The first two weeks of ‘Ways of Making’ have essentially been a crash course in camera and audio recording setups. Even though I have worked with similar cameras before and have used the audio recording equipment in the past, it has been a really good revision process to get my head back into filmmaking mode. This week I realised that I have really missed being out in the field actually creating video content.

Last semester I did a straight editing studio, which was great because there is definitely a part of me that gets a lot of satisfaction out of sitting at a computer all day chopping up video and audio clips. However, on top of this I was also doing a great deal of editing for my internship, which meant that for the majority of my week I was sitting in a dark room looking at a screen. As much as I love the creative process of editing, with computer work always comes numerous technological problems that often take hours trying to fix (and that part of editing, I definitely do not love). Thus, these last couple of weeks have been a breath of fresh air, because I’ve been able to get out of my chair, out of a dark editing suite and into the real world, working with other people on really fun little filming exercises.

My favourite exercise was shooting abstract 30 seconds clips, because there was no limit to what we could film and we weren’t shooting to edit. I think this freedom gave my partner Gabe and I a chance to really concentrate on the technical details of the shot: the exposure, the white balance, the focus, the framing and the depth of field. In the end I thought we shot a few really nice clips and I believe they turned out so well because we had the time to set up properly and we didn’t need to think about continuity problems or narrative flaws.

All in all, I’ve realised that taking time to set up a shot properly is always worth it and also, maybe I don’t just want to work as a film editor, maybe I want to be a part of the pre-production or production process (rather than just post).