Assignment:
Our first assignment of the year was to make a PSA that was between 50 seconds and two minutes long. The group decided our PSA would be over racism. We thought using silhouettes would be a really strong idea for the video as it never showed the color of someone's skin, only the outline of their body sticking with the theme "we are all just people".Pre-Production:
Pre-production consisted of a lot of brain storming. We came up with the idea to take a bunch of different people with different races and ethnicities and having them speak/take pictures for us. We stuck with visual representations of "coming together". The storyboarding nor script took long because we pulled statistics for or actors to say, and much of our story boarding was just pictures of silhouettes. We all took rolls in the group, choosing what we were most comfortable with for this first project which helped it move along quite smoothly. The hardest part of preproduction was getting the cast list to work best with the production team. It unfortunately fell apart right at the end because we were unable to use all the people we originally wanted so we improvised and worked with the smaller group of people and turned in a product that was not as good as originally planned.
Production:
Production was a really short process. We filmed other eComm students during class so we could get all the images of silhouettes we needed. Our actual footage took about 15 minutes to shoot after school one day, and most of that time was spent waiting around for people to get there or finding people that could help.
Post-Production:
Post-Production is always my favorite part of the process because it is an "all on your own" part. You are able to sit and edit, and you generally get a different product from the rest of the group because you interpreted the concept a different way. Especially with such a short video, it is easy to get really caught up in small details and finding things you would change and make better for next time which is why I like it so much, because I'm able to learn from it.
My Role:
For this video, I took the role of cinematographer. I was not really needed until the afternoon we shot video. I helped a lot in the brainstorming how we thought the video should look but after that I was more hands-off until they needed my help. While filming all of this I learned the video would have been much better if we were able to get a lot more people to come help us because it would have looked like more people were helping support what we were doing. We had 6 actors come and help us and they were very easy to work with, but it was a real eye-opener on how much our pre-production fell through when we started filming.
General Information:
For this project we used Adobe Premiere Pro, which is what we used last year for all of our video edits. Much of our five guarantees were used in this project, but all in different ways. Technical skills were not as enhanced in this project as we took pictures of silhouettes and used and dolly to push and pull a camera. The communication between the group was pretty average for our first project. We all chose each other which made the communication between the 5 members easier as we were all friends. Armin really took leadership in this project as he was our director and it was him who made all the final choices. Collaboration was heavy in this assignment. We worked with other eComm classes, students we didn't know personally, and so that was a little bit of a challenge because everyone was a little nervous when we were getting pictures. Finally, the project management skills went right along as planned even though not every film went as planned. We did everything on the days we planned to film, edit, ect. but we didn't have all the people we originally hoped for.
Change and Keep the Same:
The concept of the video is very strong, and that is important when we are making a video about a sensitive topic such as racism in America. However, when it came to post production I found more things we could have done better than what I liked. The biggest problem was the lack of people, so the planning of that I would change. I would also change some of the silhouettes into not only faces, but full body too just because it is more of a visual impact of "No matter what our skin tone is, body type, gender, ethnicity, ect. we are all just people, and we all make a shadow". I would have added in a shot where we showed all of our actors smiling or laughing in front of the camera to make the heavier topic more light hearted. It is my personal opinion that if we were to get the chance to re-do this over, we could produce something better than what we have now.
General Thoughts:
I did enjoy doing this assignment, it was an easy one to get back into the swing of things. Being able to point out the mistakes makes it easier to learn, as well as fix things in the future. For the next project, over-planning in pre-production seems like a smart move, just so there is a back up incase something is to go wrong. For the first piece of the year though, I am proud of what we have and I do think it somewhat relays the message we needed to get across.
