First assessment of SOUND and IMAGE

1. Prompt – Reflect and Write

Reflective thinking is crucial in everyday life, especially in academic study. I was impressed by two points in the book, A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice, which was written by Jennifer Moon in 2004. Firstly, reflective writing is not simply arguing for what is right or wrong, good or bad, on the opposite, respecting the differences between things is one of the principles when people doing reflective writings; and the second one is holding the spirit of self-examination during the whole writing, and this is also the notion of reflective writing.

Identifying a certain “thing” with specific nature is the inertia when I doing essay writings, but what Jennifer pointed out in her book have changed my thinking pattern. She considered label things with “right or wrong” as an unnecessarily action, because things are naturally just different. (p.189) This is new to my study and I couldn’t agree more with this theory. During all kind of styles of writing, personal experiences sometimes may go against academic theories. Comparing with ignoring personal concept, reflective writing encourages writers to gain knowledge from individual experience and consider all knowledges are coexisting and also staying in different.

In addition, auto-criticism is another essential rule during reflective writing. As Jennifer mentioned in her book, reflective writing need a well-marked “pitch” in the beginning in order to highlight the significance of the task. (189) However, beside showing off all the accomplishment that have been made, reflective writing requires writers to make a deep self-examination in the end of work. The second example in Jennifer’s book is very representative, and I do appropriate what the author used to finish the paper: “Take a Wider View”. Everyone has the limit, the experiment would be no exception. “Wider” means admit the shortcomings in the last experience and making a more well-conceived plan in the future. It also could be a reflection of scientific and responsible study attitude.

2. Prompt – Goals and Desires

Before I started this course, I was never expected a course can be this practical. I was very thrills at the beginning, but a short time later, challenges that accompanied with the freshness did bring me pressures. Camera and other filming gears are complicated. Fortunately, practice can solve this problem efficiently. What really bother me is the post-production process. Editing is tricky, when I doing editing work, I have to watch several YouTube videos to accomplish my desire achievement, by watching a video more to figure out the exact step.

Goals:

1. Mastering some editing skills that can satisfy my normal editing needs such as simple after effects;
2. Having the ability to make easy animations such as the opening of a video.

I believe that people who enrol this course all have the desire of making film by their own someday. Therefore, my desire about this course is hoping it can teach me as much as possible that I can transfer into a professional film maker in the further.

“Professional” in this class is not a “adj” to me, it is more like a “noun”. During my past filming experience, I only used SLR cameras to shoot, but all gears that we use in this course are broadcast cameras. These fancy shooting equipments become a driving force that stimulate my desire to become a “professional” that deserve them. Meanwhile, half of my classmates have relative experiences in real filming industry. To be frank, studying with these guys definitely gave me some extra pressures. On the other hand, working with them may be an unexpected opportunity that improve my filming ability and post-production skills. After all, no one wants to fell behind all the time.

Desires:

1. Becoming a useful member in a professional filming group, and have practical experiences and abilities to work in Australia film industry.

( For me, “desire” is more like a goal that I have to accomplish in a long period, and also hard to achieve.)

3. Prompt – Crew Roles

Making a film is not easy, no matter it is a low-budget film or a large investment film. During my college period, I was the director in a student theatre group. We had three departments back there, directing department, production department and administration department. In the production week, people all work together and chasing only one goal which is accomplishing the show in a high standard. That was powerful and also very touching. After I read Developing a Crew and crew roles sheet, I found so much similarities and also surprised by the complexity in the film industry. In the end of paper, I realized that complexity means efficiency and guaranteed.

Firstly, as mentioned in Developing a Crew, leaders have to get know all candidates’ personality and strength before they made any decisions. It is important. A person who always being described as “nice” may not be the perfect one in film production. Meanwhile, people who love to get rid of responsibilities is the last choice in team-building process.

In Developing a Crew, the author pointed out that defining responsibilities before shooting and establishing the commanding chian in the pre-production are two golden roles in a well-functional production team. (387) Due to my personal experience, I was pretty excited when I saw this and firmly go along with this agreement. Self-management is important in any working place, but the discipline from the exterior environment could be more efficient. Moreover, sometimes people make mistake simply due to the misunderstanding of self-responsibility. Hence, underlined every crew’s responsibilities in the first place could avoid some unnecessary mistake on set and maintain the camera keeping rolling. In film industry, time always equal to money. Less time on set, less cost that producer have to pay.

