Thursday, April 26, 2012

15. Final Reflections

In an earlier post, I outlined a few of the technical elements I picked up over the course of this semester. I’ll use this opportunity to put this newfound knowledge into perspective, to explain what unexpected lessons I learned along the way, and to discuss what I learned about myself (as cheesy as that sounds, it is worth discussing).
I came into this course armed only with the knowledge of simplistic high school projects and the basics of TCF 201. Naturally, I thought I knew more than I did. As soon as we moved into new equipment, new techniques, and new types of projects, I was quickly rectified.
One of the most valuable aspects of this course was the feedback and group discussion. Oftentimes I would sit, staring at the monitor in the editing room, wondering why this shot just didn’t work or why this sequence seemed like such a glaringly obvious practice piece. After being exposed to your own images for so long, I feel that you become so used to it that you lose sight of what makes it effective or ineffective. However, when we discussed our work in class, my classmates were able to identify and articulate problems in my pieces and possible bad habits that I had. One instance stood out: while reviewing my Garfield scene assignment project, I knew that the opening sequence of Jon Arbuckle getting ready didn’t feel timed properly and that there was a very jarring, ugly cut between shots later in the piece. During review, the class told me how I lingered just a second too long after little flurries of action in the opener, and how cutting from a white background of a wall to a brown background of cabinets made the cut look rough. Immediately, my eyes were opened, no longer blind to the repetition of viewing and editing. Of course the shots stayed on the screen just a hair too long, granting an overly awkward and non-fluid pacing to the introduction. Of course the mismatched background color made the shots look disjointed, despite the fact that the action was matched well and the color temperature of the footage was identical.
I came to appreciate the value of frustrating mistakes. In my quest to close the gap between vision and reality, I messed up. A lot. I lost audio for projects, forgot how to adjust important camera settings, tried to operate a glidetrack and separate audio with only two people… the list goes on and on. But I find that the more anger-inducing the mistake, the less likely I am to repeat it. I can say with quick assuredness that I will never lose another SD card. Likewise, after 6 hours of shooting with no usable footage to show for it, I will never again shoot an extensive project understaffed. I am glad for these mistakes, because they are happening now, when I have the support and resources to turn them around.
Another important lesson that I garnered from the class was that I needed –and still need – more. I need to edit more to become comfortable with Final Cut. I need to increase coverage on set. I need to entice more people to come and help crew projects, since a hand is always helpful, from the simplest to most complicated setups. I need to set aside more time for each shooting day. First and foremost, I need to shoot more. I can only truly get a handle on what I’m doing with hours of practice. Unfortunately, I missed much shooting due to a family emergency. But in the future I must shoot everything I can: scripts that I write, projects that my friends are working on, bands playing shows, documentary pieces, you name it. As our TA Xavier put it, if I really do want to do this, I need to shoot everything I can get my hands on. I don’t have the reason nor right to turn something down at this point if I can make the time for it.
Finally, this class granted me an exciting and very significant realization: that I want to do this. I’m still double majoring in media production and business, but I want to follow this train of film as far as I can take it. For all the mistakes and missteps I’ve made – and of those there were plenty – I remain excited about film. And that in itself is an exciting prospect.

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