For our video essay, I chose to watch Passengers, specifically the turning point in the movie when the big plot’s secret point is revealed.
I love telling the world about my unreasonable opinions so I was very excited to start this project. Though unfortunately for you all, I toned down my nonsense a little to cut down the video time.
My process for this video was pretty simple and shockingly wasn’t too stressful since I had video editing experience before this. The only part that added extra stress was adding a recap to the video. It was only a minute long but took a little bit longer because of the cuts I wanted to be synched to the audio.
I first searched for footage on YouTube since I couldn’t rip it from a DVD. I used the 4K Video Downloader that was recommended we use. I then wrote my script while rewatching the scene so that I wouldn’t have a harder time synching it later. In the theme of AI, I decided to use a text-to-speech reader from last week TTSMaker for two reasons. I was a little ill this week and unlike humans, software delivers the same lines the same way every time. I then found some nice background music on Freesound so that the video wasn’t stagnant in the pauses. After all those steps it was pretty easy to just import them all into iMovie and edit for a bit until the I got final product you see now.
I enjoyed making this video essay a lot and I would definitely do it again. I didn’t realize how much I like critiquing media that I find interesting. And I felt a lot better about doing it after doing the reading from this week. I might have spent a little too much time on the videos because I love film analysis or really just any type of analysis. Hopefully, next week isn’t a trainwreck but I guess we’ll see.
The videos and sound I used are here: PASSENGERS – Official Trailer (HD), Passengers (2016) – Did You Wake Me Up? Scene (5/10) | Movieclips, and Passengers: Did You Wake Me Up? (Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt Scene).
The bar and bartender look like they’re straight out of The Shining. I’m not sure what to make of that, not having seen this film, but it is interesting.
The fact that you enjoyed doing the analysis comes through, even with the computer voice.
Yes it is! There isn’t a lot about it online but the bar and a few other parts seem to be referencing The Shining. Here’s an article that touches on that
And I’m glad the text-to-speech didn’t completely ruin the video I really did enjoy making it.
I wonder how many of us were coming down with something while making the video essay. I did like two takes (for mine) and basically lost my voice. You did great editing the clips together.