Final Reflection

This class was a very interesting and fun experience.  Entering this class, I was excited to start fimling and editing videos because it was one of my hobbies back in middle school.  The first few days of the first semester were slow, talking about values and how people were able to portray the themes of these values through film.  We talked about specific things that we as the viewers don't notice in film, like how the lighting helps portray the mood or how the clothing that the characters wear are important to their actual personality.  As we progressed throught the semester, it seemed that these simple instances helped me look at film in a new way.  Angles, music, lighting, costume design, setting, etc. were all little things that merged together to create the bigger picture.  Those things helped us film our first project.  The project was based on cyberbullying and how it effects people and what you can do to avoid it or stop it.  The pre-work for the filming was all research about cyberbullying.  At first I found this quite boring and tedious, but when we started filming it actually gave me ideas of how the film would look like.  Storyboarding the film was hard but it helped also create what we wanted to show to the class.  During filming we started to get lost because what we created in the storyboard actually was impossible to accomplish due to the amount of time we had to film and edit.  Some of the shots we used were on the spot, a good example of this was in our cyberbullying video the scene where our friend Michael was walking down the hall and the light in the background gave that "heavenly look" as he walked into the light.  Jacob was responsible for that and it actually helped our video greatly.  Another one was during second semester and it dealt with lighting as well but I'll get to that later.  I guess our first project didn't follow what we expected but it still turned out great.  Editing the video was a challenge because again we didn't follow our storyboard so we winged the editing a lot.  We learned a lot after everyone posted their videos.  Everyone had their unique input on how they edited their videos.  One group, which I believe was Ryan's group, had an interesting intro.  The inro started with people walkin in front of the shcool and the music was added to add a technological feel. Then in an instant as the music got faster, the people started accelerating, this showed how he edited his video.  What this showed was different styles of editing.  As compared to our video which was quick and to the point at a slow pace, Ryan showed a longer piece of work but with a quicker pace.  Ultimately after seeing everyone's videos, I realized the many ways one can portray the same subject in film.  First semester was dipping our toes in the water and it gave everyone a taste of what was to come.  Our final video of the semester was using green screen to create a greeting card in other cultures.  This was fun because I never had a chance to work with green screen the way we learned in this class.  The way I learned was totally different, the fact being was that I never used green screen. It still worked, but I digress.  The difficult part of this project, however, was that I was going to the Philippines early so my partner, Ryan had to complete the rest of the video without me.  Even when I left, Ryan did a great job on it and I appreciate having a partner like him.  Working with groups was the best part of this class in my opinion.  Everyone's input may conflict with each other, but with the right people in the group new ideas sprawl from the fray.  It's fun seeing what peope come up with and then trying to play it out.  It may not always work but it helps create new ideas afterwards.  In second semester, our project was to portray a value in our own way.  Me and Jacob automatically lit up when the guidelines allowed us to portray it in our own way.  Here comes the part I mentioned earliler where the lighting comes in to play.  I have learned a lot about lighting and how it affects film physically and emotionally.  Physically the light made it hard to see the subject, which in our video was pizza.  After finishing it, many people like the ideo the pizza was "glowing in the light" and how it disappered for only a few seconds.  To me it was a blissful mistake.  It helped our video just like our first semester project. In learning many things in this class, I learned that there are things you can control that helps make your film better, the special effects, music, shots, costume, etc.  But there are things you caputre on film that are accidents and may even help you out, in my case a lot of things.  This class helped me out in collaborating with others and seeing film in a new way.  Script writing was not my forte, editing and working with the camera was my strong suit.  But having other in my group helped so much.  For example, Dillon created our story that had to revolve around an orchastra piece conducted by Mr. Zuniga.  I wouldn't have been able to think of one on my own so I'm glad Dillon helped.  The abstract project was difficult because I lean towards more representaional art, it's much easier to portray something that's actually there as compared to abstract.  But this exercise helped me see film in a new way as well.  This class really did change the way I look at film and helped me grow and get better editing and filming videos.