I was confused when I enter the first class of the second week; I was actually late and missed 50% of the first class. I was trying to catch up with all the things that I have missed at that time. I was just getting back from winter break and my mind was still in a holiday. Therefore I had plenty of things that I need to catch up with. I believe that most of the students in the class have started their blog post in the first week and I have not started any thing yet.

The tutor gave me some information about the blog posting and the first assignment, which was mostly about blog post. Besides, he was also giving me some information about this course and things that I have missed in the first class and second class of the first week.

I though that, the blog post was not that important, but actually blog post is the main part of this course, and we need to keep blogging every week. We have to fill it with some information from tutorial and some activity that were given in the tutorial. Furthermore, I also needed to blog about the progress that I have made during the make of the short documentary film.

I was busy with several things, till I lost my focus on this course, fortunately my tutor is supportive and helpful, he was always available for consultation and he was also giving me a lot of constructive feedback. In addition, there are several in class activities that help me to collaborate with my classmates.

When I missed the first and second class of the first week, and turn up late for the first class of the second week. I was totally confused with this course, but there are chances for me to catch up by collaborating with the students in the class.

Honestly speaking, I turn up late to class most of the time and missed several classes due to unfriendly wheatear that Melbourne has, but the tutor and my classmates are helpful. They help me to catch up with the materials that I have missed and also give me clue to improve my performance.

Through out this semester, I have learned how to collaborate with people in several projects, particularly film production. Everything that I have noticed from this course is the group work. This course contains in class activities that allow me to collaborate with my classmates, which also teach me how to collaborate with people and accepting people’s idea.

I believe that in film production industry, we need to work as a group in order to create a good film. Therefore, most of the skills that I have picked up from this course, particularly collaborative skills, will help me to collaborate with others in my future carrier.

Without collaboration, I would not finish the short documentary film that I am making. I have received helps from friends and my tutor to push me through all the hard time that I have faced during the making of this short documentary film.

There are plenty of things in this short documentary film that I am going to talk about. Before I start to reflect on this documentary film that I am making, I would like to briefly explain the purpose of making this film.

Well, the purpose of me choosing to make a short documentary film is to introduce and promote my ethnical background to the university students via the story of my fellow countryman Fivo Freitas.

Fivo Freitas originally from East Timor and long term activist, advocate and Spokesperson for the East Timorese Asylum seekers since 1999- to the present. He won several awards, such as; International Public Relation United Nation Award (IPRA UN Award) and Outstanding Yarra Community Service Award in 2003.

Fivo play crucial role in helping hundreds of asylum seekers and refuges in 1999, but for this short documentary film I am just focusing on him helping one of the Timorese refugees (Robin dos Santos).

I have faced several challenges in making this film; there are some technical challenges, which caused the plan of making this film keep changing.

The first plan of this film was suppose to focusing on the interview of Fivo and get some information from the third person (Ana Noronha). But there are several factors that caused the first plan for the short documentary film does not work out like it suppose to be.

After I did the rehearsal interview with Fivo Freitas I found out that the third person that I should interview (Ana Noronha) is not available, because she is moving back to East Timor a year ago. When I heard the news of her absence, I had to find a replacement for her, which means that I also need to change the plan that I have made before.

From the rehearsal interview, I gather plenty of information and I used them to make a new plan. When I realized that I had to find a replacement for Mrs Noronha, I straight away contacted Robin dos Santos to replace her.

Besides of having difficulties of finding the third person for this short documentary film, there are also some technical errors that occurred during the process of making this film.

One of my friends who helped me in sound recording was doing a good job. He helped a lot with the sound, which resulting a good sound quality. However there are some mistakes that he did which gives me a hard time to edit this short documentary film.

In some part of this film, there is a shadow of a stick going in and out of the frame, that’s the shadow of shotgun microphone. I had to understand that he felt tired holding the shotgun microphone for more than six minutes.

Moreover there were big arguments going on between the people in my team about the lighting. The guy, who was helping me out to set up the light, was too confident with the lighting quality that he set up. When I looked into the camera, images were not looking too bad, so I deiced to roll the camera and start to shoot. As soon as I transferred the footages to the computers in edit suit, then I realized that there are some extra effort is required on fixing and editing the short documentary film that I am making.

All this errors and silly mistakes that I have done during the process of making this film can be a lesson for me, which I can learn from it and try to avoid it in the future. Furthermore, by making this documentary film I have come to learn a range of skills namely social inter-cultural skills, teamwork, audio and video recording, as well as video editing skills.

I have learned a lot of skills from the activities that we had in the class, but among all those skills that I have learned, editing skills gives me a lot of benefit in improving and fixing the short documentary film that I am making.

as the picture above shows the video effect in Adobe Premier,this video editing skill was taught to us in week 10, and by knowing how to use video effect, I can manage to fix the short documentary film that I am making.

This video editing skills is also useful in the future, because I am definitely going to make more film in the future and more editing is required.

There are several challenges that I am facing when I am doing the final editing for this short documentary film.

In the final stage of editing I have put an extra effort on the video effect, because I need to reduce the amount of lighting that destroy the images in the video.

I know that I have such a limited time to finalise this film, but I have to put extra effort, in order to push it through.

During the process of editing this film I have learned a lot about film editing, and I also started to find out several mistakes that I have done, during the shooting of this film.

