Project 1: Practice

Download/Conversion
Was able to find the original content easy enough; had to put up with fairly long reencoding times when converting, as well as errors that caused some omission of content from a couple of the films. (Films I later decided I didn't want to use.)

Extracting
As I was extracting the desired clips from the first film, I noticed that the practice was time consuming and extremely unpleasant. Scrubbing through movies of long duration is not very intuitive, and extracting a proper subclip often meant going back over words and sentences several times. Listening for the key words also meant watching the films in a way that doesn't qualify as entertaining, but work.
I also noticed that even with the first film, I was able to extract a large amount of potential content. Because of this, I made the decision early on to only use the content from the first four films. Perhaps at a later date, when I'm feeling especially masochistic, I can expand the project to encompass all eight films.

The extraction process was taking about 1.5-2 times longer than the content duration I was working with, but as I got better at referencing the film transcripts I was able to make subclips for the last film (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) in about the same amount of time it takes to watch.

After extracting "Harry/Potter" from the first four films, I had about 420 subclips that amounted to a 6:20 duration.

Assembling
I decided to arrange the clips from longest duration to shortest duration. This gives the piece an increasing tempo as it goes on, and seems to build tension. It also removes artistic decisions that I would  have to make if I placed the clips by choice. Again, I want the system of distillation to be systematic and somewhat controlled. (With as little choice as possible.)

Editing
After creating the order by a predetermined system, I still had to make decisions on what to cut out, as the piece was too long. Purely for flow and aesthetics, I decided to remove the least audible clips. These were, for the most part, clips in which there were loud sound effects or music in the background. I also lowered the volume output for louder than average clips, and raised volume for relatively quieter clips. Fade in/out were also used on most clips to improve overall flow.

I added longer clips on both the beginning and end, to create bookends that went against the rules of the rest of the video, to signify a start stop. I also threw together a title in After Effect: "The Brand Who Lived."