Hello -

This is actually my second attempt at doing something resembling a documentary. It's a project that I was asked to do for a church so that it can showcase one of it's main ministries: Gideon's Garden. This 6 minute mini-documentary will be placed on the church's web-site.

To be clear, I am not a professional videographer. Actually, I'm a full-time ICU/CCU nurse. Anything having to do with video and/or audio-for-video is self taught after watching works from from people like you, reading your commentaries and practicing. The camera used to "shoot" the video was Panasonic's AG-HPX170 (which I purchased used from eBay). The video editing program used was Adobe's Premiere CC and the audio editing program used to "score" music to the video was Apple's Logic Pro (version 9). I would be happy to accept any constructive criticism on the video so that I may continue to learn. It's why I decided to post this video here.

I believe that the subject matter, itself, is pretty cool! This church is a "church without walls" which enables it to put most of its energy in maintaining ministries like the one you're about to watch. Enjoy.

Gideon's Garden a Ministry Project of Grace Church on Vimeo

Hi Ed

I think you have captured the spirit of this ministry very well. I found the interview shots to be the most in need of a lift. The eye line of the people in the frame was about centre of frame. This left a lot of the frame vacant. It felt like the interviewees were being overwhelmed by the frame. The only other thing that was a bit of a concern for me was the use of vertical format images in the Ken Burns movements. Leaving the black around the edges felt a bit funny, maybe a sympathetic colour instead?

Overall, this will get your message across to website visitors in an informative and pleasant manner.

Tim -

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Your comments are well noted and will be remembered for future projects!!

The photos for the Ken Burns effect were given to me to use. (The person who took them really did a nice job, especially with the depth of field shots!) I wish that they were all taken horizontally. I chose black as the background color simply because I'm not savoy enough to consider other colors. (My lack of experience and proper education in videography is now showing!) With regards to properly framing people being interviewed, it's obvious that I need more research and learning on this. You're pointing me in the right direction, Tim, and I'm grateful for that.

Ted

Ed - your video was very interesting. I was just talking with someone just a couple days ago who is a clinical psychologist by education but does social work. She wants to help the less fortunate and believes in work and not necessarily handouts. Her family lives on several acres and they have a barn so I will pass this along to her as an idea.

As for suggestions, with the hand-held "shots" (do you deal with people with gunshot wounds?), Final Cut Pro X has a "Stabilization" mode that can take the shake out of them. Lately I've been using a monopod and it is't rock solid so the clips have been run through the stabilization mode with great results.

Gotta run but that was a nice video. It says a lot.