Since the first few weeks of this studio, I knew that it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for with studio choices. This semester I really wanted to make a short film, and have a substantial amount of time in the semester to do so, but with the pool of studios given for this semester, Translating Observation was the closest thing to what I wanted to do.

The first seven weeks of this studio consisted of building up technical skills; mostly with the Sony EX3 and with audio equipment. Last semester I spent a lot of time learning audio so this didn’t really benefit me, and I’d also previously decided I never really wanted to pursue camera work so I kind of turned away from this learning, which is a huge regret looking back. I’m pretty stubborn when I make my mind up about something, and when I told Robin I had no interest in camera, he seemed pretty disappointed. I’ve worked quite a bit with camera, and I’m pretty skilled with it, it just isn’t my cup of tea. But especially with how things turned out from our shoot, I really wish I had’ve payed attention to the early classes. I set out knowing I wasn’t going to work on camera, to not really having a choice when I knew no one else really wanted to, or had the skill and knowledge to do so.

When we first got into a group with Monaliza, Isobell and Alexandra, we were set to work on Monaliza’s film pitch which was about “A kind of essay on the nuances of human behaviour and gesture, on voyeurism and desire, articulated through a simple and wordless dramatic scene.  A young woman habitually breakfasts on her balcony; her neighbour watches her with equal regularity.” This original idea I think is very real and idiosyncratic, but through our work in pre-production, it changed to be something completely different. We originally wanted an adult male and female to feature in our film, with two locations that would work together for our film. This changed quite quickly, to achieve something more “realistic” in terms of organising a shoot in our time frame. At the time what seemed the most achievable would be to cast a young boy and a teenage girl, both for availability reasons, and it seemed easier that people would actually apply. Looking back at how everything turned out, I think we could have achieved something much better. Not just with better technical things, but with story and content as well. Why didn’t we stay true to the original observation and pitch? We didn’t really even think to use Monaliza in the film, which is strange because the observation was originally about her and she has acting experience. I think if we were to tackle this project again, we would go more into that direction. But instead I feel we created something that has been seen before, and could have had a lot more substance in it than what was there,

When we got to the post-production stage of making our film, I was really disheartened by how the footage turned out, and how everyone reacted. Because of the blame I felt and took on for the outcome of the shoot, I really distanced myself from the group in this final stage. Looking back, I shouldn’t have done this, but I also found it really difficult to sit in the edit suites, trying to cut and fix up the footage, with other members mentioning how bad the footage looked and how much of a shame it was.

Robin did make me feel better about the experience when he mentioned that we would have learnt more with our mistakes than the other groups. Even though we were tremendously disappointed, I really did learn so much through this process. Robin also said that “your greatest ideas turn to dust unless you can act on them with technical proficiency”, that’s filmmaking, and that is one thing I need to consider in future. I would definitely move forward, knowing that I have people that want to work in technical roles, because I think that is really what went wrong this semester for our group, because no one really wanted to work with the technical equipment, so we were all out of our comfort zone.

My favourite part about this studio was really the core of it, the observations. I started looking at my experiences day to day very differently. I started looking at things in a creative way, and after writing down a few observations I noticed what I was drawn to and this was really interesting to me. I noticed that the pieces I was writing, focused on one person and their actions, both in itself or in relation to other people around them. When we turned our focus to the group projects, I completely stopped this process of noticing and writing down my observations, which is something I’m really disappointed about. I drew my focus away from what I really enjoyed in this course, and these observations really benefited me because I now have two really different films that I want to make, if not in this course, some time in the future, and this isn’t something I’ve had before.

Because of the circumstances with how our group was formed, with me personally being in a different state, I think this led me to enter this project a bit negatively. When I returned the week after groups formed, I came to learn that the majority of the story had been decided on, and there was no real further discussion on the content we were going to create. This really disappointed me personally, because one thing I really wanted to work on this semester was fleshing out an idea and transforming that into a script, but because of the nature of our film, we didn’t really have any dialogue or the need for a script.

In the weeks before our film shoot, I think our group worked really well with organising location, actors, props and set. We went as a group to Chapel Street Bazaar to pick out props, and we all decided on the soft 50s aesthetic we were going to go with for the film.

