Cafe Segovia - From the eye of the fly

To my disappointment, my idea of using a surveillance video from work to capture the repetition on a daily basis of waitresses and bartenders would not have worked out. I was feeling rather depressed that all recordings were on DVD, so I wouldn’t have been able to edit it.

For days and weeks i was constantly pondering on what to do. At the beginning I came up with the idea of videoing different baristas making coffee, each barista recorded 10 minutes at a time. But I re-thought the idea and realized how boring a video like that would have turned out! Then all of a sudden i had a light bulb moment and thought ‘Well why I can’t make a surveillance video myself!’. I would have been much more proud of my work anyway knowing that i started everything from scratch.

So i brought a camcorder along with me one evening and visited Cafe Segovia. I tried to gather as much footage as i could, focusing on different workers and the tasks they were carrying out at 2 minute intrevals at a time. i essentially wanted to capture Melbourne's essentric energy through its café scene - and the repetition of the wait and bar staff would have added that little bit extra amusement!

I ued Final Cut Pro to edit and compose my movie. It was SUCH a long and tedious process! I was sitting on my bottom for over 48 hours just to work out how to use the program - that was a little frustrating! I relied a lot on You Tube for assistance, however as always some tips helped and some didn't.



I began by capturing my footage onto the computer. I opened Final Cut Pro and streamed the video. I selected In and Out to cut the sections i wanted to begin from and where i wanted to end. I then dragged these down into my time frame.
Originally i wanted to make multiple movies and set them out as a continuous diagonal pattern just like what i've dont with my oher pieces but if i was to do that, the screens would have been too small. So i only changed the scale of each movie to no less than 30. I also added a background colour and fitted this in sync with my timeframe. Once i was happy with a section playing i would copy and paste and make a new section on the same time frame and adjust the In and Out channels accordingly to suit me. Afer i was happy with everything i adjusted the audio to each time frame and when different things started streaming. It took very long to work out but defintely felt beneficial in the end!

Finally, transitions were added to give the movie a softer entrance and exit