AIF project
Holidays
Completion of Learning Output
Holiday Planning
How I Planned The Holidays - E1, E2
For the Holidays I wanted to plan my AIF schedule in a different manner because I had a lot more free time. This is because there was no school and a lot of my extracurricular activities took a pause over the holidays. Therefore, I decided to incorporate my weekly planner more instead. However, to fit the 2 week span of the holiday I set goals I wanted to achieve by each part of the holiday to spread out my workload. I did this in hopes that I would be able to balance resting, hanging out with friends and family time with my studying so that I could enjoy my holiday whilst avoiding procrastination.
The goals I wanted to achieve - E1
In the holidays my main focus was completing my output. To complete this I decided to split my process into 3. The planning phase, a rough draft, and then final editing. As a result I decided to split my holiday roughly into 3. This was also beneficial as I was quite tired after the school term and wanted a lighter start to the holidays.
Planning Phase
Script - E2
The first thing I did was write a script on the first part of my output. This included a brief examples of some hardships I faced during the project and what I achieved over the course of the project. I then ensured that this lead into the video I wanted to create which displayed my training progress. For my script I wanted to leave it quite brief as what I was working on was the output. Therefore, I didn't want to include too much reflection or strategies etc. The main goal I wanted to achieve with my output was to display everything I taught Winnie.
Creating the Story Board for the Video - E2
The next thing I did was create a storyboard for the video. Originally I thought this would be quite simple as I had already recorded a lot of dog Training. However, this process was actually quite time consuming as I didn't know how I wanted to structure it. I also realised I wanted to have a backing track over the dog training section of the video which meant I also had to find a way to structure the video around the music. This lead me to a dead end as I wasn't sure whether I wanted to choose the music first or find the clips first. Therefore, I decided to do a little research before I decided to start the storyboard.
Research
Finding Inspiration - E3
The first thing I did was search "dog training progress montage". This was similar to what I wanted to achieve so I thought it would be good if I could find some examples. However this did not yield any valuable results as there was nothing similar to what I wanted to achieve. Therefore, I decided to search more broadly and take inspiration from montages.
How To Create A Montage | 3 Helpful Tips - Youtube Video
What I came across was a video on a few tips on how to create a montage which I found on youtube.
Key Points - E3
Montage Usage
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- Montages are helpful as it is a tool used to join videos together which connect to a common point
- Doesn't effect you based on language
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Tip 1
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- Don't cut to the music
- Prevents the montage from feeling one-dimensional
- To do this you have to find an organic way to cut to the music
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Tip 2
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- Matching elements
- Match different parts of the videos to help the video flow more
- E.g. two videos of people walking
- Also helps if videos are in chronological order
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Tip 3
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- Be selective
- Ensure that all the videos are able to work towards your common idea
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Ew7clZYDQ&ab_channel=MotionArrayTutorials
Value - E3
This video was quite helpful as it first confirmed that my idea of using a montage would fit my needs. As I had taken lots of videos of dog training over the training period it was good way to connect the videos in a short succinct way to display the progress of my learning goal.
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The first tip was the most helpful for me as I was originally stressing over what music to use as I needed something that had the beat at specific times so that it would fit all of my clips. However, now that I knew that not every clip change had to match the beat it made me more confident in choosing music for my montage. Furthermore, I think that I never would have thought about not having each clip change on the beat to increase the unpredictability and the flow of the montage.
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The second tip had important information. However, I don't think it was that necessary. For my dog training videos all of them have my dog as the focal point so it means that they are already quite linked. However, I think putting the clips in chronological order of the things she learnt would add a nice touch to the montage.
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The third tip was also not as helpful as my clips were already quite selected towards dog training. However, it was good to know this information anyways.
What Next - E1
I think after watching the video I had a slight idea of what I wanted to do. Although watching a bit more videos first could've helped develop my understanding I think that as this is the first time I have made a montage I believed it wasn't a good idea to overcomplicate anything to start with. Furthermore, I think whilst I wanted to give it a try beforehand as I had time to make mistakes instead of trying to make the first shot perfect. Therefore, I decided to move on to choosing the music and making a storyboard. For me, everyday I find myself exposed to lots of different short form videos on TikTok and youtube with a similar structure to my montage. Whilst these videos had a slightly different "vibe" to what I wanted to achieve I thought that over a few days I might find something with music that could create a similar atmosphere to what I wanted to achieve. Therefore, the first thing I did was create a storyboard.
Storyboard
Choosing my idea - E1
When deciding what I wanted the overall theme of my montage to be I decided to create a mindmap which weighed the pros and cons of each theme. I decided to use the metacognitive strategy as I had used it before and thought it fit quite well with what I wanted to do as I didn't want to limit my options at this stage.
E2
Reflection Of Strategy - E2
This strategy was very useful. I think over the course of the AIF project I have adapted quite well and now the usage of these metacognitive strategies has become quite smooth. This mindmap surprisingly took me only 3 minutes which I found very efficient. However, the usage of this mindmap gave me a good idea of what I wanted to achieve. Furthermore, it helped consolidate what I learnt in the 3 tips for montages such as predictability and flow. Overall I wanted to go with just including the final/best recorded completion of each thing I taught Winnie. However, by conducting the mindmap I also decided that it would be a good idea to incorporate some parts of the other two ideas. This was mainly the idea of showing an improvement over time. For me this was like a "lightbulb" moment as I had the perfect thing which fit both the final/best recorded completion idea and the progress idea. The videos I had in mind to use for this was a video of Winnie conducting a basic play dead and a video I had recorded of her pretending to die in succession when I continuously pretended to shoot her.
