Directing a Video

This was a project I had to do with a group 6 to recreate Shakespeare’s classic, Hamlet. It is the same except set in modern time and the characters are local Hawaiian surfers. We filmed all of this in just two days before it was due. I had to take charge and plan everything (meet up) as well as direct and edit everything. I also had to act as well and I played both the main villain and the brother (if you didn’t read Hamlet, the king is the villain and his brother was the previous king). I learned a lot about how to direct as well as editing such a long video as the video is approx. 12 mins.

I used Sony Vegas Pro, and I’ve self taught myself in the beginning of high school how to use it but the thing about editing a video is patience. I’ve never edited a video this long before and this was very challenging as any high schooler tends to step off track more than anything. I’ve had to wait for videos to be sent to me because there wasn’t enough storage for our phones. I had to wait for the program to not freeze, and I had wait for the video to render for about 30 mins then watch the whole thing to check for any errors and render it again after fixing those errors. There was a lot of waiting I had to do and the video was due the next day. I kept my cool however and I believed in myself and check thoroughly and only had rendered it three times.

The Directing part was my favorite as I had to direct everything. I was apparently the only person that remembers the story so most of the dialogue was scripted by me. I learned just telling them what to say was a bad idea so I explained how the scene worked in the book and they understood so it made saying the lines a lot easier as they have sense of what to say. This was great because two of the group members only had time for two hours. So I had to learn how to manage a scene and film what was necessary. I didn’t have that many issues with my group member themselves and a lot of the time it was my freedom to choose what happened.

This was the most fun project I did in High School and even if it’s not all that fancy I felt it turned out to be the better than most of the other videos. Some with students that were in the video making club. I’ve hope one day I could direct a project for something big as I felt I did a good job at handiling situations in a short amount of time.

Video Source: Duke’s Revenge