Transition Unit - Beginning The Edit

Considering My Options

These past few days I've begun to compile footage and put together a rough cut of the introduction sequence of our mini-documentary. This has also involved starting a (hopefully) long and fruitful relationship between myself and Adobe After Effects. There are a number of different animations and effects I am looking to incorporate into the piece, but one of the key aspects of this is the lower thirds.

This was the minimalistic design I came up with for our lower thirds, it consists of two main areas. The individual's name and their role/occupation within society, in relation to the documentary. I also incorporated some basic animation for the 'in' and 'out' points of the lower third. This makes it's appearance on screen much more seamless than a straight cut, while also matching the authentic, minimalistic style of Vox, in which we were inspired. 

The editing itself is going fairly well at this early stage, the introduction is coming along nicely and I've already had many opportunities to experiment with new skills and techniques when it comes to Adobe Premiere Pro. Given that I chose 'Editor' as my role for this unit, I am happy with my current progression into the world of both After Effects and more advanced Premiere Pro tasks. One of the After Effects assets I'm currently developing is an animated background matching the colour palette of the lower thirds; this background will feature a 16:9 rectangular cut-out in the centre of the screen, in which I will place external clips from news outlets such as Channel 4 and CNN. This way I can avoid scaling up lower resolution footage to the 4K format we're shooting the documentary in, thus reducing overall noise in the image during those segments, and maintaining the brand of the Vox-inspired aesthetic we're attempting to emulate. 

You can view the introduction rough cut here: