The Small Things class has been one of the best studios I had the chance to participate in. Since week 1 we started learning basic but useful information on how to set up our equipment in the most efficient way possible as well as looking ‘cool’ while doing it, an aspect our tutor Paul always held in high regards. My peers and I, all had the chance to experiment and learn one by one, managing the equipment and testing various things out. Usually a typical class would go as such: first we would be explained how and what a said equipment piece would be able to do and what it would be for, secondly we would get the chance to set up the very expensive piece of tech (hopefully without damaging it), and thirdly Paul would give us an assignment where we had to shoot or record audio for a certain script assigned by him. The studio had assignments and tasks designed to helped me and the rest of us to develop our ideas while facing limitations such as time restrictions, cooperating with group members and more importantly challenge ourselves to make the best piece of media we could produce putting together our ideas and developing them step by step.
The final project we presented for our final assignment required a conspicuous amount of work since week 8, where we started our pre-production phase. Each group member had an original idea which we used as a foundation from where to build new and more interesting ideas, to do this we examined which parts of the original ideas was worth it to expand upon. We ended up mixing all our ideas together and came up with a general idea of what we wanted to do and achieve. After pushing aside some ideas that just would not have worked out (John, the vampire idea was bad I am sorry..) we settled on the idea which became the short film we presented. We decided roles pretty quickly and I and John started working as soon as possible on the script, meeting up a few times to put everything on paper and as soon as we had an initial draft for the script, we started storyboarding and brainstorming ideas of how to shoot the film all together.
During our pre-production phase, we were constantly getting new ideas and advice, both from the brilliant Paul and from all our other classmates, thanks to this we were able to improve over our original idea and find different ways to bring our vision to life. The script was continuously changing to fit all the input received and we experimented time after time to see how the results could look.
‘Sweet But Psycho’:
This final cut is the closest I could get to realizing my vision in the given time, of course, many things can still be improved about it and it is evident to see the problems we ran into while shooting. Always in the pre-production period, we considered shooting the whole short film during the night, but after scouting the location, kindly offered us from Julian and his family, and trying out some scenes late at night, we figured we were not ready to take that challenge yet, so we decided to go back to the original idea to shoot during the day. This though proved to still be a quite difficult challenge for us, as it is noticeable I was not very able to fix in editing some problems we had with the intensity of the exposure due to the bright lighting of the sun and possibly the distraction of the cameraman. The lack of proper lighting equipment added to the challenge level where we could rely only on a reflector to direct the light bouncing off the sun onto the actor’s faces. Sadly we noticed the issue too late when the shooting was complete, nonetheless, the final result is quite satisfying and still manages to deliver the tension we wanted to portray. The actors and the crew all worked generally well together and luckily we did not experience any technical health issue thanks to all of us being mindful of what was happening on location. While what we shot was not bad at all, I found myself in the editing process wishing we had shot more material and that what it had looked a bit more polished, surely next time, I will check on the work my teammates are up to and share my opinion on it to improve it together and make the best we can do together. 
For this film my tasked was to handle audio recording and sound, my job was made easier thanks to Peyton and Gill who helped with the equipment and in writing on the log sheet all the names of the different files. A special thanks goes to Payton’s claps, audio syncing was a breeze most of the time and we managed to get crisp audio in all scenes. Researching audio was a crucial task to give the film a totally different vibe, so we looked for good eerie noises that would set the right mood, this taught me the importance of sound design and the effects it can have on the final product. The sound of the knife, the tension music, all had to be coherent and credible so that the scenes would not lose credibility and weight.
The group work was generally very good and all group members did the part that was assigned to them, one of the reasons why I am so proud of this project is definitely because we all had a fun time together making it. Since the planning stage, we all cooperated with our unique ideas, building on top of each other and creating a very nice and friendly environment to work in. thanks to this we all became quite good friends making this one of the best group works I participated in since starting my course at this university. On another note, I would have appreciated help with carrying the equipment back to RMIT after the shooting, but sadly the group member who initially offered to help with this task, changed his mind leaving me to carry all the stuff by myself the day after the shooting. Not only this left me quite disappointed but also it is very risky to leave only one person to handle all the equipment alone since there is always the possibility of some accident occurring when handling a lot of expensive stuff all by yourself, luckily some group members gave the help they could. Despite this accident, I hope I can work again with people capable and creative such as the people present in this group in the near future and I hope to have as much fun as I did this time around.
