For the Video Essay assignment, I decided to discuss scenes from The Wire season 3, episode 12 and how they show the characters dealing with Stringer’s death and comprehending how they understood him and where they go from here.

I downloaded the episode and rewatched the scenes I wanted to cover, taking note of what was important about them and how they were shot. I then imported the video into iMovie and trimmed it to only the clips I needed. Then I added in the title and credit screens. For the audio commentary, I recorded myself talking in Audacity, exported the file as an mp3 and imported it into iMovie. I then split the audio from the video in the clips from the show and rearranged it so that my commentary track was above the audio of the episode, so it would take precedence. I then split and adjusted my commentary as well as the volume of the audio from the episode.

Here is what it looked like in iMovie:

I then saved the file and uploaded it to YouTube. Here is the final product:

I’m not sure this is my best work, and I’m sure I could have refined and structured the audio and ideas better, but I think it gets my ideas across well.