Reflection – evidence of your work, thinking and making

Part 1. What I have learned and gained in experience within this studio was being more decisive when cutting and doing it with more of an intention rather than relying on intuition which I was doing before. This intention comes from my thoughts of how I imagine the audience to feel like and what I want to achieve in the edit whether it be conveying a story clearly or to elicit a specific type of emotion. 

Another insight and knowledge I gained personally from this studio was how I think about how this sequence of footage I am cutting is functional and the purpose behind it in order to create a better delivery and impact in the type of work I am making whether it be a narrative piece or a commercial piece. 

Even though I have not completely found my editing style as I set that as a goal at the start of the studio, I have discovered more about myself and the type of sequences and editing structures I see working for myself that I like using. It was in the process driven exercises from homework activities to assignments where I got to see multiple perspectives on edits that I did myself and from others which I was then able to observe and see what I like from and want to try again for myself from it. 

Part 2. For my documentary piece I wanted my audience to feel some sense of comfort and nostalgia as that was my main intention of how I structured the clips of b-roll and interview footage together. I also wanted the audience to see the care and artistic skill Daniel puts into cooking different foods. I think I was able to achieve this in the pacing of each clip and the selection of clips which matched well and suitable with what Daniel was talking about. The colours I was able to get were consistently warm and slightly desaturated and faded throughout which I thought helped contribute to the theme of nostalgia and comfort with Daniel and his experience with cooking. If I were to keep working on this piece, I would want to improve on the pacing on areas where there was empty space between where Daniel was talking as I feel like those areas were a bit too rushed due to time constraints set by the assignment. Next time I would want to have clips of b-roll whether it be Daniel or still life shots of the overall space in his home to stay for longer which would help with the overall calm and peaceful tone. 

As for my narrative piece, emotions I wanted to elicit within were feelings of being disturbed and anxiously scared and to be alert and cautious feeling throughout, similar to the feeling you would get when watching a thriller movie where there is an anticipation but you do not know what is going to happen to the main character. I felt like areas that helped me achieve this in my final edit for this piece was in the sound design combined especially the choice of music and diegetic sounds combined with the series of shots I took which contributed to the overall dark theme. Something I would like to work on if I were to continue developing my narrative edit would be improving the sound design and experimenting with how they transition and change in volume at different areas in the edit to accentuate details which are quite helpful in making videos of the thriller genre. I would also like to further experiment with the pacing of each clip and how long they go for before they cut and then observing how it contributes to the overall dark thriller feeling I want to achieve.  

The commercial edit I made was quite fun to shoot and edit and with that feeling, I wanted to convert and translate it into how I stitched the footage together in a fast pace to create an energetic feeling and also this excitement and coolness people feel towards Nike as a brand as well as the sneakers. My main intention putting all these shots together was prioritising the sneakers first and it being the main focus of the video in their functionality of basketball and dance. I felt like I achieved this in the edit by keeping the shoes around the centre and even made small cut outs that pop out in some of the shots which helped create interesting visuals. What I would add to the video and try to develop more of was how I could vary the shots in visual aesthetic like adding and trying out different template filters which can change the look or even enhancing (like altering how the wide angle fish eye looked and distorting it even more to look stylised) of a particular sho. This is so that a variety of shots that look different to each other can create a more engaging and interesting to watch. 

Part 3. I feel like in this studio there was not too much collaborative work as doing that can be a bit difficult and tedious especially in sharing and working together editing which can take even longer as compared to working by yourself. However, areas in collaborating during the media making process I found to be important was definitely whilst shooting with others whether they be the talent or people acting. One of the challenges I found was communication and  conveying what I had in my mind that could look great in the edit into words where the people I were working with would understand and see what I had in my mind. I think this also comes down to writing a shot list with clear descriptions and even going to the extent of pairing it with a reference video so that I could show the people who I am working with a rough outline of how I want to capture and shoot them in the action of doing a specific action if they get confused. Some benefits with collaboration I found that worked with me throughout this semester was showing my video to others so that I could get a new perspective on how it looks which also tell if my idea that I was going for and wanting to show in the edit was unsuccessful or worked in making the viewers react in a certain way that I wanted to.