Project 1 Report

This first project was a pleasure to work on; my team and I got along effortlessly. I was in charge of a lot for this project simply because of the time crunch we were on. It was difficult trying to get everyone together to film at the same time, so I did a large portion of the filming and all of the editing. I’d definitely say I completed my task; we all went above and beyond for this project and I tried my best to match and encourage the enthusiasm the group was generating, so I put a lot of effort into my shots and editing. I think a little bit more organization would be good for the next project I’m on, specifically with editing– I spent a ridiculous amount of time sorting through the video files trying to figure out which was which since we took so much footage and named or organized none of it. Had I been a little smarter about labelling and keeping track of what footage was where, I’d probably have a bit more time to have color corrected the footage at the beginning of the video. That was a good lesson to learn that I’ll take with me moving forward as best as I can.

In terms of the team, I think we worked splendidly together. Jake wrote a great script for us to work off of; Mike did a great job of throwing out options for how we’d shoot scenes; Maizy and Caitlyn were fantastic with polishing the storyline and coming up with ideas of how we’d translate the story from text to video smoothly; and everyone tried their best to make time for each other and the project. We’re an ambitious team, and when it came down to the wire, Maizy, Caitlyn and I worked hard to schedule our shots within the timeframe of a single day’s worth of daylight. I was really proud of the collaboration that happened to pull together what we did. We were all readily available for each other to contact and the dialogue was open, amicable, and productive. I absolutely loved working with all the creativity we brought to the table; there were so many ideas we couldn’t possibly fit into a single video, and the project was constantly evolving as we went about the production process. At one point we ran into the issue of not having a mask or some sort of scary prop to scare Jake’s character with; the crew thought on their feet and came up with an innovative solution that got the job done. It was an absolutely phenomenal group to work with, and I’m proud of the work we did with the restraints put on us.

As a final product, I think our video is pretty above and beyond. It’s not even close to being something professional obviously; but with the constraints that were on us, our limited access to equipment, and the requirements we had to meet just to get a passing grade, I’d say we did pretty well for ourselves. I put a lot of thought into the shots I took, and I know the same goes for the shots taken by the rest of the crew, to make sure they flowed together smoothly once we had everything in post. We had a wide variety of shots that both make sense for the scene as well as make the video visually interesting for the audience to watch. The audio and visuals at the beginning of the film aren’t quite as good as the rest of the video, simply because of the time constraints I ran into; had I had more time, I would have been able to sync up the better external audio and color corrected the scenes. We put a lot of thought into the music we chose to overlay the video; we wanted it to be funny as well as in line with the tone for the scenes it was associated with. The dialogue is necessary, if informal, to move the story along.

I’d say our pacing for the editing is pretty okay as well; it’s slower and longer shots at the beginning, and then faster-paced editing towards the end, which lines up well with the music I think. The two close-up shots of Jake’s face at the beginning are similar, but signify two very different turning points in the video, which I definitely liked; I think we did well to string scenes together in our heads while we were filming in order to make something funny and put together for the end product. The acting on Jake’s part was fantastic; he was receptive when I changed things up and was directing him around a scene, and took a lot of initiative to help mold each scene he was in to create the tone and setting. Overall, I’m very satisfied with my teammate’s work and effort, as well as the final product for this project.

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