LIGHTING
One of the most determining conditions to making a good video is lighting. Lighting serves a range of purposes such as creating the aesthetics, providing sufficient visual appearance, as well as making a video looking professional. Moreover, good lighting really makes a video worth watching.
There are two sources of lighting in shooting a video:
• Natural Light
• Artificial Light

Natural Light
This is the light that comes from the nature without any alteration of the amount of light and brightness by a hand-made light or other products/devices. This type of light enables us to capture a scene in its most authentic condition. Therefore, it creates an authentic aesthetic. However, there are also certain problems that one might encounter when shooting a video using just natural light. One primary limitation to shooting using natural light is the space and room. The space (location) where the shooting is done is very important when using just natural light since the light might be limited and cannot be altered. One interference that could be done in the situation when only minimum natural light is available is changing the Gain setting on the camera, if artificial light is not to be applied or not available. However, using this option should be the last reserve since it requires careful technical treatment. Even worse, when using a camera that does not have the option of setting the gain, it could turn to be a huge blow technically. Therefore, a camera person is required to have a good sense of judgment when choosing a space to film using just natural light.

Artificial Lighting
On contrary to natural light, the second type of light is the artificial light, which is the light produced by electrical lights or other types of materials that produce light. Since it is a source of light that is produced by lighting equipment, the amount of light, the color, and the tone could be altered and manipulated to create certain aesthetics and feel to convene certain messages to the audience. Artificial lighting is mostly used in interview mode filming as well as filming for specific purposes, such as green or blue screening, as well as staged filming or studio recording.
In regards to my choice of light during the shooting of the interview with Fivo Freitas, as well as Fivo’s chit-chat moment with Robin dos Santos during Robin’s visit to his residence, natural light was not sufficient, since it occurred in a closed room in the evening. Therefore, I had to apply artificial light. However, due to lack of experience in using artificial light in shooting a video, I miscalculated the amount of light I needed to make the shot a good one. Therefore, I applied too bright artificial during the filming, which resulted in the video looking too bright. This was made worse by the fact that it was somewhat difficult to make a good judgment on the much smaller size of the camera’s view finder. What could have helped great though was the Iris/Zebra function of the camera, but I was not aware of this function until a later stage.

Lack of stage planning, especially in terms of light positioning contributed as well to the problem. I therefore have learned from this experience and strive to improve in the future when I shoot an interview or scenes that require the application of artificial lighting.

I appreciated the works that Jordao Sousa has done as a sound men in my team. he helped a lot with the sound, which resulting a good sound quality. However there are some mistakes that he did which gives me a hard time to edit this short documentary film.

As this footage shows, there is a shadow of a stick going in and out of the frame, thats the shadow of shot gun microphone. I had to understand that he felt tired holding the shot gun microphone for six minutes.

As a director I suppose to cut or stop the take of that part and retake it, but I did not realise till I went to the editing suit. I have limited time to fix it, and it is impossible for me to go back to Fivo’s residence to redo the interview, so I just need to find a way to cut this bit out of this short documentary film.

Robin dos Santos house is quite small and we were struggling to move around, I was trying hard to figure out the way of positioning the camera. I was afraid that the camera position in Robin’s house would result a bad frame, so I decided to take Francedez off the frame.

After I collected all the footages that I got, and I started to edit them, I realised that the camera position in Robin’s house resulting a better frame than the one from Fivo’s residence. It was a big surprise for me.

In the future, I would think twice before I decide to position the camera.

In this part I was struggling to set the camera in Fivo’s residence, I was not quite familiar with this particular camera, I have several lessons in class about this camera, which allow me to learn how to use this camera, but I was still need learn more about it.

At that time Fivo was not happy with my miss preparation, luckily I had Francedez Suni to back me up, Francedez helped to set the camera and he let me decided the positioning of the camera. I wanted to position the camera in the middle, but I thought that it would not give enough space for Fivo and Francedez to sit, therefore I moved the camera to a weird angle that result pretty bad frame.

When I hear that Ana Noronha left Australia for good, I was struggling to find a new replacement for her, because I was quite set and prepare for shooting the film.

After the rehearsal interview with Fivo, he gave me several options and several names of people that he was helping. From five different names that he gave me, only two of them that comes with contact detail. I tried to ring Antonio Ornai, but he did not answer my call, so I decided to call Robin dos Santos.

When I called Robin dos Santos, he was confused with the purpose of calling, so I explained to him the process of this short documentary film that I am making and he agrees to be part of it.

Robin was one of the hundred refugees that Fivo helped. He came here by boat and he did not speak english at all. Robin came here in 1999 when East Timor was gaining its independence, but the pro Indonesian militia created a chaotic situation in the island.

Robin left his motherland to avoid the conflict and seek for a better life in Australia. he went through quite tough situation before he met Fivo. He had a language barrier, he was still in an adaption process, and at the same time he was going to be send back to his motherland.

After meeting Fivo, Robin said that he felt save and finally found someone that he could trust. Fivo help him to stay in Australia and gave him a chance to learn and improve his english.

I would like to thank Robin dos Santos for sharing his personal life story and sacrificing his time to participate in this short documentary film. I without him, I might spend more time to seek for the replacement for Ana Noronha.

I would like to thank Jordao Sousa for helping me with the sound, the sound quality for this short documentary film is satisfying and there is no extra effort that I need put to fix it.

When I compare the sound quality of the actual interview and rehearsal interview, I could hear a difference between them. In the rehearsal interview there are plenty of background noises that disturbing the interview and also there was some echo sound that going on in the room.

From the rehearsal interview I realised that the short documentary film, particularly the film that contains a lot of interview, require good sound quality. therefore I was quite focus on the sound as well.