This is a view of shot 12 in Adobe Premiere Pro. The camera pulls back from the bus window as the bus pulls away. Sam is saying “We have a right to be here.” In the timeline you can see that this shot consists of a series of images stacked on top of each other. Audio is green. The main audio track is the narrator relating the story. The other audio in this shot is of a bus a it accelerates. The audio was supplied by a free online service called Zapsplat Sound Effects. Other sounds included the sound of sneakers on pavement and the sound of someone settling into a comfy seat. Since I don’t have a quality audio recorder, the effect sounds were a lifeline to finishing the folly work on this project.
The visual elements included a painting of the bus. A painting of the bus interior and a layer for tinting on the windows. As the bus pulled away I darkened the windows. All the animation of the bus move was set up with the bus itself and then the animation key frames were copied and pasted onto the other layers so they all moved together. At first I tried to animated each element separately but the window tinting and bus kept getting out of alignment. The copy and paste trick was picked up on viewing a you tube video tutorial.
The exhibition is opening tonight for VIPs. I had to finish up two other videos just today, and thankfully they worked out well. I figured out how to use green screen techniques to have two paintings animate as time lapse recordings at the same time. One painting was of the person who was speaking and then the background related to what they were saying.
These films will be on display at Yesterday This Was Home at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 East Central Blvd Orlando FL) from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021. The exhibition is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history. It couldn’t be more timely with the election looming.
Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.
This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.
Now that all this animation is complete, I feel a sense of relief, but also an exhaustion I have never experienced before.