The End of FST 201

After taking FST 201, Intro to Production, I gained much basic knowledge about the film making process. For example, making the pre-visualization materials in different projects helped me improve organization in filming. Exploring different positions of filmmaking gave me chances to obtain basic knowledge and procedures throughout my own experiences. At the same time, it also helped me determine what I like to do within filmmaking and what am I good at.  Editing is always my favorite after trying out the different positions in class projects and I have built up a big interest of producing. I love to work in groups with other people. This class also provided chances for students to learn to work with different people and face different situations. I believe different combinations of people’s knowledge can make different films with different flash points. 

Experience about editing experimental sound editing

By working with my group members on editing the experimental sound project, I realized that sound designing is a job that takes plenty of creative talents. We used Adobe Audition to edit both of our sound tracks, which had so many choices with sound mixing, sound lapping and sound effects. We wanted to make the audio interesting. Since we had 7 different tracks constantly playing in our film, we had cool sound effect after we played some very different sound audios at the same time. We spent most of our time adjusting volume patterns in each audio clip and edited many fade in and fade out effects on audios to make smooth transitions. Also, we adjusted some audios to stereo sound or monophonic sound, in order to make sound effects sound more realistic on distances. I enjoyed editing sound with my group for this project because we could do crazy and funny things with the audio tracks. 

Experience about Creating the Library Sound Recording

I am the D.P. for this project; however, since our sound guy could not join our group for recording, I had a chance to work on H4N and record stuff for the first time.  I really like to have headphones on and listen to ambient sound around me. The feeling of having clairaudience is an amazing experience.

I have found out that cables were my biggest enemy while I was walking around recording because if there was any contact between XLR cables, then it will add noise into the recording file. Also, I noticed that sometimes changing the angles of microphone could get different sound qualities. I think it is because we were using direct microphone and changing the recording angles will increase and decries some white noises in an environment.

Experience about sound recording

We have done two projects so far in this semester for our film production class. The first time I was a director and the second time I was doing my job as a producer. I have not had a chance to have hands-on in recording equipment for projects yet. However, by working with other people, I also learned some tips for future reference. First, keeping the microphone at a distance away from characters (for example: shot/reverse shot) will decrease the differences of voices’ tones and qualities from different characters.  After editing the actor’s lines together into a conversation, their voices will maintain around the same level, making the audio smooth. Secondly, it is very important to shout out the scene number and the take number clearly and loudly, in order to make sure the sound guy to catch them, also it helps the sound editor to sync the audios.

Editing experience on the Master Shot Project

We finished shooting for the master shot project on Sunday. Jacob, the director of our group, has been working on editing videos. We met up today as a group and discussed details about the videos. We realized that some shots were not connected together well and looked hoppy. We are trying to fill in cut away to make the video sequence smoother.  Some clips are shot nicely but couldn’t match the context due to unmatched blocking. Event though I am not working on the audio for this project, by talking to our sound person, Adam, I learned that syncing audios with the video is quite hard. Since the camera and the H4N stopped recording at different times on shooting day, it is necessary to go through every audio file that we are using, and edit them second by second.

After facing these challenges from this project, I think an easier why for matching audio and video could be picking out all the clips we will be using first. Then, syncing the audio for all of them, and then editing these clips together.

the experience of making previsualization materials

Yesterday I met up with my group for our second project this semester for “Narrative Master Shot Sequence”. We made our shot list and storyboard at the same time, and it only took us about two hours to do that. I am really confident about our project. Since we have some equipment available from one of my group members, we came up with some ideas of cool shots. Hopefully, we can achieve them. However, I found out that I struggled when choosing the best camera movement or the best camera place spots. Changing one shot will influence the other context shots. We tried very hard to keep consistency when blend in special shots into normal shot/reverse shots. Also we had to give up on some creative ideas, since there was limited time and script. Overall, the shot list gave up a clear outline of what to follow, and we discovered more improvements of details while drawing the storyboard out.