I used to list several goals to be reached in this studio in the first weekly blog. Now I want to elaborate on and summarize them.
First of all, one thing I’ve learned is pre-production. I realized that the pre-production of films and television was as important as post-production through Assignment 2. Previously, I, like some people, innocently believed that shooting a documentary meant purely following the protagonists with a camera while putting in some other pictures of the surroundings. But the content of films edited in this way was superficial and lacked thematic expression, making the films purely the piling of materials. The experience of that assignment, however, told me that people needed to view documentaries with distinctive subjects, calling for a clear investigation and careful planning in advance. I need to have a clear concept of the content I shoot and realize what the audience can watch, hear and learn in the documentaries I produce. I also need to list the structure of the whole documentary, be clear about the content each part wants to convey and whether these parts can be linked, etc. This is a difficult challenge, but when you finish pre-production, you’ll find your shooting much simpler and regular.
Secondly, in this lesson, I did have a good understanding of many skills and methods of shooting. One of the greatest lessons was the shooting of interviews. In that class, I was very happy when I knew that we were about to practice the shooting of interviews since we used to have the same assignment in Media 1. I believed maybe I could refer to the videos I had shot and produced. But after class, I found that my shooting perspectives and methods were completely wrong. The position of the camera wasn’t in the specified angle. In fact, this was also one of the difficulties I ran into in the final group project. I was not particularly clear about the interview documentaries with multiple camera positions, like how to place cameras correctly. Then my team members explained to me this problem patiently, and I really appreciate it.
I have my strong points and weak points in terms of video and audio edition. I’m good at the advanced edition of videos, for example, adding mask and subtitles, refinement and toning. But I am not good at arranging the order of the entire videos, and I would always worry that I may put the clips in the wrong orders or make them unmethodical. I’m not good at audio, either. But when I saw the operation order and methods of team members, I seemed to know how to select from a large quantity of complex videos and roughly edit them to a non-fiction media with comparatively complete stories. But audios would still make me confused. I even felt that it was 10 times more difficult than Premiere. I admit I will try hard to learn how to edit a beautiful soundtrack for a video.
Of course, in this term, I also learned about different kinds of non-fiction media through this course, since teachers and other classmates all showed me works of various themes. The most impressive were the topics they chose to shoot, and I couldn’t imagine most part of them. Maybe it was also due to the differences between Oriental and western culture. All of our team members are Chinese, and our ideas tended to be emotional expressions like different expectations in the East and West and Chinese people’s ideas about family. Others produced films on maritime environment, animal protection and religion. Some were independent music producers, and some even produced the interior MV Live of a song. All of this allowed me to see countless possibilities of non-fiction media while expanding my horizon and opening up my mind. I shouldn’t restrict myself to documentaries on emotional expression since the audience also wants to watch more different works.
I have had a great time in this studio, also I’m really grateful that I could choose this course in the last academic year at college since it gave me a much more profound understanding of the procedures of producing non-fiction media. I believe this will be a great help to my future engagement in relevant work.
