We Didn’t Start The Fire

review of the process of we didn’t start the fire short film

Project Overview:

To prepare ourselves for our coursework we edited together videos and photos to the song we didn’t start the fire by Billy Joel in 1989. We were put into two groups of three and we each assigned ourselves specific verses that we would collect the pictures from. Then within the chorus we collected our own material to be imported as we see fit. The software used for this project was iMovie.

Process:

First of all we got put into groups of three and then amongst ourselves we decided who would do what verse. I then created a shared folder for my group where the pictures we collectively got would go into. So we all had our specific verses to get the pictures from so we got them and then imported them into the file correctly named.

These photos would then be used for all three of us to edit the song to, however durian the chorus we were left to our own devices to find videos that we thought would fit well into the song. I chose firemen for the beginning of the song and for the rest of the chorus’ I found clips of iconic dancing from the 1980s on YouTube e.g pulp fiction and back to the future clips. However most of the dancing videos i collected were in black and white as it felt as if it fitted the feel of the short film better.

After collecting these videos and pictures I began to edit them together using the software iMovie. The pictures had to be on beat to the song, most people captioned the pictures however I didn’t since I didn’t feel the need to as it gives it a more authentic feel. So the pictures were edited together smoothly I had to remove any transitions there were between the pictures otherwise it wouldn’t be on beat. I also had to have “ken burns disabled” to make the production overall more smooth.

Overall:

Overall I’m quite pleased with how the video turned out and it was an enjoyable yet tough experience having to edit the film together as it took very long to try and get the pictures on beat as well as finding the right picture for the specific part of the song being played. I am not a big fan of the software iMovie however I think this short film turned out better than I expected.