Critical Reflection

This whole year was like an adventure to me, a new experience in a new and interesting field. I have never filmed before or edit or try to take some beautiful pictures or analyze a movie clip. It was a very beautiful experience and I am also kind of grateful that everything went well at the end although I’ve encountered a number of serious problems.

Regarding expectations vs reality in the movie opening task, it didn’t go quite as planed starting from my script. I didn’t have quite enough time I did the blog and movie opening one week before the deadline which was very stressful, but this happed due to cello and theory exams. I didn’t have any people to film me because all my friends are working full time jobs or are writing their thesis for university. I have finally found someone one week before the deadline and film the shots with the cello then I put my roommate at 2 am to film other shots in my apartment. Having no people was very stressful and the person that I have found to help me film myself had no experience before in filming and I had to explain to him how camera shots and angles work which was quite hard when a person never heard for example of a “Dutch angle” or “dolly movement” and I had to explain every shot and angle and what I want in 15 minutes and even though I explained it didn’t go as planned anyways. I had lack of equipment, I was supposed to have a camera from a friend but I never got to meet that friend for the camera anymore because he was very busy so I had only the phone which had no storage space and I had to delete absolutely everything on my phone because it wasn’t working and that got me really angry. I also couldn’t afford to pay for editing softwares because they are quite expensive and it was very complicated to work with the free version of it (as I explained in the process of making my film opening in the previous post). I had to also wait to take some outside shots which was also annoying and complicated because I was running out of time and in the Netherlands it’s always raining outside so I couldn’t do anything and I had to constantly check the weather and run outside for 10 minutes to film something very fast until the rain started again. I was a bit sad because my final work didn’t quite match the script that I wrote with the first idea that came into my mind. I had no clowns, train shots, professional camera to work with, standing on the bridges and so on. The idea is still there regarding what I wanted to express but the shots are different. More minimalistic and low quality than what I expected. I also felt very weird to film myself because I am not photogenic and my brain shuts down when a camera is in front of me, because I am a very anxious person so it was very uncomfortable. But I couldn’t put anyone as the protagonist either because as I said before, my friends are full time workers or finishing university studies and also neither of them know how to play the cello or at least mimic a good play so it looks like the character is actually a cellist. I wish I could’ve split myself in two or find someone that knows a bit about the cinematographic field so I wouldn’t be stuck between: a) you film the whole thing but the protagonist will not be as you expect it- but at least the camera shots and angles will be on point, but also the person that would play your character wouldn’t understand in depth the story behind because they don’t know what it’s like to be a classical musician and facial expression and emotions were very very important in my story due to the fact that it was no voiceover in the background to explain what exactly I felt in each scene or b) the camera shots and angles would be slightly mediocre but if I play the protagonist, my character will be on point and I can express emotions more in depth to the viewers because it’s my story.

Either way, I am a bit surprised by the result because when I started media studies, I said that I could never do something like this (make a blog or film anything). And I am impressed that at the end of the day I was actually capable of building a blog, filming and editing quite well for a beginner a film opening and that my brain was capable of having film opening ideas which were quite nice.