One of the projects that gave me the biggest sense of accomplishment this semester was our short film shoot in December. Although it was also really stressful and exhausting at times, I loved how we all came together as a group and everyone gave their best and played their role to create an amazing product.
I found it incredibly interesting and inspiring to get somewhat of an insight into what it might look like on a real film set and working with a large team. All of the practical experience I have had so far outside of FH was with event after movies or smaller commercial productions where a team of maximum 3 people did everything from lighting, a little bit of scripting, camera and editing. However, with all of these shoots it was mostly just interviews or statements of company CEOs or employees talking about their work, so there wasn’t much creative freedom in it.
This is also why I enjoyed it so much to work with real actors and see a story come to life that we as a group developed further from an initial idea.
It also gave me a whole new appreciation for how much work goes into just a couple of minutes of professionally produced films or shows. How much time it takes to plan out every single shot, get the lighting just right, think of everything needed for the set design and so many more steps that need to be taken before even turning on a camera.
In comparison the work I usually do takes a lot less preparation and planning beforehand, but you also need to be a lot more flexible and spontaneous with filming because there are some situations which you cannot simply redo if the focus or camera movement were off.
I think having experienced both situations will greatly help me with my master’s project in order to combine thorough planning and thinking of storytelling with having to be spontaneous when things happen that cannot be planned for. During documentary filming, depending on the style of documentary, you might have to stay very vigilant not to miss shots that will help your planned story along or maybe even ask the right questions to the right people in order to achieve your goal for the movie.
One personal takeaway I got from the film shoot was that I am very bad at saying no, which often lands me in situations where I’m in over my head. That is also when I become frustrated and I’m always scared that I am very rude to others just because of my own exhaustion and stress. So in the future I want to be able to just clearly declare the tasks I want to do and have the capacity for without feeling bad for saying no to other tasks.
I still don’t know whether in the future I would rather be involved in more creative projects that are thoroughly planned and staged or whether I prefer capturing real moments with real people even if that means not being able to influence the captured story all that much.
