Final Reflection

           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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