Camera Work Reflection!

    Throughout the two camera projects, there has been a similar learning process for camera movements and camera shots/angles. In class, we would have to write down the definitions for each movement or shot term and then view scenes to identify the terms in the scenes. The scenes would involve multiple shots/angles and movements. These camera project let me put what I had learned to the test! All of those aspects were a part of my learning process for both projects and the process led me to have a much better understanding of all the terms and how to use them effectively. 

    Although the projects were part of the learning process, they still had their own complications and successes. Both projects had their own challenges. For instance, in the camera movement project, we had the obstacles of our location being noisy and not having a box. However, we were able to prevail over those issues and have other successes. Our movie turned out to be a silent film and we asked for a box and were able to use it in our project! The other successes in our project were that we finished the project quickly and we embodied our camera movements efficiently. Additionally, our camera shot/angle project had challenges, as well.  The difficulties we had to go through were that we had nowhere we could travel to show the desired locations in our story, lack of materials, and procrastination. Procrastination was a heavy issue because I did not bring my main water bottle because I had an after school practice. This brought many delays because we wanted to continue the story with the original water bottle, since it was the love interest in the story.  This led to the project not being done until last minute. Although the complications had a strong toll on the project, the assignment was still able to be successful. We were able to ask others for their water bottles for our shots and they easily agreed and we were resourceful by using the whiteboard to draw the settings we wanted. We were also successful in other ways by being able to tell a understandable story with the camera shots and angles and we were able to extend our understanding since we used extra shots and camera angles. 

    In both projects, me and my partner contributed different factors and it created a similar experience for me. In the camera angle/shot project, I contributed the idea for the story and storyboard and my partner was able to take most of pictures and we both asked for materials and contributed our own materials. Our contributions were in different elements of the assignment; but it led to me having a fun experience because I was able to express creativity by thinking of the storyline. For the camera movements project, I also had a fun experience expressing my creativity but also for a different reason. In this project we also had different contributions. For example, I came up with the story and my partner provided the materials and advice for my ideas. This led to another fun experience because me and my partner were able to act out as characters in a surprising situation. 

    I was also able to learn significant information in the process of completing both projects. I learned that storyboards can change a lot compared to the final product. For reference, in the camera movements project's storyboard swapped the positions of where the tilt and whip pan was going to be in the story. Originally, the whip pan movement was supposed to be in the tilt's spot and vice versa. However, we changed their spots because, as we were recording, we felt the whip pan first did not truly introduce the box well or its dominance. In the camera shots/angle project, I learned that storyboards and taking shots can take a while. For the storyboard, it took a much longer time to put our ideas onto paper compared to the camera movements project because we needed more scenes. This led to deeper thinking about our storyline: we wanted the story to fully explain visually what is happening. The same concept applied when it was time to actually take the pictures. We took several pictures for the same scene because it was difficult to show the emotion we wanted on the first try. 

    Our projects had very successful outcomes but there are many things I would do differently so they would come out even better. For the camera angle/shots project, I would plan out our ideas better to prevent our procrastination. If we had done this originally, certain scenes may have come out better than how they are now and better scenes can be useful for future projects. Moreover, for the camera movements project I would find a better location while recording. The place we were at for the assignment had many students around; we had to convert our project into a silent film. I would've found a quieter place to record so we could have added cute sound effects like a gasp, the box opening, a dominating sound while the box was being introduced. All of those effects would have made the movie more entertaining to watch and entertainment is a key factor for products like these.