by Randy Dodd
A couple months ago, I was perusing the Carrboro ArtsCenter winter/spring course offerings. One caught my eye, “Make a Documentary in Seven Weeks”. It promised to teach me “Final Cut Pro X”, and also offered access to computers, video making stuff, and knowledgeable people for a year as part of the tuition. “Sign me up”, I said.
I pondered the many possibilities for the documentary I might make, and decided it needed to be about Harts Mill. Beyond that, it was a big mystery. So I took a rather meandering path over the course of January and February into both the world of the content for the video and the very technical world of video making.
The first roadblock was when I got all the necessary steps aligned to have sit down studio interviews with Paul, Hope, and Joe, did those, and then experienced the technology glitch of the itty bitty card holding those interviews getting mysteriously “corrupted”. Whomever came up with that term could have done better. But I digress…..
Soooo, I came up with Plan B, which involved using the little narration I had cobbled together (thank you Hope for being the narrator) and then, somewhat Ken Burns style, attempting to hang some photos and perhaps video on the storyline. I ran with that, and the Universe in its ongoing karmic balancing act matched the bad luck with the interviews with the extreme good fortune of Paul getting his friend Barry to join him on the land with his drone. Low and behold this time the technology and Cloud worked splendidly and I shifted into the mode of cobbling all sorts of additional photos, graphics, and bird calls together and learning how to use Final Cut Pro and its own little language and world view of “libraries, assets, compression, and rendering”. Jason (teacher) and Carter and Carson (Peoples Channel staff) were most helpful in holding my hand as I bumbled along.
The “good enough for now, safe enough to try” version of the video can be found by clicking here.
Respectfully submitted by Randy
