Expertise Reflection

Our group started the expertise exercise with a professional gear and nothing more than “footsteps” as our idea. My first lesson from the exercise is: even if I possess all the fancy filmmaking equip, I can’t produce anything good without a plan. Be organised.

We did not take Paul’s advises seriously. I handled the zoom F4 and my boom was in the shot more than 3 times. I should have been notified. Importantly, I nearly fell down the metal stairs while I was walking backward trying to record Jamie’s footsteps with the boom out of the shot. I did not really keep in mind when Paul said the AD is very important while shooting because I thought it was just an exercise. Of course, lesson learned for my whole life of filmmaking: never ever overlook the safety procedure no matter how small the project is.

Sitting alone and starring at Premiere Pro in the edit suite gave me a cloud of confusion. I had no clue what our group had done on the shooting day. They were just random shots. In addition, that was the first time I used Premiere Pro. To be honest, I found it funny as well as shameful for a media student having no idea how to operate a professional video editing program (I used Window Movie Maker in Media 1). So, I tried to follow Paul’s instruction to have a proper start. Paul is totally right about the extremely importance of organizing and naming the files. Although it is a time-consuming step, it will save you lots of time trying to find the spot later on. I did the same thing when  I use Pro Tools.

This is my very first version. The exposure is quite OK, but the 2 guys are a bit out of focus. We totally forgot about cinematography aspect when we shot these guys. I used original audios from the camera for this one. The built-in microphone is bad without a doubt.

The second version is better in terms of audio thanks to the Zoom F4.

I was inspired by a one of the music pieces I had collected. It does add a sense of humor to the piece.

Third lesson: get over the feeling of “my footage is crap”. I realized that it not only happened to me, but also happened to my classmates who have no or a little of video editing experience. No matter how my footage is, I have the power to control the story while editing my own video. What done is done. It is better to deal with it than to regret. Watching the footage over and over again until the idea comes.

 

 

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