Mental Health Foundation: Day 6 - September 1st

On day 6 at MHFA, I continued the task that I left on yesterday, which was to edit episode 4 of the Empowering Voices of Harmony podcast with host Jim Goodin and guest Gary Keisoglu. After adding name cards of the host and guest, I then added the intro sequence that was already made which is the same for every episode, therefore, it was easy. After that, I worked on editing the outro sequence which was also easy, although I just had to change the names and photos on the template that was used before.

Once that was done, I did another edit for their Spotify platform which is basically removing the visual from the edit and leaving only the audio component. I showed the final edit to my supervisor, Nithya, and she gave the thumbs up. Everything is all good to go.

After editing the podcast, I was also tasked to make short form videos out of the podcast. Since they will also promote the podcast on their social media, they would need short 1-2 minute videos in different formats for different social media platforms. For Instagram/Tiktok, it would be a resolution of 1920x1080 which is vertical 9:16 format. For Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, it would be a 1080x1080 which is a square 1:1 format.

For the short videos, I would take an important moment or key messages that were said in the podcast and edit it into a short video just to catch the viewer's attention when they come across it on social media. The key messages/important ideas were already marked in a separate document which was done by another media member. So, all I had to do was go through them and pick one that I like best, and create a short video out of that.

For the short videos, Nithya wanted them to have music over the dialogue, as well as clear and catchy subtitles that go on screen when the person is talking. I asked another team member, Daniel, for music suggestions since he had worked on previous short form videos for other episodes of the podcast and he gave me a list of resources I can look to.

For the subtitles, I used the transcript tool in Premiere Pro and automatically transcribe audio to text based on what it heard. It is a very useful tool that can help a lot when doing subtitles for a video. After transcribing, I used the action "Create Captions" and the program will generate captions based on the text that was transcribed.

The transcribed text were not fully accurate some of the time, so I had to go back and changed some spelling mistakes or words that were inaccurately transcribed. The timing for some parts of the text did not match the video, so I also had to do some minor fixes to the timing of when the text show up on screen when the person says something. After that, I played around with the font and sizing of the text to make it appealing and catchy. From Nithya's feedback, she wanted it to be sort of big so that when people view it, they can read it quickly and easily, making it easy to follow along.

After I'm done with the subtitles, I had to add the outro sequence which is a short animation of a puzzle with a "Let's Talk" graphic that was provided to me.

Once that was done, I did the same for the square 1:1 Facebook short video but just with a different key message. For the Facebook video, it is a little bit longer which is 2 minutes since people will more likely spend time on longer videos on Facebook as opposed to shorter videos on Instagram/TikTok.

I completed the short form videos for Gary's episodes and showed the final cut to Nithya and Vasan before finalising it and rendering it out. They liked it, so it was all good to go. Once I was done rendering all the files, I uploaded them into the Teams channel and sent the director, Matthew, a message to let him review it.

Nithya reminded me that I also needed to create short form videos for the previous podcast episode that I edited which was Yasir's episode, and I remembered not doing that. Therefore, for the rest of the day, I edited short form videos in the same format for all social media platforms for Yasir's episode. The key messages were already outlined in a separate document, so all I had to do was pick a key message and follow the same format as Gary's videos and create subtitles and add music to the videos.

After I'm done with those edits, I showed the final cuts to Nithya and Vasan again for their feedback and approval, and they said it was all good to go.