This is by far my favourite course I have done at RMIT, When I first met Rohan in class, I saw a teacher who is passionate to teach, he teaches from bottom of his heart and he cares for his students, Unlike some teachers he would answer every question no matter how stupid it was, and explained until he was sure that they have got their answers. The biggest thing I learned from this class is that I don’t think I would be a great online learner. I am a more 1 on 1 person who likes to see people and talk with people. I like to see facial expressions from people when talking with them and this proved to be the right course for me. When a teacher is so passionate about what he does, it reflects others around him, not only me but the whole class had a friendly vibe.

This course has helped me develop my skills of approaching people for interview, I have learned great techniques such as how to make people feel comfortable in front of camera, and how to manage time and work in a group project and so much more. I have enjoyed Rohan’s class because it opened my eyes to who I really am as a person. I enrolled in this course for two reasons, one because I wanted to use my summer the best way possible and two, because I truly wanted to know what documentary making is about. I am glad I enrolled in this course and I could take another one if it was allowed.

In the beginning of the course there was an adjustment period, but as the semester started off and I began attending classes, I learned to be less dependent on the teacher and more dependent on me. I think this was a good learning experience. Sometimes Rohan answer too many questions easily when students need to search for their own answer. I found that it was important to work in a group to find solutions to problems. This is when my critical thinking skills came in handy. Being in a group enables students to be a better member of that learning community.

During the course, what I enjoyed the most was doing our group project which we had to make a short documentary as a group. It was a valuable learning experience, as all my group members had great set of skills and ideas. Some ideas from the group I will consider borrowing to use in my future. I also think the individual feedback that we received on our project from Rohan will help me improve my learning style. I believe, that it is helpful to have someone who has experience in the field tell you their opinion of how you did on a task, because it allows you to see things from other perspectives, that you might not even be aware of. I also learned to be positive about receiving feedback from others.  Sometimes others feedback will not match personal beliefs, but it’s good to reflect on what others think because those comments may come in handy in the future. I have a better understanding on how different ways of editing can lead to different versions of understanding. I learned a lot from weekly feedback on our project, it enabled me to look at both sides of what I was doing and gain new lessons.

After finishing this course, I feel that I have gained a variety of film making skills that will be helpful in other classes and in my future career. All the feedback that I got from Rohan and other will help me focus on the areas that I need to work on. I am glad that the final project was to make a documentary because it allowed me to practice and reflect on everything that I have learned from this course. After watching the documentary I made with my group for this class I was amazed. Before the course, it looked like that the workload was a lot, but now I realized how helpful it was to put most of my ideas into moving images. For example, my colour grading skills is something I consider improving based on future learning experience.

After this course and semester, I feel more confident to continue in the rest of this learning experience in media and communication. I have learned about my preferred learning style. I have gained new confident and goal oriented. My organizational skills have improved and I am looking forward to the rest of my university experience, and to the working world beyond.

 

 

Logline

A story of a family legacy, do nut underestimate the history of this jam-packed van.

 

Synopsis

In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Queen Victoria Market sits a humble van. Full of history, this is the American Doughnut Kitchen. Selling more than 10,000 jam-filled doughnuts a day, their iconic doughnuts ‘donut’ ever let you down. Established in the 1950s, they have now expanded from a modest travelling van to a huge family run business with a full fledged factory. A story full of determination and laughter, this story will satisfy your taste buds.

Today we were editing the final version of our project. We started by adding interview footage that we shot earlier, and photos of Arnold. Everything was going well and we were ready to export the file and show it to Rohan for one final feedback. When Rohan watched it, he pointed out some detailed issues we had in our project, there was a buzzing sound at the start of our video, we assumed it was from the speakers but when i watched the footage from another computer I could still hear it. After reviewing the footage over and over we found the issue and fixed it.

Now it was time for final step of edit, color grading. we shot our footage on 3 different cameras, Canon, Sony and mobile phone. The footage from each camera was different and our challenge was to fix the colors so they look the same. We tried different layers and effects but it was a struggle to get the right color. We spent hours doing the color grading, Sam would put a mask/effect and me and Camilla would give feedback. I have focused so much on the computer screen  my eyes were glitching, I thought I was color blinded, but we continued on the edit.

Today I gained some knowledge on color grading and detailed sound edit and that’s what I love about this course, I learn something new in every session. Towards the end of the day we were satisfied with the color grading and called it a day.

Today I was meeting with my team at 6:00 am in front of American Donut Kitchen Van. We wanted to film the dough preparation and re interview Karl and Belinda later in the day. It was the first time I have been to the Market this early, it was very quiet, shop owners were setting up for the day, and there was no buskers.

