Coursework: Evaluation #3

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Before this project I had not directed nor edit before. And I had barely acted or written. So many things throughout this process was entirely new thing to me. I had always enjoyed film but did not pay much attention to the intricacies of the production. But now I know how difficult and tiring it is and we only had to do 2 minutes of footage! A real production would have been so much more.

Here is what i would have rated myself before and after this whole project

Payut Wongthongsri

Cinematography - 3 (+2)

Camera work - 1 (+1)

Editing - 1 (+3)

Sound & Music - 2 (+2)

Visual Effects - 0 (+1)

Performance - 2 (+0.5)

Creativity and Confidence - 2 (+2)

Organisation - 0.5 (+0.5)

Cinematography

I have always been interested in how film looks and the framing is for each film and genres. Some mind blowing shots have just been etched into my mind and I will never forget them. With my love for them I strive to make the most beautiful shots possible and sometime it works and sometime it doesn't. Before this I would have just done everything through intuition but with this i have learned many techniques and why they are done. I want to keep improving to make each shot as beautiful as they can possibly be. I want them to be able to tell their own story just by looking at them, afterall a photo is worth 1000 words.

Camera work

I have always had shaky hands and very little knowledge about cameras but fortunately we had our friend Pun with us and he taught us many things about the camera. The contrast, saturation, aperture, focus, lighting and many more. Even though I would not feel completely comfortable doing it all myself I feel slightly more confident with it.

Editing

With me knowing so little about editing I had the most to learn about editing, and sure enough I did. Never have using Adobe Premier Pro before this I learned a whole lot that would allow me to make my own video/project now if i wanted to. Before this i would have needed help with everything. Editing software's are just so overwhelmingly massive. There is so much you could potentially do and I just ponder over what could be done and don't do anything in the end. Now i've learned how to use layers, ordering, sound mixing, colour correcting, 21:9, settings, rendering and so much more.

Sound & Music

This is very closely related to editing and I learnt how to choose songs and how i should record sound as it is one of the hardest things to do in film production as I have experienced. I have experienced 3 recording gadgets 

Colour Correction

Sequences

Visual Effects

I had no idea how Adobe After effects worked at all or any visual effects software really. So theoretically I could have learnt most about this. Unfortunately our project required little to no visual effects at all so i ended up not learning much.

Done by lewis

Performance

I have been average with my performances overall and I didn't get any scenes in this so I didn't get to properly learn first hand but fortunately directing Lewis around did teach me some small things such as expression, positioning, gestures, believable and some small stuff here and there

Creativity and Confidence

I have always been a pretty creative person, day dreaming on my own about stories and interesting concepts. I had the chance to explore it in this project. I started of with a very big concept that wouldn't have been possible if I had thought of it thoroughly. We then trimmed the concept down until the simplistic vision you see in our finished product. It's slightly sad for me because I had vision i really wanted to do but wasn't really possible. It has taught me that not everything you want to achieve is possible but at the same time, dreaming big is not wrong and is something that should be celebrated.

My confidence with this project was very wishy washy. One day I would be very confident, one day I would think that this is the worst thing ever. It was a weird but interesting experience to say the least. Seeing it go through it production stages has made me love it much more than I ever would imagine. It's a simple and mediocre product but it's OUR product. I am much more confident now about my future projects than I would be without this experience.

Organisation

Me being the lazy and unorganized person I am, I was extremely unsure about how this would go. It did take several weeks for us to get everything ready to a stage that we could start shooting. And even on the day we shot we were not ready at all. After months of doing this it has taught me to work hard and to create a plan that we can follow as it is much easier for everyone in the project. Also to not do your work the last minute because it'll never work out in the end.

I have additionally learned to delegate work load and maximizing efficiency with the exception of myself but that should be fine.

Overall I have learned more than I could have bargained for in this project and I am very glad that this was the case. I will use the experience in many other things in life as they apply very well to most things. I will allow me to perform so much better with related tasks especially media and coursework related tasks naturally.