CCR Draft #3

How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Before discussing how my production skills developed throughout this project, I find it important to consider how skilled I was at producing films at the start of my project. I had a more distinct appeal to films and I already had the skills behind editing and composing different videos in the past. The new challenges I knew I would be taking would mainly be logistical and dealing with real actors in a film. Throughout developing the film when I chose my actors and I filmed with them, I realized that I was correct about the logistical and production issues I would likely face. I was able to improve my production skills by employing better scheduling and management with my actors. I taught myself to understand the schedules of my actors intricately in order to accommodate their oftentimes cluttered schedules. This scheduling is important for me because my target actors were individuals fitting to appear like young adults.

My use of physical tools to assist in camerawork and filming was essential in producing nicely framed shots. I realized quickly after filming scenes for a film for the first time, that it is very important to be able to consider every element you are capturing. Color, sound, duration, and shapes are all highly important in producing excellent scenes full with meaning.

A significant example of mine is when I wanted to follow conventions of producing dark scenes as seen in psychological thrillers. The glaring problem with this is that the cameras were either not advanced enough to handle low light scenarios, or the lighting was not effectively used or placed. After reflecting on my first time filming, I knew I was struggling with both issues. I scheduled times to use better cameras with my instructor and I opted to using consistent or custom lighting. I decided to always light my scenes to improve the clarity of the shots and to be able to adjust the scenes in post-production. The editing process should have control over elements of color and timing of the scenes. I found it was very important to provide as much material as possible during filming, even having recorded the scenes you wanted to record, to make editing much easier. At the beginning of my project I couldn't use filming well enough in conjunction with my editing. Towards the end of my project, I was much more conscientious about this glaring issue of mine and I made sure to produce as much material as possible with as much planning as necessary.