The day of the shoot was really stressful for me, because I was working on camera and wasn’t very confident in my ability with the EX3, but Isobell really helped me on the day with solving a few unforeseen issues with the camera and some of the operations. Communication on the day of the shoot was really good as well, because we’re friends I think we all felt really comfortable with each other and that made it easier to let each other know their thoughts and feelings towards things.

The of the main issues with this specific collaboration, was with the intentions of our group members. It makes it pretty difficult to make a film when you have four people that really only want to direct or produce. This definitely was an issue I believe, especially when it came to assigning roles for the day of the shoot, because no one wanted to work on camera or sound.

In the post-production stage of this process is when I think we were really tested as a group. With the footage turning out the way it did, it made it really awkward to even talk to each other. Our communication started to get worse and worse, because I felt as though there was a lot of tension and negative energy. I started to distance myself in this stage because I was so devastated by the outcome of the shoot. We did a few rough cuts of the film, with a few sessions of feedback with Robin, and finished the film. I think this project has effected my relationship with my friends in this group, and is something I really need to think about and work on for future group projects.

So today we met up with Robin in the edit suites so he could review our process and how our film is coming along. Our process was met with slight disappointed shared by Robin, but with a few tips we were able to improve some things in our film, like the length of shots and some little cuts.

The main thing Robin wanted to address with me though was with the issues from our shoot. He went through the amount of effort he had gone through to do different tests to find out why our footage was blurry. Through the tests he did, he found out what was NOT the issue with the camera, which made me feel more guilty with each thing. What the issue turned out to be was entirely my fault. The issue was solely found with the viewfinder, and the settings you are supposed to set yourself; that of which I did not do, and to be honest, not really know how to do anyway. We apparently went over in it in class, but I was either not there physically or not there mentally. So the problems were with the peaking of the display screen of the viewfinder, as well as contrast. So the peaking was on full, which is usually used for low contrast settings, which we didn’t have because low contrast is usually indoors, with outdoors being high contrast, so that is the first problem. The second issue was that the brightness was on full, which with those two together being wrong, make it hard to pick focus and make clouded judgement on where focus was.

So this was an operator error, so the camera wasn’t at fault, which I kind of already knew, but was devastated to find out. I guess if I were to make some changes so this wouldn’t happen the next time would be to actually do some test shots with the camera I know we’re going to use, as well fully research the camera and it’s functions. Another thing I would do differently next time is to not work on camera. I knew at the start of this semester that I didn’t want to work on sound, but now I think I definitely know that I prefer human interaction much more than interaction with a machine. I really dislike the technical pressure that comes along with using equipment, mostly because if something goes wrong, it’s easy to be blamed and to even blame yourself, which I have done a lot in this process.

So upon viewing the material we shot over the weekend, it’s safe to say that quite a bit of it is unusable. Most of the shots outdoors were not very sharp, which I’m not surprised by because of how hard I, as well as others, were finding it on the day. I’m feeling really disappointed by it and feel really guilty about it. We tried to hard as a group to organise everything and put it together and it has been really put back by this issue. I’m not exactly sure as to why this has happened, but I’ll have to find out, because this is the last thing I want to experience again.

The day of the shoot is always nerve-wracking and stressful, and a few things always seem to go wrong. The first issue of the day we faced was camera, and setting the white balance. Because we were shooting mostly outdoors, and with the sun constantly changing between shots, we wanted to set our white balance to 5600k so we wouldn’t have to worry about it for the rest of the shoot, but it took about half an hour to figure out how to find the settings to do this, even though we covered it in class.

One of the main issues we faced on the day of the shoot was the wind, and because most of our filming was to be done outside, it proved to be quite difficult. Even though the weather isn’t something we have any choice over, if we were to do something different for next time, it would be to have a few safety days just in case the weather isn’t in our favour. Another thing I would do next time is shoot an indoor film, or really limit the amount of shots outdoors. The main shot that this effected was of the girl on the banana lounge reading a magazine (below), which she could hardly do with the wind.

Another issue I faced with doing camera was focusing outside. The viewfinder made it very difficult to see what was actually in focus, especially towards the end of the shoot when the sun was at it’s brightest.