Film Studies 201

This class if anything has strengthened my resolve to be a filmmaker, I loved every aspect of this class and learning hands on by doing projects instead of just reading from the book. I learned that I like pretty much everything in production and post production from shooting, editing, lighting, sound, and everything in between. I do not like pre-production too much, I understand why it is necessary and that it saves a lot of time later on and that it is a good practice to use, I just end up somewhat second guessing myself like if this would be better if this looked like this or used this instead of this. I also don’t like being a producer that much but every other job I liked a lot. I learned a tremendous amount from this class and I had a lot of fun making the projects. I only had an admittedly loose understanding of film making in general before I took this class, I still don’t know much but it really taught me a lot.

My plans for the next semester are to take as many film classes I can, and then try to get some online classes as well. I have also got to take a physical education class so I was thinking about fencing, aikido, or jiu jitsu. Since I commute to UNCW from Jacksonville I try to take as many classes as I can around the evening time so I do not have to wake up extremely early. I definitely want to take more classes where I will learn about the production side of film studies, I’m just more interested in production than the theory. However, I do have a respect for the theory and want to learn as much as I can about that as well. I want to take the editing class as soon as I can, since I have always liked editing. I also want to take the lighting class as soon as I can, I do not really want to be a gaffer but I have always been interested in lighting and especially when and how to use shadows.

Shooting and editing the experimental project was really fun for me. Since it was an experimental I got to really play around with angles and different editing techniques. I slowed down and sped up the time and I was really proud of the edit where I used the evaporating rain footage over top of the sand at the beach. Our quote was “It was so hot they never left their house” so Nick and I tried to brainstorm ideas that would show how hot it was. I looked up a bunch of different editing tricks I could use in the project that I will probably use again some time. Overall during this project, I felt like I learned a lot, through the shooting and the editing of the film and it was a lot of fun. I am proud of the product we ended up with and I feel like other people enjoyed it as well.