My second week at Visual Aid Inc. was good, although very different from my first week. The main difference was that James and Joelle were in Las Vegas from Wednesday through Friday, so I spent those three days working with Ben and Susan instead. Their absence made the office much quieter, and possibly even more laid back than usual. However, it was still a productive environment for everyone, and James sent me emails keeping me up to date on my current duties.

In addition, after spending so much of last week logging footage from previous shoots, I spent most of this week organizing and editing footage from the shoot we did the previous Friday. Unfortunately I still cannot give details on the exact content of the footage or the client that we’re  working for, but I can say that it consisted of a variety of interviews, and at this point I feel like I’m getting to know the people we interviewed pretty well (simply by watching their interview clips over and over again).  I also got to try some editing myself, which was probably the most interesting job I’ve had so far besides the shoot last Friday. Last summer I made some promotional videos for the Friends of Tryon Creek State Park, but this was my first time working on editing actual commercials for a for-profit company. The stakes are also considerably higher with this job since Visual Aid runs primarily through one-off deals with clients, and they usually need to produce something really impressive in order to get to work with the company again. Thankfully, James, Ben and Susan are there to look over my edited footage before the company sees any of it.

Over the course of the week, I made two different rough cuts of potential commercials. It is doubtful that either of them will actually be used or posted online, because the company decided that they no longer want the first one and they would prefer some shorter versions of the second one, but it was good to be able to work on some actual projects and not have to worry about negatively affecting Visual Aid if the company doesn’t like them. Near the end of the week, I helped Ben with some ideas for the shorter promos based on my second rough cut, and they seem to be turning out well so far.

On Thursday, I had no major projects to work on, so I spent much of the day learning Adobe After Effects, a program I had never used before. After watching tutorial videos for several hours, I spent some time playing around with the software, and I now feel much more comfortable with post-production effects work, something that will help me greatly in future projects of my own even if I am not able to apply it to a project at Visual Aid.

On Friday the transcripts from the previous Friday’s shoot arrived. Visual Aid orders transcripts of unscripted interviews that they shoot in order to simplify the editing process by creating a “paper edit.” This means that they put a “script” together by condensing the transcripts of the interviews that they have already shot into an outline for the commercial that they plan to edit. This makes it much easier to see the big picture than by individually watching and logging each interview clip. They order the transcripts by exporting an audio file of each interview and sending them to a woman whose job it is to listen to each of the interviews and transcribe them exactly (this would be incredibly difficult for me, but somehow she is able to do it quickly). On Friday I began the process of matching the best quotes that James identified in the transcripts to the actual clips containing them. This should make future editing projects with this footage much easier.
Finally, I have attached two photos. The first depicts the interior of Visual Aid's office, and the second shows the entrance to the Gotham Building, where it is located.