CCR Question 3

 The third question we have to answer for our CCR is: How did your production skills develop throughout this project? Here's the script I wrote for this part of the question. 

Looking back, I feel like my production skills have improved so much with this project because it has truly made me realize just how much work goes into creating a production and how everything has to be planned down to the smallest details, such as lighting, angles, sound, and just everything contributing to the film, or else it will take so much longer and it won't flow as smoothly. The overall planning for this film went pretty well I would say because I remember I came up with the idea when I was trying to fall asleep one day, and from there it just clicked and it was really easy for me to develop a storyboard and an overall plot. Once I started seeing visuals of what I wanted my story to look like in terms of cast, set, and everything, I got really excited because what I had in mind was something I knew I could learn to develop into an amazing film opening and I was starting to see it come together. For our casting, we knew immediately who we wanted Layla to be played by, but it took us a little longer to find the cast for the parents, which ended up being my sister’s boyfriend and his mom. Our first day of filming went really well because I had a shot list of everything I knew I had to capture, and we had a lot of fun trying out different shots and angles to see how everything looked and find the best shot. One of our friends lent us his tripod so we could stabilize our shots but even with that, once I looked back at the shots when editing, some of them came out shaky so I had to re-record like 2 or 3 shots. On our planned second day of filming, the sunset was beautiful which was exactly how we wanted it, to kind of juxtapose all the emotions going on in that house but unfortunately our actress had a last minute emergency so we had to reschedule, but once we did film it went so fast and smoothly. Sadly, the day was very cloudy so we had no pretty sunset but we had to work with what we had because it’s something that was out of our control. I really feel like the part where the growth really came in for me was with editing. I had to do a lot of research on how to use a lot of things on Premiere Pro, like I mentioned earlier, that I didn't need in past projects like the Music Marketing Project or the One Word Film. I feel like towards the end of my editing process, I was doing it with more ease and I felt so much more comfortable with my abilities. However, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t struggle because I definitely did when it came to exporting the movie. It was so frustrating because everything was getting overwashed with white and it just looked so wrong, but I managed to fix it after research, trial, and error. Before taking this class, I had absolutely no experience at all with filming or editing a production like this, but I believe that this project is going to showcase the best I could have done with the editing, but I also believe that I still have so much more space for improvement because I’m just starting and I still have so much to learn and so many opportunities. With this film, I really feel like I was able to grow and learn as a filmmaker, especially as an editor and it really has opened my eyes to potentially taking this up as a career later in life.