying to accomplish. I kept a storyline for my video while using minimal words. I only included the names of the cities we visited because I wanted to leave some of the imagery open to the interpretation of the viewer. I started with a scene in Portland, Maine, where we started our travel journey and set Jessica as the main character. I included some clips of my mom to show that I was also traveling with her. Later I added the characters of my aunt and grandmother, then finally myself. Later on, I added Tyler and Cody, some friends we met up with in Florida, to add a variety of characters. My favorite part of the video was the drum circle where we met some little girls from New York, Julia, and Bralynn. There was so much energy at the drum circle, and the film definitely captured that moment perfectly.
I had no problems uploading the footage, and I spent about two weeks editing. I came into class during my study halls and used class time to work on this project. Lastly, I uploaded the video to my YouTube channel and posted it to my blog on WordPress. I plan to burn the video to CDs to give away as gifts to the people who were on the trip. I can honestly say this has been one of the most fun projects I have worked on, and I plan to make more travel montages in the future.
Mystic Arts and Music 