Project #1: Short film

2 weeks ago I attempted to make a short film using the title given by Deborah, titled “the missing shoe”. For me, being given a title or a topic has both positive and negative effects on creativity; at the same time I do not have to spend time to think of something completely new but the title was quite straightforward that it actually limits the ability to be creative. It took quite a short time to shoot the movie because of the short duration and the main focus was on editing rather than shooting (and I didn’t use any actors).

Even though the film gave a slight feeling that this was a horror movie, but it was almost impossible to make something obviously silly not funny, and horror and comedy are polar opposites in filmmaking.

The plot was not really clear to the audience because of certain scenes were too short or the important bits were not clearly highlighted for the audience to notice.

Note to self: Could have done better.

Reflective Journal #1: Induction and the first two weeks

The first few weeks at NTU were mostly introduction of the course.

The induction weeks required our group to work together and come up with a presentation of what our course is about and what we are capable of doing. Of course, it was not essential for the quality of the presentation to be high as it was not being marked. My course mates were not ready to commit to such type of work because it will not affect the outcome of the course or overall marks in any way, but I motivated them to commit better because after all it would be great to show other people what we can do and not to look too bad if other people’s presentations were better. I assigned every one to their respecting research areas and when they were finished, I would take charge of presenting the project using a short animation style presentation with a story, because after all, we were the ones studying about film. Everyone was not at all motivated because I could tell that in the induction week that there was literally nothing that would take up most of their time except for their personal activities (and it was over the weekend). Kamil and I assigned a deadline to the other four and himself, but as I expected the amount of work that came out four days later was minimal and low quality. I also understood that there was an amount of misunderstanding due to the language barrier and culture differences (education-wise) because of our multi-national group (three different countries). At the end, I decided to tell specific people to improve on their research gatherings and began to produce the highest quality work from what has been found. I also had to come up with a solution for the audio-syncing problem, which could have been done better. The best thing I had to say about the whole experience was that it went better than expected because it was very well received for something done that was done in a very short period of time.

Classes of the two previous weeks were mostly introduction and familiarising with the course. The camera and scriptwriting sessions were both new to me but I am familiar with using a DSLR camera, which uses similar things such as aperture, shutter speed, etc. I have had previous experiences in assisting professional photoshoot, so lighting and usage of the tripods were both very easy to understand. With the case of audio mixing, I am very familiar with using audio mixing programs (Adobe Audition and Ableton Live) so learning how to use Pro Tools were quite simple as there were obvious familiarities between the three programs. I had also done a lot of audio mixing in the past, but not professionally, therefore I was very confident into mixing the first audio task that I was given.