Self Evaluation

Self Evaluation

Pre-production:

I felt the pre production went well as I could shoot the interview inside my own home however I should have placed the interviewee in front of a darker background instead of a white wall i.e the curtain (see lighting).  B-roll footage was at the nursery and I had no idea what I was going to get. Unfortunately the workshop had finished by the time I received the call to come down so I couldn't get any footage of them actually making the products. The Interviewee was well informed so I feel overall it went well.

Lighting:

The aim I had for the lighting was to get a nice soft ambient light through the window and have the key fill and backlight covered with blue gels. However it was cloudy so the colour temperature higher than what the blue gels.  In retrospect I should have closed the curtain as the lights still gave a nice mood in the living room. One thing I definitely learnt was the importance of raising up the backlight to give the ‘halo’ effect over the head. My back light was too low and only lit the shoulder.

Camera:

For the B-roll I wish I made more use of the tripod for some of the shots instead of hand held, as some are shaky and some potentially good shots I could not use in final edit as they were too unstable. The reason for this I really wanted to get as smoother shots as possible as the subject matter of cosmetics is relaxing and only some of the shots were good enough to use. For the Interview I rushed the setup and did not make use of the peaking tool. And I didn’t zoom in to get focus when the interviewee sat down I just relied on the small monitor screen which was a big mistake as the focus is a little soft… I think in future I will just spend a few more moments before to set up and make sure i get it right. When I came to edit I wish I had more footage of the products and raw ingredients although it was sufficient I feel that I could have been better with more selection of shots as I ended up repeating some shots in the edit. As far as the white balance goes, I learnt my lesson from the Chases sequence and made sure the white balance was correct and this made a big difference for my edit.

Cinematography:

I like close up shots of subjects with focus pulls, I tried to achieve this with the raw ingredients shots however I wish I did slower pulls and longer takes in focus. Another thing I could have improved would be smoother motion for the product scans. My favorite shot was a close up of a plant then zoom out to reveal the garden I feel this worked well and was a good speed of zoom and steady camera.

Sound:

For my own sound work I think went really well, It was simple as during the interview the interviewee didn’t move so I was very simple. I think I could have pushed the levels up a fraction more, but that was easy enough to fix in post as it is easier to turn up the gain on a digital signal and have some headroom than having a unusable signal that clips.