Hindsights a wonderful thing isn’t it? Being able to look back and see exactly where you went wrong, where you could have done better? I really wish sarcasm worked better over the internet.

At the end of every project theres always questions on what you could have done better or changed and thats where things like peer review come in, to give you different perspectives. But until someone invents a time machine all you can do with your hindsight is try to learn from it and apply it next time.

This project has taught me a lot, mostly because everything went wrong and it was awful. Im never working with children again, I lost half my footage and couldn’t figure out how to use my editing software to create the effect I wanted.

But from these failures I’ve figured out how to avoid these problems in the future. After all, to err once is human, to err twice is stupidity. As I slowly cross off mistakes that I’ve made and then learnt from Im becoming a better person and media creator. But if you don’t have time to make your own mistakes, learn from mine:

• When making a list of candidates for your portrait, think hard about everyone you know. As I was screening mine to the class I remembered I knew a guy who set off fireworks for a living.
• Don’t work with children, specifically those under the age of six. I know this can’t always be avoided so when you do, be flexible. Children aren’t very good at taking direction so get what you can then work with it in post-production
• Eject your discs properly. I lost half my footage because I was in a rush and yanked out my memory card.

Of course reading about it isn’t really a substitute for doing it so get out there and give things a try! Remember that its ok to make mistakes, learn from them and use them to make your next project better.