I believe the successful aspect of my work to be my incorporation of found footage. I discovered relevant, eclectic material that illustrated the idea of my portrait. I needed more of it than first thought, bringing me to the least successful part of my work, my equipment usage complications.
My mistakes began from equipment hire. I didn’t book a camera with enough notice, so I could only use the Zoom H2N and a personal camera. When I conducted the interview, I recorded simultaneously on the sound recorder and camera. I was unaware that 8G would not be enough memory for footage and I neglected a second memory card. Therefore I ran out of room for coverage footage not long after the first interview. During this interview, I also only had the recorder on single microphone, so the result was not fantastic. I decided to record again. The second time was better, however I made three major mistakes that cost me the audio. Firstly, I pressed, “start/stop” recording in between each question rather than letting the whole thing roll, to give feedback to my nana. I forgot that I could edit my questions out. Secondly, I was watching so closely to ensure the sound didn’t clip that I got into an incorrect rhythm of “stopping” and “starting” and therefore recorded the incorrect pieces of information. Finally, I did not check every audio file to make sure it had worked. I checked 3 and they sounded fine, but if I had listened to every single one I would have realised that I did not in fact record correctly. I only discovered this audio issue when I went to edit and my subject was not free to record again. These issues resulted in a lack of coverage and decent audio recordings. I struggled to fit mediocre, mismatching pieces together. I am disappointed and believe my work turned out unprofessional and messy.
This entire brief has been a learning curve for me. Whilst I did learn how to detach audio and relay it over other footage to create continuity, the fundamental lesson I learnt of broader media development was that editing will not fix bad audio or footage like I once believed. Recording is a vital step, and therefore I need to be more conscientiousness in the filmmaking process. I am going to take my time and write lists so that exhaustion cannot get the better of me.
PEER FEEDBACK→ My group consisted of: Pat, Lucas, Dusty, Kristian and Elle. The feedback I received from this brief was quite positive. Hearing, “You really did save the lack of coverage with the footage you found” was music to my ears as it was my biggest fear all along, that I wouldn’t. It was also nice to hear that people liked my beginning and my ending. The ending got a couple of laughs (possibly due to appropriate-ness) but I think it fit perfectly with the humorous aspect of my subject that I was trying to convey.
