To prepare for the major project, we had done multiple practices in class in order to have a better understanding of documentary. In this portfolio, I included a food making show exercise, an experimental montage, an interview, an observational video of sunset and some hand-held food focusing exercises.

The food making video was not difficult to make. The most important part for me was to use the right footage for the layers, so the close-ups comes at the right timing. Using the right timing will be the most important thing I learned from the production of this video.

The montage was the most difficult one to edit because the combination of visual and sound is the key point of the whole experiment. I chose a piece of dark beat for the background music and edited all the footage in black and white with strong contrast to fit in the vibe of the music. I came out really abstract and dark and I achieved the effect I was looking for so I will consider this experiment successful. The editing of this video helped me become more familiar with the color editing panel on Premier, which I believe will help me in the future when I edit the major project.

The major project will contain a huge amount of interviews, so practicing interviews will be very important. The day we shot this video we actually interviewed three people, however the previous two interviewees didn’t give us very detailed answers and they looked like they are not interested at all. Luckily the third interviewee in this video was very happy to answer the questions and gave out some useful answers. So I think the list of questions, ways of asking and choosing the right interviewee is crucial in an interview.

The sunset video is an observational video I did on my own interest because I really wanted to make an time-lapse video, and I believe I will be using many time-lapse videos as transitions in my major project, so this is an exercise for it.

For my major project I want to make the food as delicious as possible. So I will be using big aperture and shallow depth of field for the food footages, so I went out and did some exercises. Unfortunately the lighting in the restaurant was not bright enough to have to best visual effect. I also shot these videos with a hand-held DSLR to see how it will look, because sometimes for have the best angle, there might not be enough space for a tripod. Luckily my hands seem to be quite steady and the footage look stable. With enough lights, I believe I can do well in the actual shooting for my major project.