In pervious courses I did not have many hands on experiences that allowed me to learn and gain an understanding of production. Coming into the digital director I expected to gain that experience, while also learning about how digital technology has affected filmmaking now.

With the major project these expectations were met. Initially we had planned to do a campaign project with the class being split into groups that would have had develop campaigns for individual projects. This was however changed into to the whole class working on one series while assuming different roles within teams to help realize the project.

As a member of the production team I discovered the hands on experience I wanted. As I took on the role of technical assistant director, co-cameraman and assistant editor, I was able to be involved in each stage of production, which helped me learn and understand the workings of producing content.

Through the pre-production stage as I worked with the director I gained a good sense of communication and understanding ideas that weren’t my own, as well as learning how to outline storyboards and shot-lists. On set and production, as the technical assistant director, helped me improve my skills as a camera man and improved my communication as I had to work with the main cameraman and convey the composition of the shots our director wanted. During the post-production I was able to take over editing duties and learned how to cut footage, assemble them as well learning the different types of transitioning techniques.

Executing the project itself was a great experience, and improved each shooting day. On the first day there was a lack of preparation, which resulted in certain roles overlapping, such me taking over sound duties, which was not my responsibility when the role’s had been allocated beforehand. There were instances where were making creative decisions and figuring out how and what we wanted to on the day of filming itself, without any preconceived thought. Of course as we moved onto the next episodes things became much smoother as we became more prepared and heavily discussed how we wanted to make everything.

Upon needing to improve the production process what also became apparent is that there needed to be efficient communication between the production group and the other groups, mainly the writing. Which allowed both the scripts to be production friendly, as the writing team took to consideration how feasible accomplishing certain ideas or gags would be, as well as the production team being able to change the scripts to accommodate our needs. Overall producing the content went well as there were no serious disputes within our group and in our communication with the other teams.

The one thing we hadn’t gotten a chance to explore was the crowd funding campaign, which I think would have been an interesting aspect to explore. Creating a successful crowd funding campaign would be the next aspect of digital filmmaking I want to explore.