Experience of the video prototype

A lot of things happened during the video prototype assessment. I suffered from reshooting, recovering the data and re-editing the video, which really taught me some lessons. I don't want to recall the bad memories, but post it here as a reminder to warn me what am I gonna do the next time making a video.

1. Backup your data.
Always remember to save your work whenever make some change of any substance and do not have a fluke mind. I just trusted my laptop and the lab Macs too much. Hence, when first my laptop didn't work, and the second day (the day before due date) the Mac delete all my work, I was close to collapse. Luckily Greg and Peter gave me a week's extension so I had enough time to buy a new laptop and redo the video.

2. Video editing tools.
Initially, before the awful thing happened, I used Photoshop CC to edit the video. It is an easy tool but really consumes the system resources, which will take hours for my old laptop to render a 30 seconds long video with low resolusion. The lab Macs are better but still slow and sometimes choppy, especially when I add the 1080p footages in it.

Therefore, I listened to my friends' advice and used Sony Vegas to redo the editing. It is a great tool, way better than Photoshop. It has many advanced functions such as transition effects, which is more professional compared to Photoshop. I have to manually set the transition effects in many steps in Photoshop and some complicated effects are very difficult to realize. Besides, the rendering time is much shorter than Photoshop and it consumes fewer system resources and even my old model laptop was not choppy when editing the large size footages.

3. Scripts
Scripts are the guide and specification of shooting and the more detailed the better. I strongly recommend that do not shoot before it is decided and completed with full detail. I wrote a rough draft at first, thought it was detailed enough and could not wait to start shooting. However, after I finished one scene and started to edit I realized that I forgot some of the key shots. I thus had to arrange another time to reshoot the missing part. It was really a waste of time, particularly when the time is pressing.