Brewing Culture in the Malt Industry
For my Video Story I chose to create a narrative story segment that includes a section of an interview. This video focuses on the culture within the Malt Industry and explores the passionate people who create it.
Check out my video below. Click here if the embedded video is not working.
Inspiration
After interviewing a coworker for our audio project, some of her answers gave me inspiration for this project. I knew I wanted to incorporate a section of her interview, and I also wanted to briefly discuss the company industry and its quirky people.
To accomplish the heartfelt yet fun vision I intended, I planned to include pictures and video of the company’s exterior, clips of the interior that speak to its history along with people in the industry and various video of the product.
Filming Process
To the field! Not the barely fields unfortunately…
On a couple trips into work I took video of the exterior of the plant and General Offices. I also took video inside one of the older buildings. One of the office buildings was originally a Taproom, from when employees were allowed to drink on premises. In the Taproom, there are old paintings and other memorabilia, along with a collection of beer bottles. This film session makes up most of the building and interior shots included in this video.
The video of malt and beer was taken in my backyard with the assistance of my boyfriend. Once we had a sunny day, I collected some recruiting equipment (GWM table cloth and malt samples), a construction stool, beer and two glasses.
The glasses are actually from an Oregon Brewfest from years ago. Great Western Malt and Country Malt Group often sponsor local brewfests, so their logos are on the glasses used in these shots, which I thought was a nice touch.
Our brewfest enthusiasm paid off!
By the end of all these sessions I probably had at least fifteen to twenty minutes of video.
Gathering Other Materials
Before beginning the editing process, I also sifted through photos that I thought I could incorporate. Some of the photos used in this video were actually taken as we were working on our Graphic Design Project. I also found pictures I had taken last year at the Pink Boots Brew Day.
Pink Boots Day 2019 in the Malt Innovation Center 
Pink Boots Day 2019 in the Malt Innovation Center
Pink Boots Society
If you don’t know… Pink Boots is a society founded by an employee of Great Western Malt to promote the community of women working in the beer industry. Every year, near International Women’s Day, Pink Boots Society members across the world gather together with local women in the industry to brew together and share their industry knowledge.
It is probably one of the most fun work days.
One picture was used from this year’s Pink Boots Brew Day that was not taken by me. This picture was taken by a Pink Boots Day participant and was shared with my company for use.
Audio
Once I had gathered most of the video material I intended to use, I started working on the audio. First, I decided what section of interview I wanted to use from the interview conducted with Tabby Decker. Once I knew what section of her interview I wanted to focus on, I drafted up the narration to surround it.
To the left you can see the audio and video from the interview being combined with the narration. Here I also marked the sections of the interview I intended to use for the video.
Narration
I recorded myself using a recording app on my cellphone somewhere between five and ten times. Each time I recorded the narration with slightly different fluctuations of my voice.
In at least 50% of my recordings you can hear my dog’s collar jingling in the background, or them commencing a howling match… so those recordings were automatically out.
Combining Audio
I imported the interview with Tabby and the narration I recorded into Premiere. Using the markers and the mark in/mark out tool I selected the section of Tabby’s interview I intended to use. While editing the narration audio to align well with Tabby’s interview, I edited out sections of audio using the razor tool and marked which sections of Tabby’s interview would include video of her speaking.
The volume of Tabby’s interview was increased to 6.05dB. The volume of the narration is -0.00dB.
Music
The music selected is Paradise by Ikson, found on Sound Cloud. I reached out to @Ikson for permission to use this track in this project. The music fades in and out using a Constant Power fade. The music is at -18dB during the introduction and when the credits roll. Throughout the rest of the interview the music volume is -48dB, the volume was lowered from my initial draft after obtaining peer feedback.
Editing Process
Once all the audio was aligned roughly the way I wanted it, I began organizing the video.
Storyboard
To begin compiling the video, I first developed a storyboard. The storyboard was a great tool to organize my ideas, even though I ended up straying from it. Here you can see what my initial storyboard looked like.
I first selected which building shots I wanted to use as my establishing shot. I then identified areas of the audio I wanted to be associated with pictures of people versus pictures of malt or beer.
I added a section for the introduction title and ending credits, although the title was still in the works at this time.
Video Splicing
Next I imported all of the video and picture files I intended to use in the sequence. Before adding any videos to the sequence, I organized all videos and pictures into bins and named them.
After submitting the draft version of this video, I made one major change to the video sequence: during the introduction I replaced a shovel picture, with this building picture that also includes the United Malt Group logo. This better aligns with the narration. This photo was edited in Adobe Photoshop, saved as a .Jpeg file, then imported into Premiere.
I went through each video and selected 5-10 seconds. Using the mark in/mark out tools. I added these sections to the video sequence along with the pictures I selected.
Once the videos and pictures were all placed in the sequence, I used the razor tool, slip tool and ripple edit tool to adjust the lengths of the videos. This step took awhile. I wanted each shot to be roughly the same length and to correspond with certain pieces of the audio. During this stage I also changed the order of some of the sequence.
Effects
Once the sequence had the narration, interview, music, videos and pictures aligned and the lengths edited, I added the introduction, ending, and text. Then I started playing with various effects.
Introduction and Ending
For the introduction I added the text Brewing Culture in the Malt Industry. I selected the color, stroke and shadow by using GWM branding hex codes. This title enters with a cross zoom effect. The background is a video of malt with the scale and position altered. The video and text cross dissolve to the beginning of the first establishing shot.
The last video clip fades out with a dip to black effect at which time the credits scroll. A peer’s feedback gave the idea of scrolling credits, as well as adding Tabby Decker to the credits. I followed this tutorial to create this effect.
Interview Effects
A cross dissolve transition is used at the beginning and end of the video of Tabby. The cross dissolve transition is also used on the entrance and exit of the text of her name and title. This text intentionally dissolves out right before the music picks up again and the interview segment is about to end. This text follows the Lower Third technique.
The scale, position and rotation of this video clip was also edited to better follow the Talking Head technique.
After receiving some peer feedback, I followed this instructional video to improve the video quality of Tabby’s interview by adding an adjustment layer. Below you can see the difference adding the adjustment layer made to the video.
Adjustment layers were also used on the still shot of Tabby at 1:15, along with the first two establishing shots of the Great Western Malt building. (Thank you @joannaobayer for the awesome tutorial suggestion!)
Scaling and Position
There were several clips that were adjusted by changing the scale and position, or by rotating them to be more level. Every picture that was used had to be adjusted to better fill the frame. I also considered the Rule of Thirds as these adjustments were made. Additional adjustments to both the scaling and position of clips were made after the draft submission.
More Transitions
Next, I spent some time playing with video transitions. After the video transitions were added, I also adjusted the length of some of the transitions (making the transitions longer or shorter) depending on the two clips.
The video transitions used throughout this story are:
- Dip to Black
- Cross Dissolve
- VR Light Rays
- Iris Box
- Additive Dissolve
- VR Iris Wipe
- VR Spherical Bluer
- Film Dissolve
This is what the sequence looked like after all the effects were added:
That’s a Wrap
I hope you enjoyed this video Brewing Culture in the Malt Industry.
CHEERS!
Citations
Music:
1. Ikson. “Paradise.” 2018. https://soundcloud.com/ikson/paradise-free-download?in=jada-garrick-1/sets/free-to-use-music.
Picture:
1. Pink Boots Society Collection. “untitled.” March 2020. Vancouver, WA.
Matching Talent 