The Friday of week #7 marks the submission of Project Brief 3 (PB3). Hence, it has been a busy week with shooting, editing, and coming up with the exegesis. In this post, I would cover a brief reflection on how the process went and some learning points that I have encountered along the making of the video sketch.

Firstly, it was my first experience working on the Sony EX3 and I must say, it is quite a big piece of equipment if you’re planning to shoot at several locations in one day. Loaning it from the tech store at building 9, together with a tripod and a set of LED panel lights, you definitely need an extra pair of hands to help lug everything around from one venue to another. Thankfully, a friend and I planned to shoot both our video sketches together to spread the weight and in some ways, seemed a little more productive as well as time efficient.

For my video sketch, I was exploring the tropes of the Western film genre, and applying it into modern contexts, therefore taking the western style of narration and several visual and shot composition, and setting it in modern times and in an urban environment. Overall, the sketch exhibits a person moving into a new city and going through certain struggles to meet her goals. She experiences setbacks and hostility from the new surrounding, but she manages to press on to reach her destination.  Like in classical western films, we see the hero or an outlaw coming into town and getting face to face with the local people feeling unwelcome and treated unfairly. The hero then goes to all lengths to overcome the challenges and restores back order and stability to what was a chaos and lawless front.

It definitely was a challenge shooting and trying to remake and capture the concept I have in my head into reality, more so that I don’t have any background in filming prior to this assignment, therefore every step was a step to unchartered territory. Again, with the help of a fellow genre exploder, she helped brainstorm certain ideas for several scenes and shots to help portray the western narrative a little better.

In general, I thought the sketch worked out pretty well, given the circumstances. Certain things I thought could have been done better would be the length of the sketch. But since it was specified in the project brief that we are only required to do 3-4 minutes length, we are restricted to the guidelines. Would also definitely like to explore other tropes of the western film genre that could be applied into modern day context, maybe develop new iconographies for modern western films, like how the cowboy hats and horses can be strongly related to classical western films.