Thursday, June 19, 2014

Reflections On the 6 Film Projects

The projects below are ranked from one to six with one being the lowest ranking and a six being the highest positive ranking. There are no duplicate numbers so a one is a relative ranking that does not mean it was a horrible filmmaking experience.

1.  I truly enjoyed the segment where we experimented with camera-less filmmaking. It was a great way to expand the concept of filmmaking and its limitations. This project is probably unlike any type of filmmaking we will encounter in the movie-making business, but it will allow us to add this type of expression to our films when this effect is needed. Also, it represents another direction filmmaking can take; after all, filmmakers like Stan Brackage have made non-digital editing an integral part of their style as artists. 4

2.  I also enjoyed creating the rhythmic edit film. It provided a new exploration of film to create the illusion of visible sound (a synesthesia effect). This exercise also helps demystify the editing of a music video by taking rhythmic editing to the extreme. Finally, something that requires such a large amount of precise cutting is excellent editing practice. 5

3. The multi-plane filmmaking exercise was intimidating for me at first because I hear the word animation and start to get nervous. Animation is great and can free the artist greatly, but I have lost more sleep over animation than over any other aspect of filmmaking. After this project, I realized that this type of animation is not half as labor intensive as I thought and it creates a charming tone. Also, requiring us to have individual soundscapes made sure that we have the ability to create a full soundtrack alone, further expanding our editing/sound design skills. 3

4. The crowdsourcing assignment was incredibly time consuming but this might be because my group included multiple takes that had to be edited down to precisely timed clips. It was fun to figure out ways to show complex ideas using only our bodies and cardboard and this forced us to think creatively (like using cardboard to cast shadows that look fairly realistic). However, I feel that the time requirements were a bit redundant after making the rhythmic film and it was a bit much to pile on top of the other technical requirements. I wish we could have been given more freedom in the number of concepts we showed and were able to focus on specific concepts more fully. The sheer quantity of short scenes was a bit daunting for summer. 2

5. The long-take was one of my favorite assignments because it created a piece with a very specific artistic tone and made us more familiar with what it is like to work with physical film. It also illustrated just how many frames of footage go into a film in a way that is vividly memorable. This understanding can help a digital filmmaker feel more of a connection to the roots of editing and what is actually occurring on the editing room floor.  6

6. The 3-D project was another difficult project for the summer. We ran out of shooting time because it took a while to rig our cameras to function in the manner they should. Maybe this should be one of those days where class runs late or starts early. Once in the editing room we lost most of our storyline and pretty much all of our story-arc because of technical difficulties in lining up the image correctly.  This was quite frustrating and made the concept seem more dense than it should. In the future, this would be a better assignment to do outside. I would also have enjoyed a bit more practice with the concept, once again, a few extra hours would have been helpful. I understand that this is mainly due to the nature of summer classes. 1

Overall, I really enjoyed this course. It expanded my creativity and my understanding of the scope of filmmaking. There is no project that we completed that I would remove from the course. Each project taught me unique filmmaking concepts that went beyond the realm of hollywood style filmmaking.

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