Who are You? and Virtual Obsessive Love.

This module involved working on two projects as contributors outside of our solo projects. I was able to be involved in the production of Who are you? a music video project by Nhat Linh Trinh, in which I was involved as the Assistant director and editor. The second project I was involved in was Virtual Obsessive Love, a mockumentary by Alvin Alex-Juderaj, my role in this was as the Assistant camera operator and editor. Linh’s project was to create a music video for the artist Jinnie, the project aimed to portray young love in a creative visual art form and explore the versatility of a projector. I took on the role of Assistant Editor because post-production is the part of the production process I have always been interested in, I was also able to gain more experience as an assistant director. For the mockumentary, Alvin wanted to create a documentary on how difficult it is for people with depression to find love. I took on the role of Assistant camera operator because most of my experience working with a professional camera happened pre-pandemic, so the opportunity to relearn and improve on my cinematography skill was an option I just had to take. As stated earlier, because of my interest in post-production I decided to take on the role of Assistant Editor because it would count towards my experience.

Through a critical analysis of my role and skills in each project, this reflective report aims to evaluate my roles in each project, the process of working with others, and how I incorporated the skills I have developed throughout the course.

Working in a group:

Forming a group to work on each other’s projects mostly involved working with people I had previously worked with and because I found their project ideas interesting, I decided to work with them. For Linh and Alvin’s projects, I was mostly involved with the production and post-production stages of their projects. I believe working as a group on each project made production efficient and swift. Before production for each project started, my group members decided on making sure pre-production for each project was definite before planning the production stage. Pre-planning for the production stage mostly involved meeting up physically when we could and texting details of each other’s projects to one another. The pre-planning was important because it involved planning how we were going to travel to each group member’s required location for filming. With the planning done for each member’s project, I just had to travel down to each respective location to complete my roles. The filming for Linh’s project took three days to complete while Alvin’s took two days. I believe working as a group and contributing to each project made production effective.

Equipment and Software:

For Linh’s project, the types of equipment used were the Canon 7D Mark ii, a projector, and a tripod. For Alvin’s project, the equipment used was the Canon EOS 700D, a tripod and a Zoom H4H microphone. The reason for using these equipments was because they were familiar to us, as they were equipments we had been taught how to use on the course and had experience using. The projector was used in Linh’s music video to add to the aesthetic of the video. For the post-production of Linh’s video, the software used was Final Cut Pro. I had little experience in using the software while Linh was well versed with this specific software. So, to be able to complete my task as an assistant editor, I had to watch YouTube tutorials on how to use the software to refresh my memory on it. For Alvin’s project, the post-production software used was Adobe Premiere Pro. The reason for this was that we were both well versed in using the software. We were able to finish the post-production stage effectively due to our prior knowledge of this software.

Working on the Who are you? Music video for Linh, my role in this project as stated earlier, was as the assistant director and editor. Working on this project involved having to travel to the filming location which was Linh’s friend’s house the reason for this was because for us to show the versatility of the projector in the music video we needed a place with a white background and to accomplish this the location we used had a white fabric, which we could use to achieve our goals. During the production stage, my contribution as assistant director involved telling the actors when to get in the shot and telling them when to give certain reactions like smiling or looking down, to make sure we made the most of our time with them. Directing the actors when needed allowed us to have a swift production making filming complete within three days. The post-production for this project involved Linh and I meeting up to edit the footage which we were able to complete within two days. I assisted in colour grading to make the footage look more high quality and in adding transitions and effects that would fit into the overall aesthetic of the music video.

An incident that occurred was during post-production, the problem encountered was that some footage taken was not entirely in focus which ruined the ambience of the video and made it look low quality. To fix this, I decided to add the sharpen effect and curve on the clips that were not in focus.

Another incident that occurred was, that one of the clips for a certain scene did not come out as expected because, during production, the scene was taken in the same direction which did not line up with the overall feel for the music video, this was proving to be quite a problem for us, so, to fix this I suggested flipping the clip to make it look like they were taken in different places in order to achieve the aesthetic we were aspiring for. Despite these incidents that we encountered during the production of this project, the final results were quite successful. These incidents allowed us to create a music video that could look professional.

Before flip

After flip

The second project I assisted in, was the mockumentary Virtual Obsessive Love for Alvin. The mockumentary was to depict a girl slowly becoming obsessed with someone they met online. For this project, I had to travel down to the filming location because Alvin lived quite far from my location. The reason for this was because of the creative direction Alvin had for the mockumentary and to make it easier for the actor. The location used was Alvin’s house, where we mostly filmed in the garage because of the lighting. As the assistant camera operator, my role was to collect b-roll to be used in between scenes so that it was not just the interview being seen in the final edit and to further the narrative of the overall project. Splitting the task of interviewing and collecting b-roll made the production process efficient and quick. Doing this allowed me to complete my required task quickly and allowed for filming to be done within two days, the timeline we gave ourselves for production. For the post-production stage, my role as the assistant editor involved meeting virtually on Microsoft teams to give feedback and advice on the editing of the footage. My contribution involved advising on transitions to make the video look more professional and advising adding music to the start and end of the video to make the mockumentary attention-grabbing.

An incident that occurred during the making of this project was during the production stage. Having to be recorded for almost a full day can be exhausting and the person being interviewed started getting impatient about how long it was taking to film because of retakes, to try and ease the situation I decided to talk with the person being interviewed to try and calm them down. I was able to alleviate the situation so that production could continue without any delays. Another incident that occurred during production was trying to figure out the camera angle to use for the main part of the mockumentary, to fix this I suggested taking shots from different angles to make the conversational look more interactive. These incidents that occurred allowed me to gain experience on how to diffuse a situation and working with different acts. As unexpected as these incidents were, the project was able to be completed within the timeline we created for it.

Overall Thought:

Overall, the process involved in making each individual project was a valuable experience. The project was able to run smoothly through constant communication between my group members. Communicating with Linh and Alvin on each of their respective projects, was important because we were able to organise and plan each stage of production successfully. Throughout the course of working on each project, I gained more experiences to add to my technical and soft skills which made the projects pleasant to have been involved in.