Reasoning for each part of the storyboard - E2
Whilst I didn't want to include too many examples of progress with one clip of a bad attempt and one good attempt I decided to incorporate some form of chronological order. "sit and lie down" and "shake hands" were the two first things I taught her. Therefore I wanted to put them at the first part of the video. Additionally, I thought it was a nice touch as Winnie was smaller in the video which also helps me display her physical growth too. I think it was a good idea as it would potentially help add to the flow of my montage.
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The next thing I wanted to incorporate was the play dead progression. This was pretty simple as I had already come up with the unpredictable part of this section.
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The next part was recall around the house. This was nice as this clip included my family members which allowed me to show another part of my project which was how I ensured that training was consistent amongst my family members too.
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The next thing was also recall however I decided I wanted to show a game that I played with Winnie. This was the 'Go Find" game which she enjoyed the most. The Go Find game also allowed me to incorporate progression as I could incorporate using harder hiding spots.​
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​Afterwards I decided to put in "Wait Before Eating". Although this one did not have a specifically unique thing about it, I decided that it would be a good idea if I was able to incorporate both an outdoor and indoor clip. Although this was not completely necessary.
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The next thing was fetch. I think fetch itself was quite interesting. Furthermore, for fetch there isn't really a clear progression to it that can be displayed unlike the other tricks. Therefore, I think that fetch could just be displayed as a few good examples.
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The final thing I wanted to include was a clip of recall in the park. Whilst I think this might make recall a bit too heavy in terms of screentime in the montage I felt like clips in the park were necessary as it kind of demonstrates the importance of recall training and also adds to how I've achieved the goal of making her well trained and she can now comfortably go and play in public spaces.
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Draft Phase
Drafting - E2
My process for drafting in a video is slightly different to how I would undergo an essay. What I did was first based on my storyboard paste lots of videos for each part of the storyboard (in the storyboards order) so that I knew I had everything I needed to start. This enabled me to get a rough idea of the final video. Next I did some simple cuts to find the specific clips of what I wanted to do and joined them together to find a rough idea of the length of the music I wanted to use. This was quite necessary as I did not have any experience with editing music which meant that it would be quite difficult for me to edit the music so that it fit the clips. Furthermore, it was unlikely that I could shorten/lengthen the clips in a way as I had to include the entire process of each trick otherwise I felt like it would feel rushed and some information would be left out for the viewer. Afterwards I decided to start exploring music in which I wanted.
Choosing Music - E3
After a few days I had some videos (both long and short form videos) that had a similar vibe to what I wanted to create. However, after experimenting with some music I found that music which had lyrics were not suitable for what I wanted. This is because the lyrics would clash with me speaking to Winnie which resulted in the audio being quite poor. Eventually I found a good fit to my montage.
Choosing Music - E3
The song I chose was "Forest Lullaby" by Lesfm and Olexy. I think I was quite lucky to find this song as it fit what I wanted and more. Originally I just wanted something quite calm but happy. However, this song also had quite a nostalgic feel. This actually fit quite well into something that I hear from other dog owners quite a lot where they see Winnie and start to tell me stories about their dog when they were just a puppy. I think even for me, looking back at these memories is already quite heart-warming so the nostalgic music actually fits quite well into what I feel when seeing the videos.
Drafting Process Reflection - E2
The drafting process was definitely very useful for the montage. I think by joining the clips together and creating a rough idea of what I wanted to do it made choosing the music a lot easier as I was able to test all the potential backing tracks with my clips. Furthermore, I think the choice of "Forest Lullaby" would not have happened if I hadn't been able to test it beforehand as listening to the song by itself does not really give a strong feeling that it would fit with a dog training montage.
Final Editing
Editing - E2
The two things I wanted to make sure was high quality was the video and the audio. The video was already of a good standard as I was using a camera to take the videos. This made my life a lot easier as it is quite hard to improve video quality. Audio quality on the other hand wasn't great some of the time due to things like wind and background sound. Therefore I spent the majority of my time editing the audio.
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For the audio I first experimented with cutting the audio completely. However, I found that if I completely cut the audio of some bits but included when I spoke the edits became quite blatant. This was a challenge as I was unable to cut the audio completely which meant I would likely have to include the poor background noise. However, after fiddling around a bit I was able to make the audio when I wasn't speaking slowly fade out which made the editing feel more seamless. Furthermore, I found a denoise effect in Premier Pro which I fiddled around a bit. Using these two editing strategies I was able to improve the audio quality significantly. After watching the video a few times I decided to leave a little background noise in just to make the video seem more authentic.
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Finally, I did some finishing touches such as making some of the clips change on beat and making it cut at nice seamless points.​ Furthermore, I made some clips cut at more humorous points such as Winnie licking the camera to add to the personal feel and also add something special into the montage.
Final Reflection Of Learning Output - E2
Overall I think making the output was quite a smooth process for me. This was largely due to how I had already recorded the training videos which made it very easy for me to transition into making a montage. Furthermore, these videos were all decently high quality which made it pretty easy in terms of video processing. Additionally, lots of the strategies I used such as the "key points, value and what next" and the mindmapping have become quite easy to implement for me. I think this definitely shows my progress in learning as originally these tools were quite hard and time consuming to use. Finally as I think I have learnt quite a lot managing my AIF project. This has definitely enabled me to adapt and use time management strategies which helped me avoid procrastination through the holiday period. I think conducting the AIF project through the term definitely gave me a smooth transition into the holiday period which meant I knew what I wanted to achieve and how to achieve it. Creating the output was quite fun for me and I'm quite proud of what I have achieved over the course of the AIF project.