MODULE 06
Production Process: Visual Effects and Sound Design
Tonight you edit. Forty minutes of demonstration, thirty minutes in which every one of you builds the first fifteen seconds of your own reel, ten to export it, and twenty to look at several of them together. Everything on this page exists to protect that thirty-minute block — it is the only part of the evening that cannot be moved to a consultation.
Where this sits
Creator's workflow
- Idea and the topic
- Research to collect and verify materials
- Decide how to present the document
- Write a screenplay and record the voiceover
- Assemble the visuals with tools that fit you
- Polish: subtitles, visual effects, sound design — you are here
- Pre-publishing screening and evaluation
Schedule
| 14.08 | 01 Introduction and Finding the Focus |
| 18.08 | 02 Research Phase — AI-powered or AI-distorted |
| 21.08 | 03 Ethics and Techniques of Intervening in Archival Footage |
| 25.08 | 04 Editing as a Way of Thinking Through a Fragmented Reality |
| 27.08 | 05 Tools Implementation: Choose What Works or Build Your Own |
| 28.08–01.09 | Consultations, 30 min per group |
| 02.09 | 06 Production Process: Visual Effects and Sound Design — today |
| 03.09–06.09 | Consultation, 60 min |
| 07.09 | 07 Final Screening and Wrap Up |
| 21–27.09 | Berlin workshop · 16 places |
Module 05 ended with a claim: the tool does not make the film, the script and the order do. Tonight is the test of that claim. Every one of you is in a different editor and every one of you is building from the same three things — a script, a set of verified images, a read. If the claim holds, the fifteen seconds will differ by decision and not by software.
Tonight
| 18:00 | Arrival, where we are, what tonight produces |
| 18:10 | Demonstration — the edit built from scratch, questions taken as they come |
| 18:50 | Practice — your own fifteen seconds, tutors on call |
| 19:20 | Export and upload |
| 19:30 | Screening — around five videos, voluntary |
| 19:50 | Next steps, close |
Before we start
Three files, on your own machine, not in a browser tab. If one of them is missing, say so now — a tutor will get you to a workable state during the demonstration, not during the practice block.
What you need open
- Script — uploaded to the shared Google Drive folder
- Are.na board — at least 10 images or clips, downloaded to your device
- Music — one track from a free library, downloaded. Voluntary
- Editor — installed, opens your files, exports 1080×1920 at 30 fps
Downloaded means downloaded. An Are.na board that lives online is a reference, not material — the practice block has no time in it for fetching images one at a time.
Where the music comes from
Free libraries: Pixabay Music, Free Music Archive, Ende. Choose something that fits the mood of your piece rather than something you like on its own. Note the track name and the licence as you download — the credits will need both.
Carried over from Module 05
| Built-in assets | music, sounds, fonts and stickers bundled inside an editor are licensed for use inside that app. Keep them out of the final mix — the reel is published under the museum's name and the funder's |
| Tonight | the demonstration is in CapCut because it is the fastest thing to watch. Every move shown has an equivalent in Shotcut, Resolve and Kdenlive, and the techniques are what you are being asked to learn — not the buttons |
| Sound | take it from a CC0 source and write down where it came from |
Demonstration
An empty project to an exported file, in order, with nothing skipped. Interrupt when something happens too fast — this is the block where that is free.
What gets shown, in this order
| Step | What is actually being decided |
|---|---|
| Audio and subtitles | the read lands first and everything else is measured against it. Subtitles are typed from the script you already have — not recognised from the audio, so no name, rank or date can be misspelt |
| Photos and footage | which image stands with which sentence. This is the one decision the software cannot make for you |
| Motion and animation | slow zoom, pan, push. How much movement an image's pixels can carry before it softens — an archival scan has a ceiling and the ceiling is visible |
| Effects | glitch, grain, light leaks, transitions. Which of them carry a claim about the material and which are decoration |
| Sound design | ambience under the voice, accents on cuts, the music bed and where it ducks. Where the sound does the persuading instead of the image |
| Details that raise quality | cutting on the sentence and not on the beat, leaving silence, safe margins for captions on a vertical frame, consistent headroom, the export preset |
Watch what is being decided, not which menu it lives in. You will be doing this in your own editor thirty minutes from now, and the menu will be somewhere else.
Practice — 30 minutes
Fully edit the first fifteen seconds of your video, from your script, with images from your board. More than fifteen seconds if the time allows. Not polished — legible. The point is to show you can do each of the six things that were just demonstrated.
30:00
| Left | Phase | Done by the end of it |
|---|---|---|
| 30–25 | Set up | Voiceover on the timeline, project set to 1080×1920 at 30 fps, images imported |
| 25–18 | Structure | Images placed against the first fifteen seconds of the read. Subtitles typed in from the script |
| 18–11 | Motion | Movement on every image. Nothing pushed past what its pixels carry |
| 11–6 | Effects and sound | Effects where they mean something. Ambience, accents, the music bed under the voice |
| 6–0 | Render | Export started. At zero, whatever is on the timeline is what gets exported |
Space starts and pauses · R resets · The clock is shared, the phases are a guide
Ask for a tutor at any point. Say what you are stuck on rather than sharing your screen and waiting — the block is thirty minutes for everyone at once.
Your fifteen seconds must contain
- Subtitles
- A background and visual elements — images and/or video
- Motion or animation on the images
- Effects, and filters if you want them
- Sound design
- Background music · voluntary
- A finished export
If you finish early, extend past fifteen seconds rather than polishing what you have. Length now is worth more to you than finish — the polish pass is what the week between this module and the final screening is for.
Export and submission
- Resolution
- 1080 × 1920 px
- Aspect ratio
- 9:16
- Format
- MP4 · H.264
- Frame rate
- 30 fps
- Length
- 15 seconds minimum
- File name
- surname_m06.mp4
Two destinations, and they are different
| MemoActs Drive | your personal folder. Required, from everyone, tonight. This is the submission |
| Telegram group | only if you are willing to have your piece screened and discussed in the next twenty minutes. Voluntary |
Start the export before you tidy anything. A render that is still running at 19:30 is fine; a render that was never started is not.
Screening and feedback
Per video
- it plays — no introduction from the author
- the author says what they were trying to do
- response — one tutor leads
What the response stays on
- Whether the images are placed against the lines they belong to, or merely in sequence.
- Whether the movement was chosen for the image or applied to all of them at once.
- Where the sound is doing work the picture is not, and whether that was decided.
- Which effect would be missed if it were removed.
Fifteen seconds is a short thing to have made and a fair thing to be judged on, because everyone made theirs under the same clock. Nothing said here is about the finished film — it is about what to do in the next five days.
Homework
1 — Compile your content on Hotglue
Create a page on hotglue.me and upload your materials there: a storyboard, or the full video based on your script if you managed to edit it.
2 — Compile a list of sources
Attach a brief document alongside the file. For every piece of media used — image, video, audio — specify its source.
3 — Prepare a question for the consultation
The session between this module and the final screening takes place on 3–6 September and lasts sixty minutes. Come with any issue you were unable to resolve this evening. It is the last session with a tutor before the screening on 7 September.
The criteria you are assessed against were set out in Module 05 and have not changed.