Creative Critical Reflection Question #3 (Timeline Visual)
For the third CCR Question, which is as follows:
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
I decided to present my answer in the form of a timeline visual since the question demands a linear / chronological assessment of how my production skills developed over time.
Attached below is the timeline visual I made and also the text of my answer in its entirety in case it is hard to read (although the picture can be opened and the text easily read by viewing it at full resolution).
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
My ‘production skills’ prior to this project were limited to the random bits of information I had picked up from the internet while working on little passion projects, and all of it was limited to editing only. I had absolutely no experience when it came to the actual production process of a film- I had never tried my hand at filmmaking before, so doing camerawork was a total mystery to me. So this is how I went into the Media Studies course: armed only with my passable knowledge of editing and nothing else.
RESOLUTION & COLLABORATION:
Because of this, there was a lot to be learnt if we were to successfully pull off making this film opening. As such, I made sure to plan out everything we had to do in advance and to become familiar with the idea of researching anything I didn’t know about.
Since this was a team project, it was really important to us all that we include each other in every decision. Therefore, I was always vocal with my ideas and made efforts to listen to group members’ perspectives as well- in this way, we could generate ideas and collaborate better overall.
Most of the skills required for filmmaking, we learned in class- including but not limited to editing, camerawork (shots and compositions), how to set the scene, and about sound and lighting. We also learned about production workflow and very soon had to put the processes into action for our film opening.
We started off with genre and audience research through a questionnaire, as explained above. Then, we went through all the processes of production one by one: location scouting, casting, script writing, budgeting, and deciding on props. Finally, we moved on to actually shooting the film and then editing it, both of which came with their own sets of difficulties and learning experiences. The process of us doing all of these things is explained in more detail in my blog.
I was the one who edited the whole film opening; we’d decided that I’d do it alone. That meant lots of hours of scouring the internet for tutorials on how to do this one specific thing I wanted to and google searches about where to find the button or tab I needed in the Filmora software. I was actually really grateful for my small ‘experience’ with editing from before during this process since my learning curve was thankfully not as steep as it could’ve been.
Editing truly felt like an endless path to walk on, and there were technical difficulties as well. For example, I ended up exporting the film around 4 or 5 times one day because for some reason, my PC refused to cooperate with my video editing software and the final film would have weird black frames and jumps in it. I simply had to keep re-exporting until I got a satisfactory export, and this was all just to fix one technical problem!
Apart from editing, script writing was something we had never tried before. I used a script writing software for the first time and found it to be quite straightforward- the UI was simple enough that there weren’t any challenges there. For the blog as well, since I am an enthusiast and have maintained multiple blogs since I was very young, I had no trouble and instead quite enjoyed the process of structuring my blog for this project.
Overall, this project helped me develop my production skills immensely. I learned to actually put some of the previous skills I had to practical use (particularly, my editing and blogging skills), and the project also allowed me to gain some new skills and to learn how to do things I had never tried before. It was a very rewarding experience!
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