Reflection

This was a very long and frustrating project nonetheless. Not because of the difficulty of it, but because of all of the elements and things we had to do in order to complete it. But surprisingly it was also a time of learning and gaining new knowledge as we had to learn to do stuff me and my partner Matias have never done before. 

We started the project with high hopes of learning and being able to develop our "media creation experience." Obviously, we started with the planning process. We brainstormed possible genres and ideas when we finally got to one that interested us both: the indecision in high school. Both of us were very familiar with this topic as we had seen it with close friends and sometimes even ourselves. After that, it was pretty much research. We spent the first week and a half researching the genre, what possible things we could use, where we could film, etc.

Planning and research became a huge part of the project and it took us longer than expected. We also had to make scripts, location searches, and storyboards. The next step was to start actually filming. At the beginning of the process, we contacted one of my friends who previously agreed to play the part of the main character. However, this came to be our first drawback on the project. We were supposed to start filming around week 4, but those plans changed. Our actor was not able to attend this shooting day. Therefore Matias and I decided to use this  "off" week to refine our planning. We revisited the storyboard and script, organized the set (my room), and we did all of this to make sure that once we could actually film, it would be an easy process. Due to conflicts in our schedules, we could only film on weekends, so we used the weekdays to prepare these things. Once week 5 arrived when we agreed to film, our actor yet again said he could not make it. At this point, we became frustrated and decided to completely take him out of the process. From there it was just me and Matias.

On week 5 we each had to take on the characters that we were not supposed in the first place. On the first day of filming, we assumed this decrease in "staff" would not affect us... but we were wrong. The first day we filmed scene one which was mostly one character, therefore while Matias was acting, I could easily film. But, day two of filming came and we realized a big problem. We did our storyboards and scripts based on the fact that there would be three people available (two actors, and a cameraman). Now that one of those people was out of the picture we had to basically quickly redo our previous planning and remake it to accommodate our current necessities. So, on day two instead of filming scene two, we filmed scene three which included fewer shots of the two characters together, therefore, making it easier to film. 

Another problem came when our schedule became tighter. In the beginning, we thought we would start filming in week 4 and assured ourselves that we would be done filming by week 6 at least. So, I had already agreed with spring break plans with my parents and would not be available for that weekend. Thus, we had to rush the filming to a weekday, but luckily that same Friday we did not have school and I convinced my parents to move the trip from Saturday to Sunday. This would give us two days in which we had to finish or shooting. 

As mentioned before we planned to use a cameraman who would handhold the camera. After we changed that we had to change most of our planning. Firstly, we had to change the scene itself. We were planning on doing a walking two-shot, but without a third person that was going to be hard. We moved our location and had to buy a tripod. And, since we changed how the scene was going to develop we also had to change the script.  Those two days Friday and Saturday (which were the only two days we had to finish filming) we basically had to race the sun. We had to be able to get everything done before it was too late. 

On spring break we agreed to work on the project. I would edit while Matias would do additional sounds. But, we committed the mistake we told ourselves we would not do: we took things too easy on spring break. We had the whole actually started working on Saturday, but the good thing is we still had a whole week to be able to finish editing and do our CCRs.

We are both currently working on our CCRs and finishing up editing. There were definitely some drawbacks, things we did not expect, and things we could have done better. But as I said at the beginning, this project allowed us to learn new things and learn from mistakes.