Over the past four weeks of doing a Senior Project I have
learned a lot about my interests and myself. Carson and I teamed up in January
with the idea of creating a documentary about Atlanta. At first we wanted to
explore as many cool places around the city and film our experiences at each
place. This idea eventually transformed
into creating a documentary about our structured lives and showing us break out
of that structure or “bubble” and experience Atlanta. After a lot of
consideration and meetings with our advisor, David Silverman, we thought the
most captivating and entertaining videos we could create would be centered
around restaurants. Regardless of the locations, the main goal remained the
same: venture outside of our comfort zone and hopefully inspire our peers to do
the same. At first we thought making a 60-minute video on numerous restaurants
would be practical for the time allotted but Mr. Silverman knew that wasn’t
realistic. We narrowed it down to five restaurants that we planned on making a
five-minute webisode about each one.
Many
factors played into choosing the five restaurants. Before we started the
project we would tell people about our idea and they would offer us
suggestions. The most recommended restaurant we encountered was Ann’s Snack Bar
so that became our first restaurant. We also had numerous people approach us
about visiting Krog Street Market. We did some research on the BBQ restaurant
in Krog Street Market, Grand Champion BBQ, and saw that it had outstanding
ratings so it became our second restaurant. In our research, Mary Mac’s Tea
Room was all over the Internet with incredible ratings and reviews so we made
them our third. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream added a dessert aspect to the
project. Jeni’s was improvised on a day we got shut down by another restaurant
but we found it to be an excellent spot. Finally, we added Savage Pizza because
we wanted a pizza restaurant on the list and Savage has great ratings and is in
a very neat area, Little 5 Points.
We spent
the first two weeks (8 days) learning how to use the camera and putting our
filmography skills to test. We rented about $2,000 worth of equipment for $400
from aperturent.com. This was the first time either of us had used a camera
that nice so we spent a lot of time with Mr. Silverman learning how to use it.
After that we spent the remainder of those two weeks filming at the five
locations. I learned that a lot plays into getting good footage. Sound,
weather, light, wind, shadows, hand steadiness and numerous other factors can
both positively and negatively affect your footage. We found this to be
problematic when editing… “Because our video recorded to an SD card we couldn't
watch it until we got home to a computer so a lot of the times we would just
take one shot at a certain angle thinking it was good but when we get back to
the computer we would realize it was shaky or the lighting was bad. To
eliminate this mistake in the future it is always helpful to get multiple takes
and then choose the best one when you get back to the computer” (April 20,
2015). We also had two locations cancel on us but the five restaurants we did visit;
the staff was very fun and easy to work with. We lost some footage along the
way and had some ups and downs but overall filming was a great experience that
went very smoothly because of the great people we worked with and the great
food we got to eat. I personally enjoyed the filming portion because the
theatrical aspect was very fun to me. Putting on a different persona in front of
a camera to be more lively and enthusiastic has been something I’ve been
working on for four years in theatre class and it was great to use some of that
experience.
The next
two weeks (10 days) was spent editing. We
spent two days on each video and each day we learned more and more about the
process. “We're trying to make these videos look as professional as possible
but we're amateurs so it is certainly a learning experience. Everyday we get
better at the process and it continues to move more smoothly as we learn more
functions and controls”
(April 17, 2015).
Essentially what took so long was taking about 30-45 minutes of footage and
cutting that into 5 minutes. Sifting through all the clips we had, cutting them
up and formatting them took a full day on it’s own. The second day we would do
more cosmetic work such as adjusting volumes, adding music and fixing any minor
glitches. During the editing period, Carson did most of the technical work. He
would do the hands on editing where as I would do the over arching work like
putting the clips in the right place to make the videos artistic with flow. I
personally did not like the editing half of the project. I learned that I am
just not patient enough for the technical parts of editing. I loved watching
them all come together but so many minor details went into making them. It was
a grind.
In
conclusion, I am very fortunate to go to a school like Lovett that is able to
offer this time for senior projects. I’ve always been passionate about film and
acting and I’m glad I got to take some time to learn what I like and dislike
about it. I learned that I love working on camera and improvising but I have no
patience whatsoever when it comes to editing. Carson and I made a great team
because of this. Without each other this project would have been impossible.
This project has given me a step in the right direction and I can’t wait to
continue my passion for film and acting in college and in life.
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