This week is my favourite week so far! The lessons are all very practical and intriguing – in Monday’s lesson, we learnt to use camera, microphone, and tripods, and got to shoot a short experimental video. Right after the lesson I decided to borrow some equipment from tech for our project. Here is a list of things we borrowed: a Sony FX3 camera, Manfrotto Stills Tripod, a clapper, a Litepanel LED light, and a Sennheiser shotgun microphone. Honestly, if it wasn’t for this lesson, I would not even try to borrow anything from tech; I would just use the cameras and tripods I have at home, even if they are less professional. Monday’s lesson changed my mindset – after playing around with different shooting gear, I realised how much difference equipment could make to a video’s quality. Plus, once I leave school, I would have to pay for them, so I might as well take advantage of school right now.
Another interesting thing I learnt from this week’s content is about planning and script writing. I loved the part about ‘industry-standard formatting’ of scripts, and the writing tool recommendation. I downloaded Writer Solo almost immediately after the lesson and started playing around with it. We originally wrote our script in Chinese as it was more convenient, and so translating the script and re-formatting it was very essential. I think Writer Solo is very easy to use for beginners as all of its options and functions are clearly laid out. I spent about three hours finishing translating and refining the script. I found this process especially useful because it allowed me to critically assess the script again; I found a lot of details lacking in the script that we have not noticed before. I was therefore able to add in more notes, as well as asking more questions to our original plan, questioning whether there are any other / better ways to shoot a certain scene.
This led me to another lesson I learnt from doing this group project – never be afraid to communicate and make changes. As I was refining the script, I felt that there are some plots that didn’t flow very well. Luckily, both of our team members are very communicative, so I was able to ask these questions and propose some solutions I’ve come up with to them. Looking back at this, I truly feel grateful that I was able to team up with these nice people. We stayed up quite late to discuss and often met outside of classes, which all make the shooting on Friday very smooth and successful.
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