Tying Loose Ends: Finishing Whispers from Salem

The moment of truth. This week is the grand finale for creating my mini-documentary, Whispers from Salem. It seemed so challenging in the beginning. Each day spent working on bringing this project to life felt far from the deadline. Now, it seems to have happened so fast. 

This week has also been the busiest (and probably the best) week of the production process. Since I’m creating a mini-documentary, research was one of the most important aspects of the project. Hefty research also means the video had so much information to offer. The voiceover narration was critical to telling the stories of the Salem Witch Trials, so I let the audio lead the edited video footage. 

I started the week by editing Annie Putnam’s confession audio. Then, I clipped the confession audio with the already edited voiceovers. Next, I put all the audio together in a way that would provide rest between sections but would also tie the sequences together. Then, I grabbed some background music from Epidemic Sound and added music to the narration. Finally, I played with audio files in PremierePro until the sequences flowed together. The full audio ended at 8 minutes and 19 seconds, but the video didn’t have credits added yet. So I added closing music to the end of the audio to push the final video length to 9 minutes. 

I started editing graphics and footage to match the audio. But, there were a few more video sequences to film, so I worked on building a few more props. I needed a feather quill pen, a little red book, and a written petition. I followed a YouTube tutorial for cutting out a feather quill pen with a chicken feather. I didn’t have a little red book but found a light brown novel and used it instead. To create the effect of the “Devil’s book,” I soaked paper from a sketchpad in old coffee. The dyed paper turned out almost the exact color of the brown book’s pages.

After Rebecca Nurse was arrested, her neighbors wrote and signed a petition on her behalf attesting to her innocence. I found this document in online archives, but the document was faded and nearly illegible. So, I used my calligraphy pen to rewrite the document’s contents on paper from a sketchpad. I also wrote Annie Putnam’s confession and used a recording for the video. 

I needed to record Tituba signing the devil’s book and the magistrates opening Nurse’s petition. The last sequences I needed to film were mostly outdoors, which was rather trying in 106-degree heat. I captured b-roll footage of trees and grassy areas for the opening sequences. I also needed footage of feet dangling from a tree or gallows. 

I was still on the fence about how to create the title sequence for the video, but handwritten letters felt like an omnipresent feature. So, I wrote the title Whispers from Salem using Adobe Illustrator and a Wacom tablet. Then, I transferred the file to Adobe AfterEffects. I used the mask path feature in AfterEffects to cover the handwriting and uncovered a portion of the title one frame at a time. This animation made the title look like it was actively being written on the screen. 

Next, I included the new footage in the video draft in PremierePro. I also downloaded more stock videos from pexels and pixabay. However, PremierePro stopped functioning properly and wouldn’t show any video in the playback. I tried quitting PremierePro and shutting down my laptop. When this didn’t work, I chose to work on creating the video credits. I wanted the final credits to resemble the title sequence, but I used an Adobe Font instead of writing them by hand in Illustrator. I saved each slate of credits to a layer in Illustrator and exported them as PNG files.

Later, I returned to Adobe PremierePro to add the final credits. The video still didn’t show in playback, but I edited the credit slides to 3 seconds (5 seconds for long slides). Then, I used a stock image of parchment paper behind the credit layers. Finally, I edited the opacity for each slate of video credits to 0% at the beginning, rising to 100% after a few frames and dropping back to 0% in the last few frames. 

Since I couldn’t check the video quality in PremierePro, I exported the video. Then, I played the video file in the QuickTime Player and made notes for editing the video in my pre-production script. Finally, I made those final tweaks to the video in PremierePro and exported the file again. 

Without further ado, here is Whispers from Salem: