Reflect upon your experience in class.  Did anything come as a revelation to you?  Did you learn something new technically; about the camera, or film craft in general?

I come into Media 3 as a second year Professional Communication student and although I had undertaken the VCE Media subject, and participated in the Making Media course at RMIT last year, I still felt severely behind my peers in the first week. This has, however, meant that I have learnt a lot in the short amount of time that we’ve had in class.

Having used only my iPhone to film the projects required for assessment in Making Media, the cameras we used in class were an intense step up. I initially found it daunting to watch some of my peers make their way around the camera like it was a second limb, but I suppose everybody’s got to start somewhere. The discussions we had in class about exposure especially stood out to me, as I had never really considered or fiddled with it before. After seeing the difference it made to some of our shots, however, I could apprectiate that fact that although it may not seem like something of severe importance to the layman, it did increase the quality of the shots we produced.

The discussion we had on Wednesday about the order in which a director may shoot the separate shots in a scene was also insightful. As mentioned in my previous blog post, I had considered this decision making process before, and to be able to find some answers to those questions was enlightening. Learning that the filmmaker/s usually set out a list of the different shots they aim to achieve first, and then order them in the most practical and time efficient way was a process I hadn’t really considered before. We deliberated about whether during a scene that included a shot, reverse shot, and a close up of a person’s phone, if you would shoot all of the first person’s shot and then the close up of them holding the phone, or instead move onto person 2’s dialogue, leaving the phone for later. Although it may require less camera movement and set up to get the shot of the phone whilst the camera was still facing person 1, shooting person 2’s dialogue may be more important to the overall film. It is these decisions that revolve around time management and financial concerns that had a new light shed on them for me, as previously I assumed that the main factor that dictated these decisions was artistic quality.