When I first attended this studio, I honestly had no idea what to expect. A part of me was excited but the other part of me was scared because it’s something new. All I knew was that Real to Reel is different from everything that I had done before; I knew that there was a lot I could learn in this class, and I was right.

In my first blog post, I said that I wanted to learn to create media that only presents the truth, essentially – a documentary. I am now aware that producing a media piece that is raw and real is much more difficult than it sounds. I underestimated this because I constantly thought, “Just how difficult could it possibly be?” Well, I think it is safe to say that it is much tougher than I imagined. For me personally, the trickiest part about creating a documentary is that the smallest modification in the interviewee’s answers can already result in a completely different message. Yet at the same time, we are pressured to maintain the documentary interesting and engaging for the audience.

Another goal that I wanted to achieve was to improve my interviewing skills. Although I was not the interviewer for the documentary that we produced, I was still able to ask a few additional questions and that in itself was enough to help me. It was not much but there are definitely going to be more opportunities for me to improve in the future so I am not too caught up upon it.

The last objective I was hoping to accomplish from this studio was to increase my knowledge on filmmaking and my technical skills. For this, I can proudly say that this objective has definitely been accomplished. I was able to expand my technical knowledge about cameras as well as editing. In addition to being able to play around with the cameras, I actually got to produce my first ever non-fiction media piece.

Overall, I am very pleased to say that this studio is able to meet my expectations and that I am able achieve my goals from this studio.