The Final Blog (Blog #12)

I think it’s safe to say that I never want to make another documentary after this class. I feel very comfortable with making narrative films. I know quite a few students in my Intro to Film Production class are interested in going into the documentary field. They can go do that, but I’m going to stay in my own field. Sure, documentaries are very interesting to watch, but now that I’ve had experience making one, I feel more comfortable with narrative films.

What did I learn about myself as a filmmaker? I had a good idea before I took this class, but this class just made me realized that my original assumption of myself was right. I thought that I was a little controlling, but open for collaboration if the idea wasn’t bad. I knew I wanted to be a director and a cinematographer before this class. After taking this class, I am really excited about becoming a cinematographer, but I could use a little more experience as a director before I direct a feature film of any kind. Cinematography seems to come natural to me. I like working with cameras and making things look good. Directing is a whole other story. It takes a lot to become a director. I’m positive that I am doing fine a director, but I feel like there’s a lot that I’m forgetting to do as the head honcho on set.

What did I learn about filmmaking in general? Making a film is HARD. Of course, I wouldn’t need to take this class to find that out. I had never made a documentary or an experimental film before this class. It was interesting to learn what it took to make those kinds of films. When making the documentary, I was concerned about editing it. I asked myself “How do I edit this to get the point across?” and eventually I just pushed through it and it ended up doing fairly well. The experimental project, I didn’t know what direction to take this, and I just randomly placed clips onto the timeline in Adobe Premiere. I finally knew what to do when I saw the rough-cut play through. So to sum it up, I learned that almost every film you work on will have its problems that will make you ask yourself “What am I going to do? And how am I going to do it?” Eventually you’ll have those projects that are so controlled that your work is cut out for you.