Second Semester of Video Production Reflection

Movie Trailer

          For this project, we were put into groups of five and asked to recreate a high school movie trailer. My group was assigned "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." This project took about a month, between storyboarding, filming, and editing. Our biggest challenge was probably figuring out what to do about the music. The music used in the video was a medley of three songs, and it would've probably taken a long time to redo for our video. Along the way as cinematographer, I had to learn more about the camera, so I retained more knowledge of ISO, the iris, and the focus. Our feedback was mostly good, but some people noticed one of our group members in a shot and others realized that some of our trailer strayed from the original. Overall, I'm really proud of how the trailer turned out. If I had to change something, I would've put more time into possibly recreating the music in the background of the original.

Short Film

         This project started off with everyone in our class creating our own original story and script. After, we were put into groups based off of the genre we were interested in. I chose drama because I wanted to experiment with cinematography. This project took about a month. My group was able to start quickly with filming, although our filming times were short and we messed around a lot, so we didn't get too many shots each filming day, so filming in general was still spread out. Along the way, I learned about the importance of time management. Though it's fun to mess around while filming, it's also good to take initiative and get stuff done. My group never presented in class, but one thing that my peers around me suggested was changing the transitions or the color correcting. Overall, if I could change one thing about this project, I would change the quality of the shots we got. Some of the most crucial shots were too blurry, or you could tell that our actor had been laughing before I hit record on the camera. 

Time Management

          Throughout this semester, I think I have gotten more off task in class as the year has drawn to a close. I tended to get more distracted as school began to die down, and the fact that our class is seventh hour made me anxious to just get the day over with. When I finished early, I would talk with those around me who had also finished, or I would work on homework. Outside of class, I was able to edit after school, and often filmed on location. Although my time management wasn't the best this semester, I definitely think I was able to keep myself on task in class.

Strengths

          This semester, I think I've been good at keeping up with the five guarantees of eComm. Specifically, the leadership and communication aspects. I went from not knowing too much about the camera at the beginning of the semester to having a much more advanced understanding about the operation of the camera. Overall, I think I did good at leading my group and keeping them on task.

Weaknesses

         I think I need to work on my organization and technical skills in the future. Although I'm not continuing in video next year, I still think that these skills are crucial to life in general. Most of my decisions in this class regarding filming or editing were very spontaneous, causing my project to get a bit off track from what was organized and planned. I also want to improve my editing skills, as my only strengths are in color correcting and basic sequencing, along with the occasional warp stabilizer where it's needed. I want to look more into the audio side of editing in the future, as that's one big gray area for me. 

Short Film Process

          The short film was difficult, but I think it was worth it. I was the cinematographer again for this project, so I was able to continue to advance my knowledge of the camera. Our film was a drama, but also unintentionally a comedy because it's so awkward that it makes you laugh. I think that my whole group would admit that our video can still be considered a work in progress. This project taught me a lesson about being organized, because my group made a lot of spur of the moment decisions to go and film. When I started out creating my logline and synopsis, I was not confident in my idea, and if I'm honest, I still don't like the concept. Although I did learn more about creating a story based off of the plot structure, and not to leave plot holes in creative writing. 

Semester Summary

          My favorite part about this semester in video production was the environment in our class. Everyone was always constantly communicating and radiating ideas off of each other. If I could change one thing about the semester, I think that I would go back and create filming schedules at the very beginning of planning for the project. Although I'm going into Graphic Design next year, I definitely think I'll take away knowledge about cameras, and communicating with others. Next year, I hope to take my lessons learned in time management and apply them to my classwork.