Construction Post 29: My technical learning curve during the construction phase

I definitely went through a learning curve during the construction phase. From previous projects, and even the earlier stages of this project, I had already done some shoot and edit sessions, but I did some things during this phase that I hadn't before.

During the shooting session, one of the main things I had never really done before was camera movements. The ones I had done weren't extremely ambitious and there weren't many of them, but in this project we did quite a lot of different movements, so I learned how to do those due to necessity.

A photo of me adjusting the camera in order to get it ready for the tilt shot involving Jack and Sayo's characters. The tilt was a very tricky shot, and all three of us tried our hands at the movement- it was the biggest problem in the test shoot (at that time it was an arc, and we had to change it to make it easier,) and it still required many takes in the main shoot. Click to enlarge.

Camera movements were a great thing to learn in my opinion, and I am very happy with how they look in our finished video, especially considering how awkward they looked in the test shoot and how hard they were to do in the main shoot.

At the beginning of Edit Week 2, I hadn't graded or colour-corrected much- I had done it before in a previous school year and media project, although I wasn't very good at it and didn't understand it greatly. However, this time around, I was able to identify exactly what needed to be done to achieve the look we wanted, and I had a large hand in colour-correcting quite a few shots.

A picture of me colour-correcting, as part of the grading process. Click to enlarge.

Grading and colour-correcting really impacted our video- they helped create the style we were aiming for. As such, I am really glad I learned how to do them- the project would not have been as good without them.

I think that, from my original starting point, I have learned quite a lot about construction- I have gained more experience in things that I have done before, such as using the camera and editing suite, but have learned new techniques that have helped me use those pieces of equipment more effectively, such as movements and grading.