Editing Practical - The Spy - Reflections

I really enjoyed working on this project, it was great working as the camera man and co-director. During these times I've learned and used many different skills. This includes creative and critical thinking skills when coming up with the scenes, narrative and writing skills are also used during creating the plot and story of the project. Later on we used teamworking to refine our rough ideas into the best iteration. I also managed to refine my camerawork skills and just getting used to the camera in general. It is also the first time we did risk management and time organization which is a huge learning opportunity.

Being the camera operator gave me some precious vocation skills. This practical helped me practice my practical filming skills like framing, composition, changing depth of field, setting up the camera, manually changing ISO...

Co-directing this project also allowed me to have certain control over the scenes we film. This helps a lot with communicating with actors and having creative vision, trying out different scenes and experiment with different angles.

I think that me and my crew planned the brief really well, we managed to encode the emotions, personality and professionalism of both Spy A and Spy B. We also came up with an insert shot  of the time which encodes strict regulation and professionalism of the spies which we are very proud about.

We did a lot of different shot types, close ups, medium shots, long shots, high angle, low angle, over the shoulder...

We plan to use standard continuity editing with straight cuts.

I think that our storyboard and shot list can communicate our intention very well but we still need some more instructions on specific props and actions in both the story board and shot list (mise-en-scene).

To rate my own performance, I feel like I deserve a 3.5 out of 5 performance. I did the camera work and directing. Some shot I did isn't as smooth as other shots. Some shots are a bit shaky since I'm still not used to filming with a camera. In terms of directing I still need to work on instructions and communication with the actors since we have some difficulty understanding each other

Reflecting on shots:

1. Transaction, Spy B puts down the drop and Spy A picks up the drop.

This shot is probably the most unpolished shot out of all of the shots we've done, the whole idea just doesn't work so well. If I were to shot this again, I would do a tracking shot of the drop through out the whole scene to highlight the importance of the drop. 

2. Eyeline match of Spy A, showing Spy B walking towards the bench

This is by far my favorite scene. The depth of field change as Spy B walks towards Spy A is such a great effect that I think I would do again in future projects.

3. Ending shot, Spy A and B walk away in different directions.

Not much to talk about here, mostly if I were to shoot this again I would keep trying to get both actors to walk at the same pace to make the scene completely symmetrical. But other than the lack of symmetry, this scene is fine.

If I were to film this sequence differently, I would add a lot more shorter shots and many more insert shots and close ups on the actions in order to emphasize the importance of the 'drop' more.