My experience with Film-TV 2 this semester has provided me with several skills that I had expected to develop, but also given me opportunities to expand my knowledge and problem-solving with some unpredictable twists happening along the way. For our documentary, I wrote one of two short scripts that was to be made into a film, and then our documentary was to be made about the whole process of making each film together and the similarities and juxtapositions between the two. This idea was born at the very start of the semester, with plenty of creativity and eagerness to creative something intriguing but also ambiguous. I always wanted to have an element of ambiguity when it came to the editing process of the documentary, but not revealing everything as it happened in a linear fashion. We definitely achieved this with the final cut of our documentary, with snippets of both short films that we made interlaced with behind the scenes footage of the day of the film shoot. Initially, we had filmed several group meetings in pre-production leading up until our shoot, with the thought of including some of that footage in the documentary as well. This footage was all shot on handheld devices and the audio was not great quality, so we ultimately decided to omit it from the documentary and focus instead on juxtaposing the two films using solely the actual footage from the films and the behind the scenes footage of us on location on the day of the shoot. This works well together and also gives our film some structure that was needed as we were loosing direction after cutting together our first edit. After we stripped it back, we regained our sense of direction and could finish our movie while retaining the sense of ambiguity and also our artistic integrity.

Another unexpected challenge that arose happened on the day of our film shoot, when both the male and female lead actors failed to show up, rendering our film actor-less. I was directing one of the films, but with limited resources I pulled on my acting hat and became the male lead in both films. This was an interesting experience for me, to say the least. It was easier with the horror film, as I was just the actor and could take direction from a director who was removed from the scene. But in the comedy film, I was directing myself and had to imagine how I wanted myself to look, as well as the scene, shot and other actor also. This was a real challenge as I wasn’t ready to commit myself to do the things I had wanted to make the male lead character do. I got to reflect on the hardships of directing and acting and appreciate both roles respectively. As a whole, this semester has given me a broader perspective on filmmaking and a deeper appreciation of every crew behind the camera, as well as the roles in front of it.