My First Assignment Reflection

Well my first assignment is very much over. I found it to be a simple but helpful introduction on how to tell a story on camera. My role in the group was to organise the group on the day and complete the script, shot lists, schedule and camera floor plans. It was also my role on the day to operate the camera to set each shot in point and make sure each shot fitted. I shared the filming with the other proddie in my group and directed most of the shoot.

I felt some of the group member although tried to help thought that it was the proddies job to shoot, use the camera and direct action on screen. Some of the other group members seemed afraid to voice their opinion as well, but towards the end of the assignment this had mostly gone away. We had trouble with some group members who didn’t turn up to meeting on time or at all in a few cases.

One major challenge on the day of the shoot was that after the third of eleven scenes we were about 40 seconds into our time. I had rough figures on the shot timings but I forgot to take into account that there was no way to just trim each clip as I am use to from using Final Cut Pro. We overcame this by reworking the script to only eight scenes. Other than that the filming went faster and easier than I expected.

I found the paper work we were force to do made us think about the project more, which was a good thing. For me personally I found the in camera editing extremely frustrating and limiting. However for someone with no idea at all about cameras and filming it simplified the whole process.