Time to do Question 3!
How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
My answer to this question may not be what one would expect. I already had a great deal of production experience before hand from my work with my very advanced television production class to my technical work and performance in professional theater. So, although I had a great deal of improvement in attention to detail and caring about all the small things, the biggest improvement, and maybe something I still need to improve on in productions is collaboration! Let's talk about it (and make my CCR script)
The Script for Question 3
Okay first, let me explain how I'm going to answer this question. Close your eyes and imagine your favorite late night talk show. Well, actually, you need your sight to read so maybe don't close your eyes. Just imagine it! Now, the host is about to bring out your favorite celebrity ever! Oh you're so excited! The crowd is cheering! You see foot steps and then... it's... me? Huh? Everyone is confused except for me, for I am a professional yapper, and oh man am I going to yap you're ears off! In a timely manner, of course.
Host: Welcome back to Another Late Night Show! Let's not keep you waiting anymore. Please welcome to the stage Robert Downy Jr!
[applause]
Me: [walks out] Oh thank you! Thank you! Stop it, you're all too kind. Hello!
Host: Uh you're not-
Me: Shhhhhhhh. Thank you, Jim, for inviting me to talk about my film opening project!
Host: My name isn't Jim...
Me: I'm sure you saw my lovely Oscar acceptance speech for it (NOTE: Other CCR video is Oscar acceptance speech)
Host: I didn-
Me: Great! Well then let me talk about something different so I don't vote you to death HAHAHAHHHA
[laugh track]
Host: Who's laughing?
Me: Going into this project, I was very confident with my production skills. I mean I was in an advanced television production class and have worked with all aspects of theater production! What was I going to run into that I couldn't do? AHAHHAHahhahhaa...ha... There was a lot, Jim. I lot. I have a huge ego and am too much of an overthinker. Terrible combo, I know. It makes me miss many important things when it comes to making productions such as this one. Sure, I had the basics of production down to a science. But there's so much more than just setting up a tripod and hitting record on a camera. Let's start at the beginning, pre-production.
Planning is the majority of a production, believe it or not. Making this opening, and preparing what there was to be done came with a lot of learning curves. The biggest being the typing out every little step I planned on doing and posting it onto my blog. I talked in depth about my characters, settings, costumes, storylines, and so much more. Sure, I've done a story board and created a script before, but typing out all of our ideas about what I and my team wanted our story to be and the research needed to be done wasn't something I was used to. I discovered two things when creating these blogs. 1) Writing everything out and having a plan for every step of production makes things so much easier and 2) I love doing it. Creating the blogs was at times stressful, but at most times was very enjoyable for me. I wrote a lot and felt more prepared because of it. Sometimes I will be confused or unsure of what I was going to do when the time came to film, but then, I just kept writing and the ideas just kept coming to me. I now feel more capable of fleshing out my ideas and coming up with solid production plans instead of just winging it whenever I film.
Production is what I thought I was a pro at by now, but I still have a long way to go. But through this project I think I've gone a little bit further. Typically when filming, I take a long time. However, I was working with a fast-paced team who have been doing TV production even longer than me and go at a very quick pace when filming compared to me. With this fast-paced filming, we were able to get a lot more shots than I typically would be able to get, however, because they go at such a quick pace, we missed shots that were important to our story. That being a shot of the cover of our main character's comic book and a shot of our main character looking out the window. When I filmed, I took more time with it and redid many of my shots, and was constantly looking for something new to film. Both types of filming have their merits, but seeing the issues with the two, I think I need to find a pace that's within the middle. And you remember how I said how important that planning was, we needed to reference that planning while filming so we don't let important details slip underneath the cracks, such as those two shots we talked about and discussed the importance in our blogs.
Post-production of this project showed me that I need to be more organized when I edit. I was a wreck going back and forth, back and forth, looking for clips and looking back at the blog, script, and storyboard to edit properly. It was a lot to keep track of, and not too much time to do so. I needed to edit fast, but also keep every detail we wanted in. So, I used the feature for the first time ever when editing on Premier Pro, used the feature that lets you organize the clips and audio into their own special folders. It helped me stay so insanely organized and keep track of what I was doing. Definitely going to use this strategy again when I edit another big project.
Alongside this, collaboration was surprisingly huge in improving my production skills. No matter what production you do, you will always in some form, have to collaborate with others. In fact, the more you collaborate, the better your production may turn out. However, with the help comes compromise. There was a lot of compromise needed to achieve my production since I was working with a team of three other people. We are all very passionate. Passionate people have a lot of passions. We had to work around everyone's schedule, and that was hard with McKenna's color guard competitions, my busy school life, and Madison and Sofia's TV production projects, there was a lot to work around. Especially when we lost Sofia and Madison to a TV production competition for an entire week! No camera, no crew, just two girls figuring out other ways to further their opening project while the other half of the team was gone. Relying on others can be fun, but can also be a nightmare. Luckily, once they returned, it became fun once again! We all got together immediately on their return to film. Besides time compromise, there was also the compromise of story. Some elements of the opening I'm not a huge fan of, the title of our opening, The Guide to Saving a Princess, being a huge one. But my team compromises on some production elements for some things I want. I just had to get over myself and realize that we are a team. We want everyone to be happy with what was created. If I don't like the title but the rest of my team does, then so be it. I'm sure I put some elements in the story they don't love either. I had to understand that working as a team means doing what is best for the team.
So what did we learn here?
Host: That you don't know when to stop talking?
Me: That this film-opening project improved my planning skills, attention to detail, filming skills, organization, and collaboration in terms of a production!
Host: {sarcastic) How awesome....
Me: It is awesome! You know what else is awesome? What I used to do all of that!
{PART 2 AWAITS YOU IN MY NEXT BLOG POST}