We shot the dough preparation and some establishing shots. I realized it was a good time to record some sound from market atmosphere, which could come handy later in edit process, so I went around the market and recorded some background sound. We were suppose to meet Karl and Belinda at 12:30, we had 4 hour to kill, we took a quick nap at uni and came back to market to interview Karl and Belinda.

We recorded the interview inside their van, because there was less noise in there, after the interview Belinda provided us with  photos of her grandfather Arnold (the original owner of the American Donut Kitchen) from the 1980’s which we found interesting to include in the project. We spent the rest of the day reviewing the new footage and adding it to the project.

We emailed Karl and Belinda to do another interview with them, because in previous interview we forgot to ask some important questions relating to the history of American Donut Kitchen, which was crucial for our project and we had some sound issues which we couldn’t fix by editing so we had to retake those shots. Unfortunately they were not available until Tuesday.

We started the day in edit suites adjusting our edit structure according to Rohan’s feedback and instructions given to us in the past few sessions. We all had different Ideas about where a shot should go in editing process, or what music should we use in the background. We respected each others opinion and would try every suggestion then decide as group that which is best, at the end of the day it’s all bout group work and everyone having their say. We all had unique skills when it came to editing, and camera operations, and when we faced an issue, someone’s genius would spark and would surprise the team.

I’m glad we were able to communicate well as a group, and having professional manner towards our group project.

 

 

Today we were editing in edit suites, before we start editing we reviewed the footage we shot on Tuesday, everything seemed good and looked like we had what we wanted until we watched the interview footage. We had some major issue, we realised there was a lot of unnecessary background sound in the interview footage, such as buskers playing music, the sound of trolley being pushed by shoppers and sellers yelling out promoting their products.

We started editing and halfway through the day we had a rough cut, When Rohan watched our Rough edit, he was not happy, because the sound wasn’t quiet right, we didn’t have good content in our interview and we didn’t have enough cut away shots. We started editing from scratch with a new structure and we had to go to market again to get more establishing shots and more interview with Karl and Belinda.

We spent the rest of the day making index cards, an other great technique we learned from Rohan. Making index cards made it easier for us to edit and see what content we have. Index Cards is added to my knowledge database and I will use them in my future projects. Thanks to Rohan!

 

Today I am celebrating Australia day with my family, the traditional Australian way,  making BBQ and gathering with Friends.

Happy Australia day!

Because of the availability of Belinda and Karl we were a week behind, It wasn’t their fault, it’s just that we had to get in contact with them a bit earlier. We were glad that Belinda and Karl were co prating very well with us filming around while their business is operating.

Anyway we were determined and focused to make up for the week we were behind, so we decided to come to uni today and organize our footage, so when we come next week we can start editing straight away.

We archived our video and sound footage, then started drafting how we are going to approach the edit process. We written down everyone’s idea in our group on post it notes and stick them on the wall. I had different ideas for this project such as using green screen and shooting in 4K but our time was limited.We all agreed that our video theme would be vintage because the American Donut Kitchen has a long history and vintage theme would suit our project.

Earlier this week we asked the owners of American Donut Kitchen if we could interview them in their house and we got rejected, so Today we went to Queen Victoria Market to shoot our first Interview with  Karl and Belinda.

We started interviewing them in front of the Donut Van, it wasn’t the best place to conduct an interview but we had no choice. After finishing the interview we went inside the van to film the process of making Donuts. We spent the whole day at Queen Victoria Market, filming the interview, establishing shot and record atmosphere sound to use in our edit.

It was a hot day but we enjoyed it. When we finished our filming we were given some free Donuts by Belinda, very kind of her, we finished our day by eating some tasty jam filled Donuts and Called it a day!

Today we went to Queen Victoria market to film some establishing shots for our documentary project. The market was busy, most cafes were full, and buskers were at every corner. We setup our equipment to get time-lapse of the donut van while they were making donuts and serving customers. Then we went to the other side of the van to get some area shot, in middle of filming we were approached by security guards asking us to move, even though we had permit to film in there, their excuse was that we were blocking footpath. We changed location and moved to the other side of the van to get the shots we needed.

Every 20 minutes the market security guards would come up to us and asked for our permit, some of them were nice and some were not. After a few hours of filming and moving around we completed our shot list and called it a day. We couldn’t interview Belinda because she wasn’t available, we are due to interview her next Tuesday where she will be at QVM with her kids.