Class Reflection:
When I first started this course, I had already read the “Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video” in my undergraduate course and had a degree in both journalism and film. So I felt I had already learned a lot of the content in this course. That being said it’s always good to re-learned things and try different techniques over and over again to better yourself. So by the time I finished the course, I had re-learned a lot fo things and remembered a lot of things that I had since forgotten from my first few years of film school.
On the other hand the most important thing I learned from this course was the first few modules on audio. I tend to still overlook my audio in projects, because for so long I was hyper focused on the visuals. But during the podcast, the How-To, and the montage modules I learned the importance of balancing sound effects and dialogue. And to not make the sound effects so loud so that they feel more like they are buried in the ambient environment of the project and not actually added in post. I also wish I could continue to learn even more about this topic as sound engineering and sound mixing seem very interesting to me and they way that many films and professional podcasts are able to seamlessly blend a soundtrack, sound effects and dialogue/narration is incredible.
The hardest part about this course was finding the time to make the projects and being able to make them safely during all of these COVID-19 regulations. I took this graduate degree back at home while having a full time job and taking another course with this so some weeks I physically had no idea when I was going to be able to schedule in shooting time for these projects or editing time. Other times I would have new and different ideas, but wouldn’t be able to safely complete them and didn’t have other film friends around to help out like I used to have back at school in Connecticut.
Overall this class was fun to go back and relearn many film standards as well as find new techniques in old lessons as I graduate now I’m definitely going to take what I learned in class and apply to all of the projects I do for work and in my personal life.
My Inspiration:
The use of an L-cut in this dream sequence is actually a very popular use of L-cuts when it comes to transitioning into dream sequences. In this scene the main character begins to talk about the dream he had and as he continues to talk about the dream it cuts to the visual of the dream before adding in any of the dreams sound. This techniques is used in many other movies as well.
The use of J-cut in this scene Matthew McConaughey’s character’s iconic humming and chest bumping is heard in the scene before it cuts to the dinner scene. This tactic is used I feel even more common in movies then an L-cut. Other movies that use this cut are the Hurt Locker when they after cutting over the helicopter scene, when the helicopter propellers are heard before they actually cut over to the helicopters.
My Mini Documentary:
After last week’s pre-production. I quickly planned a time to interview Dan and then got clearance to film a couple of his lesson in the first half of the week. I also knew that since I didn’t have a ton of time to film this I got old photos from his life and pulled out some studio footage that I had filmed of Dan from a couple of months ago.
After completing the interview with Dan I realized I wasn’t going to be needing to do much narration. He talked very passionately and for a very long time about his life in music and how much he loves teaching. So I really just used my narration to bridge a couple of the different sections of the interview together. And then tried to layer as much b-roll and personal photos I could over the parts of the interview that the footage matched up with.
This met that the b-roll of him teaching went over the part of the interview where he talked about teaching and when he talks about the guitar and upright base I have footage and photos of him playing the guitar and upright base.
Overall it was a difficult project to plan and execute in a short period of time, but once I had all of the pieces it was a fairly simple piece to edit since my whole job was to just make sure the finished product told Dan’s musical journey.
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