4. Keyboard shortcuts

Editing is a cool job. This final work requires editors with capabilities of summarising and being creative. I used Premiere four years ago and shortcuts helped me a lot back then. This year when I re-use Premiere in this course, I found it went way different.

When I look at the Media Factory website, I found that many new shortcuts that I wasn’t aware but really can conduce to editing process.

Cmd+R, the shortcut of Speed and duration adjustment. Cmd+R definite is one of my favourite Premiere shortcut. Four years ago I was only knew to click my mouse and after several clicks I finished my speed adjustment. But now, things get much more easy.

Cmd+L, the shortcut for Link. When doing editing, there are always millions of tracks laying on the screen. Therefore, linking audio and video or audio and audio together is important. I used to press command to select tracks and click right side of mouse to link all of the tracks, that is complicated and time consuming. With the help shortcut, all things done in one second.

And the unlink function also share the same shortcut.

F (Match Frame). This function is new to me completely and I haven’t handle it all well, but my editing work already got benefit from it. In my past experience, I used to copy the footage twice if I want to cut them into different shots and re-sequence them. But now, I can cut a footage into several shoots after a simple F instead of keep doing copy and delete.

5. Prompt – A scene

• Production design

1. Costume

Travis and Betsy in this scene are both in red, the matched color tune delivered a romantic feeling to audience. Meanwhile, figurants in this scene mostly wore white or grey clothes that made these two characters very standout among the crowd.

Tom wore a red tie helped him still very visible even his major performance area was in the back.

2. The set

The whole set is well-organized and very convictive. This film was filmed in 1976, all props and sets were restored the real life in the society and trying to eliminate the distance between the film and audience.

• Audio

Audio was terrific in this film. The background music was continuances in the scene such as the phone rings and stapler clicks, it not only can enhance the authenticity, but also filled the audio blank when Travis walked to Betsy.

When actor and actress were talking, the background audio still going but turned down the volume in order to clarify the conversation between roles.

But one thing I also notice that some background sounds are different when switched to different characters shot. It is common that director may shoot all shoots of a single character to save time, but the background sound may sometimes disconnect though different time in the day.

• Camera work

What camera did in this scene may be described into two words: coherent and gripping.

The camera followed Travis since he left his taxi, audience can see a complete action of him and followed Travis’s leads to next plot.

Meanwhile, in this scene, the camera was barely held stable in a same angle for a long time. The moving camera can attract audiences’ attention that make them think something will happen in the next second.

Even during people talking, camera still moved very slowly to catch the atmosphere between these two young man and woman.

• Shot

There are mainly two kinds of shots in this scene, long shot and medium shot.

Director used a long shot in the back side to record Travis walking towards Betsy’s office, this shoot makes me feel lonely about Travis.

After he started the conversation with Betsy, director only used medium shot to reveal the dialogue. Clear and effective.

• Performances

Actor and actress in this scene were good, especially Travis, which played by Robert De Niro, one of my favourite actor. He delivered a man who was not that confident with this action but still held the courage to make a confession to the woman he loved, such as avoided eye contact with other people except Betsy when he walked into office, and he keep holding his body with the desk to continue his speech.

Betsy was performance by Cybill Shepherd, I do love the part that she turned down her voice and flirt with Travis that told him he can her friend.

• EdiT

The editing in this scene was fluent. All actions were connected naturally and audience can observe characters’ thoughts via their faces.

What I learned from this scene is a good editing should juxtapose the atmosphere in the scene and the frequency of switching shots. For example, editor should switch shots more frequent when people talk in order to keep up with the development of the story simultaneously.

In the end, nevertheless, as mentioned in the audio section, the background music was slightly different between Travis’s shoot and Betsy’s shoot. This is a problem that should be solve or hide in the post production process.

 

Reference:

Moon, Jennifer, A. A handbook of reflective and experiential learning : theory and practice, (p. 184-189, 204-209, 222-225). New York : RoutledgeFalmer, 2004

Rabiger, M. Directing : film techniques and aesthetics, (p. 385-400). 3rd ed. Boston : Focal Press, 2003.