I am yet to view the footage that I filmed over the last few days, so I thought I’d take the time to reflect on my performance as a director and cinematographer before I am potentially disheartened with unsatisfactory results, because as of now I am very pleased with myself.
I want to begin by noting that I never in a million years thought I would be able to be so familiar with a camera as I have learned to be this semester, and for that I am really proud of how far I’ve come. I think back to last year when I was filming my documentary and I was stumbling my way through setting up the camera, just guessing at what each button to press, and over the last few days I had quite a number of out of body experiences where I was looking at myself efficiently ticking off every task on the list of setting up shot by making the brightness and contrast of the viewfinder was correct, white balancing, fixing the focus and having either a correct/desired exposure with absolute ease. The only issue I had with setting up a shot over the three days of filming, was when in one shot I was for some reason just unable to achieve a shallow depth of field. If I take nothing away from my studies this semester other than confidently knowing how to use a camera then I will be supremely satisfied.
However, this is not the only thing I have improved on to my knowledge. I felt so much more (for lack of a better word) direct with my subjects when directing them as I knew very clearly what I wanted from them and mostly how that would materialise in the footage.
Anyway, I’ll go look at my footage now and hopefully I won’t be retracting anything I’ve said in this post.