What have I got out of the studio “Small Things”? 

In my 2 years that I’ve been studying Media at RMIT, I’ve found that Small Things has taught me the most in the shortest amount of time. Most of the studio’s are more hands on and practical than the other classes, but Small Things dived right into the real nit picky stuff and filled in the gaps in my knowledge. It was a good mix of the dreary and boring stuff, like how to coil cables, organise files on Premiere, and what to say when getting ready for a film shoot, as well as the fun practical stuff, like screenwriting, shot construction practice, and editing techniques. The parts that stuck with me without repeating the stuff from my last reflection are:

• Premiere Editing Techniques
  • There were some editing tools and parts that I had no idea even existed, for example, the ability to mask certain areas of the footage in order to alter its settings or the settings around it. This makes it easier now to make sure the protagonist or focal point of a scene stands out.
• Things to remember about filming
  • Always having two people double check everything, whether it’s two eyes on the camera recording quality, sound quality, or lighting positions
  • Plan out shots better prior to the filming day
• Cinematography Techniques
  • Some of the shot construction that we discussed was very interesting, like making multiple shots through panning camera movement

Development

Week 8

Once the groups were organised, we introduced each other and discussed scripts, we decided to choose Lorisa’s script, because a storage container was an interesting location, and a more unusual story. We saw it as an opportunity to play with lighting and sound, and create a set that was more experimental than a more standard dialogue centred script. This meant that we also had the opportunity to play with soundscapes, and create an immersive environment.

We ended up acting out the scene with controlled lighting in one of the classes. I was put charge of lighting, and I began drawing up concepts for lighting rigs. We’re still not sure where we’re going to film, so creating a lighting plan is really quite difficult, as we don’t know how the lights will react in the area, I drew up a crude one anyway.

Week 9

This week we worked out on our roles, Alana and Lorisa, the producer and director began searching for actors to be in the film on Starnow, they received a lot of applications too which we looked over as a group. We also started to consider where to film, we thought it would probably be pretty difficult to actually get the permission to film inside a storage container, so I suggested my basement, because of the ability to control the lighting and sound. We also began producing storyboards, which Chloe took initiative on.

Week 10

By now we’ve got most of the actors sorted, and I’m trying to find the outside of a storage container so that we can do the exterior of the film. I’ve travelled down to Newport as I’ve mentioned in the other post, and taken some shots of shipping containers, boats, and the ocean.

Week 11

This was the big week, we’ve filmed the entire script today and I don’t think we’ll need to do any more filming next week. The majority of the shots that we took were repeats of the script, so we have several shots of everything, with a bunch of various different angles. Though the film took place relatively well, we were missing our producer. Jeevan and I had to go to the nearest OfficeWorks to print out all the paperwork necessary. Lorisa took on the role as producer and director, and I helped out with the shot construction and took on the role of first AD as well. The actors were very collaborative however, and I found them all to be pretty professional. I thought the entire thing went pretty well until I started working on post production…

I began diving into post production, making little edits here and there, but I was a bit preoccupied with other classes to fully focus my attention. Eventually, I made a small edit before class, and the group presented each others edits. We decided to go with mine, although I wasn’t satisfied with the sound quality…

One of the problems with this edit was how shaky the first 3 shots were, and as discussed, it was better that it would be better filmed at night, rather than a pleasant sunny day. We decided to grab some footage and images from various locations on the internet rather than reshooting everything. The other problem was the way in which other parts of the set were distracting, and taking us away from being enveloped in the narrative.

Week 12

I began working pretty ruthlessly on polishing the edit because we were going with mine, I wanted to make sure that it was perfect. However, when I looked through the sound files from the boom mic, I noticed that they were all peaking, like, almost every single sound file was peaking at some point, even the relatively quiet ones. I began to get quite frustrated because it was the only thing standing between me and a well polished film. I managed to mix some of the audio from the camera microphone with some of the audio from the boom mic, I was able to add some effects on premiere to reduce the peaking of the boom mic and amplify the volume of the camera microphone, and ultimately it turned out okay. I’ve learnt a lot about colour grading too, as I experimented with Lumetri Color, RGB Curves, Three Way Colour Corrector and Brightness & Contrast settings. The shades of black that the camera often produced was actually a dark grey, and it’s really interesting looking back at the old videos I made in the start of my degree and realising the huge number of things I could’ve done to improve the quality of my work.

By the end of the film, Premiere was running extremely slow, trying to render all the masks I’d created as well as the high quality footage. The majority of the time spent editing often just went to waiting for the program to respond…

Collaboration 

Throughout the semester, I’ve participated in some interesting group dynamics, the first few groups before week 6 were interesting because I was able to contribute in different ways in groups, some of the groups I played more of a leadership role like directing and camera, and other groups I was able to do smaller parts like acting, which can be useful to observe the way that other groups do their work. In the final group assessment there was the occasional conflict, but I’ve been trying to be less stubborn with the way I want things, and let other people have their say. This worked very well initially, letting Alana and Lorisa take charge, and I doing what I could to help out with each of them as well as organise the lighting and production design, but the group dynamic became a little difficult when Alana couldn’t follow through with her leadership role on the day of filming. This forced me to step into the position of first AD, Camera assistant, and lighting designer all at once which was challenging, but a learning opportunity nonetheless. The other odd group member was Paul/Po/Kittipon, because he only showed up a few times, and barely contributed to the group chat we created. Though he did arrive on filming day to do the sound, the sound quality could’ve been more closely monitored, though I’m sure it was a learning curve for him nonetheless. By the end of the project, it was mostly Jeevan, Chloe and I sitting in the editing suites discussing the editing and what to do next. Jeevan, Lorisa, Chloe and I worked well together, and I’d like to think I did a good job quashing my stubbornness, and I would relish the opportunity to work with them again in future projects.

The studio was also a lot of fun and very educational, will look forward to working with the class and Paul again. 🙂