Final Reflection
Recording place is a location based documentary practice taught by Rohan Spong. This is my third media class and I have to say it is the best studio that I have taken. Initially, I thought the class was going to be tough and stressful as we only had six weeks for the class. However, I was totally wrong. The class was full of energy and Rohan was definitely an excellent tutor for this course. I have learnt so much which I did not expect and I did love the course and our classmates.
In the beginning of the studio, we were introduced to our main subject “place” of Queen Victoria Market where we spent the whole summer semester here. Regarding to Tim Creswell’s readings, place is not only a physical place such as home and school; place is how you experience and how you make the world meaningful. Our main project for the studio was to film a documentary of exploring a character in Queen Victoria Market.
Throughout the semester, the class gave me an opportunity to improve myself in terms of technical skills and filmmaking. Firstly, I learned how to operate a Sony X200 camera which we used for the whole semester. I only had experience on using DSLR and small camcorder. This was my first time using this kind of huge recording camera. There were some many skills and operation on using the camera. I have learned from my group member and Rohan about how to make the right exposure, focus and white balance before filming. While the camera was rolling, I learned how to utilise the camera in terms of still shooting with tripods, establishing shot, close up shot and others. Moreover, I also learned how to operate the audio equipment such us shotgun microphone with the camera. Although I was so nervous and met some difficulty in the beginning of filming, my team members and Rohan were so helpful teaching me how to get the best shot and the sound.
Secondly, I have obtained the knowledge of interviewing in the class. Rohan gave us many useful tips on filming an interview. He taught us how to create interview questions and the questions must no more than 10 where with the highlighting at the eighth question. Instead of “oh” “yea” sound we have to give the facial expression to make the viewers won’t feel uncomfortable when they are watching the film. The most important part is to use the clip-on microphone on the interviewee to give a clearer sound which was the biggest mistake we made for our group project and I will never forget for any other interview. (We didn’t use it during out interviewing)
Lastly, I learned about collaboration between the team. As for our final project, we have to work as a team and help each other to reach our goal. I am so grateful to have these lovely team members and I absolutely love working with them. Our final project was to documentary Mr. Huang who is a man with an indomitable spirit. I have never thought about a Chinese man at a retiring age would still continuously work in the market. I was so curious and wanted to know more story about him so I chose to make him as our subject. Producing a documentary required us to do a lot of work such as planning, filming, interviewing, and editing, in addition, our team had to do a subtitling where our subject does not speak English language. Therefore, by working collaboratively, our team discussed at our first meeting and chose to take in part at different area. I was in part of production for filming, interviewing and subtitling. I had so much fun in doing these tasks and I truly learned a lot it. I would also like to thank Mr. Huang for spending time with us for this project. Before I spoke to him, I thought he was a serious where I was kind of scared. However, he was so friendly and always welcomed us with so much nice food. Especially, I was so thankful that he allowed us to have an interview with him at his house and he even provided us his family album and teaching certificate for us to use as archival footage. It was definitely an awesome experience for documentary.
Honestly, I have to say this studio is no doubt fantastic. The class, tutor and my team members are way beyond awesome. The studio gives me an opportunity to boost my knowledge about documentary and assuredly be an amazing step for my future career. I am definitely going to miss the class and my awesome friends.
Reference
Cresswell, T 2015, ‘Defining Place’, Place: An Introduction, 2nd edn, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, West Sussex, UK, pp. 1-22.