Premiere Reflection

This year I have been given more experience and direction with technology specifically the DSLRs. I learned most of what I know about them from when we--Mallory and me--worked on Behind the Season: Band 2016. It was and still is important for me to know how to use the DSLRs because they are the cameras that I will use next year for the band documentary, our class short film, and any other projects I want to do or are assigned. With all technology, Mallory and I had many problems when doing the band documentary, but most of the problems and, challenges were because we didn’t know how to use the cameras at first. Since we were thrown into the deep end first semester with the band documentary we definitely had many weaknesses at first, but over the year it helped--for me at least--find out what I loved and helped me improve what I wasn’t very good at last year. I have improved exponentially in my technical skills from last year and have learned more about cameras, editing, and story than I have in all other years of being in e-Comm. With that said I still have many things to improve upon, like making my videos more visually pleasing, increasing knowledge about editing and color correcting, and to take more initiative on both large and small projects. What I have learned from my technological mistakes and difficulties I will put towards making a better class short film and making a stylistically better band documentary that has a story and looks beautiful.

I have worked on many projects with different people throughout the year, but I have mostly worked with Mallory. Together we made: Behind the Season: Band 2016, Ferris Bueller opening monologue remake, Cherry Wine palindrome music video, and Allie our first semester final. Behind the Season was the first project that I worked on with Mallory ever. At first, it was a challenge because we had never worked together, but also because neither of us had done something of that scale before then. The next video we made was the opening monologue scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Although that remake wasn’t technically the best and we could’ve done better we worked together, with Brady, and it worked out better than most other projects I’ve done in previous years. The next two were again not technically the best, but since working with Mallory it has been less stressful and all around easier to get projects done because we had that experience of doing the band documentary. I also worked alongside Drew and Elizabeth towards the end of the year editing Too Close to Home. It was the first real time I had worked with them on a project, but because they had the experience of the band documentary from last year they work similar to how Mallory and I work. The collaboration part of Too Close to Home could’ve been better, but in the end, I got to learn new techniques and editing styles from Drew and that’s what collaboration is all about.

My communication skills have grown thanks to my work on the band documentary and work I did with everyone on Too Close to Home. It was important for my communication skills to grown this year because we worked on larger projects and with more than a few people, so communicating with everyone was a huge part of completing other projects. Coming into this year my communication along with my leadership skills were a huge weakness for me because I was so shy. At first, it was very hard to communicate with everyone since I had never worked with them and most I didn't know at all. But throughout the year I have improved immensely and I’m not as shy as I was at the beginning of the year. Even with all the growth, I’ve had this year I can and will keep improving to prepare for everything we do next year.

When thinking of project management two projects come to mind from this year: Behind the Season: Band 2016 and Too Close to Home. Behind the Season’s project management wasn’t as structured as last years because they set a deadline before they started editing and we didn’t. That made it less stressful and more fun for us, but, I think made it more frustrating also. I think it was frustrating for us because it meant that we could keep messing with it until we thought it was perfect. Then for the band parents and students, it was frustrating since we kept changing the release date. Next year I will try my hardest to schedule our project better so we have a deadline, but also give us enough time to make it perfect. Too Close to Home, on the other hand, was scheduled down to the hour, yet we still couldn’t make it exactly what we wanted. Granted that it turned out way better than what anyone thought it was going to be. It still had major management issues. We were all to blame for the failure towards the end because after filming we just left it for weeks before we even had a rough edit done. Then when we realized we needed more filming days it was too late. So with two weeks left of school Drew, Elizabeth, and I went to work and tried our hardest to salvage what we could even though we were missing so much. Next year I will try and hopefully, my class will help to keep our film alive and not crash and burn like ours almost did this year.

Compared to last year my leadership qualities have almost doubled. Last year for the group short film I became the leader because I wrote the story we decided to do. That meant I had to boss everyone around, but I wasn’t very good at that, so when we had to film and someone couldn’t make it I would take on their job along with mine. But this year because of my role as UPM and head of makeup in Too Close to Home I took on more of a leadership role than I thought I could. Between those two jobs, they helped me become a more outspoken person and take charge when things started to get out of hand. This will definitely help me next year with whatever job I do in making our short film and outside of class. Although I have grown as a leader I still have a long way to go before I am completely comfortable with bossing people around and telling them where to be and what to do.