#1 First Film Edits

I am both nervous and excited whenever I get to work with group members on a film. Even though I completed a similar shoot in my last studio, I know that it is not easy to produce a successful film and there is still a lot of knowledge to learn. I am kind of prefer group work more, and on a personal level, it improves my communication skills within the team. For the film field, it is a key to consolidate skills and to identify problems with each other, and provide various ideas to improve skills with the group members.

The script we chose was The Book. After the first discussion on messenger, we reversed the roles of Bryan and Leanne to achieve a better editing effect and a better integration of the two spaces. The distance shooting was still a difficult part for us. At first, we all insisted on shooting in a zoom because it would be easier for the rest of the group to give us advice. One of the actors used two devices to access zoom, one to communicate with us and the other to record in real-time. This is a useful method, and worth learning from. But after many failed attempts by another actor, we decided to go directly to the phone to record the clip, upload it to the folder, and then finally integrate it. Before that, we uploaded our room photos to the Google folder so that we could choose the best two spaces to shoot in, at a glance and to save time. Further, I mirrored the shots of Leanne talking and Bryan walking to the front door in post-editing to achieve uniformity and not to overdo it, which was important so it wouldn’t look weird visually.

The drawback of my work is, I did not think to put a beginning scene, to provide an external environment to the audiences. It appears to be a sudden start, with no time left for the audience to have a buffer and enter the plot. Moreover, you will notice that the frame size of my video is not uniform, which seems to make the viewer feel like an editing mistake or even a sudden jump from the storyline. However in fact this was a special elaborate design on my part because I was willing to highlight the process of Leanne taking the book away without letting him know, and the smaller video size probably indicates the sneaky, unnoticed feeling. I might refine my skills later to achieve the presentation I want through proper editing techniques.

Indeed, working together as a team allowed us to express ourselves and listen to others’ perspectives, and Andrew is like the captain of our crew, brought suggestion and new ideas to the film. Besides, the group uploaded footage within the time limit, which kept us on track. Overall, as a group we did a great job for the first film and thanks for our cooperation!

#2 Animatic Exercise

This exercise is a fresh learning experience for me and it was fun. I have had experience with hand-drawn animatic before, but it seemed a little different than this exercise. 

I used the self-timer function of my phone’s camera to take each photo, and I used both my handheld tripod and a large tripod to try to adjust different camera angles to make the animation as diverse as possible. From the process of shooting, I came across and summarized some considerations that may help me in my future studies or work. Firstly, the camera lens position should be absolutely fixed, even a little bit of position deviation will cause the final image incoherence or even mismatch, it is best to look at a shot from beginning to end after it is finished, if there is a problem, you can take a second shot. For example, in edits 1, the photo when I took away the book connects to the picture of me lying on the floor searching for the book, it was a bit abrupt. Besides, I realized that I hadn’t been completely consistent and that the position of some of the items and my posture were wrong to the naked eye.  Secondly, the appropriate shooting perspective and switching, so as to achieve the most interesting, storytelling animation effect. 

Additionally, the animation is a point-to-point representation of the image, and the more pictures you take, the smoother the image will be as you move from one action to another. Further, as you continue to shoot and challenge yourself, new ideas will emerge. The focus of this exercise is on the importance of angles when shooting and that of composition, as well as continuity.  Whereas what I did not reach was that the continuity between the photos wasn’t good, it was a bit jumpy and not smooth. This was probably due to my lack of proper split-screening.

Stitching photos through editing, thus producing characters that seem to come to life. Meanwhile, I added background music and sound effects to make the animation look more lively and easy to understand. In fact, this exercise was a good example of what deliberate means, and through animation, I learned that I need to think about not only the quality, movement, and storyline, but also the coherence and story of each image.