End of Year Reflection

My strength would be my knowledge of not just movies, but TV shows as well. I constantly referred to TV shows and their interesting story lines as film as their usage of filmic techniques. Honestly, there are people in the class who has seen way more films that I have, but I am still able to talk about the research. When researching, I would like to say that "ebscohost" helped, but I did honestly did not help me find the research I was looking for. The only interesting article it ever provided for me was when I was researching the film Psycho. I always looked, but I never found good articles. Sometimes, I never found any relevant articles. That is the area I would say I need help in. I'd say that I only needed help finding scholarly writing during my research throughout the year. I don't think there is a set way to teach students how to research, but maybe exposing students to more reliable sites could prove helpful.


My strength approaching the oral presentation was the amount of time I put into the research for the film. This time, "ebsochost" proved to be helpful due to the vast history and impact of Psycho on the film industry. The blog posts we did forced us to research early if we didn't want to start so early. Next year for my presentation, I think I just need to work on presenting it in a way that I sound like I know what I'm saying. Also, I need to stay focused on the real life events of the film rather than the real life events of the people it was influenced by. Next year, it would help if we were also forced to do this research because it would force us to no procrastinate. Also, I know this is hard to do, but I feel like we should get a little more time to work on it. I felt like presentations came too quickly.


This year, I got a chance to work with gear that I had not thought would use. For example, I used sliders, steadicams, audio gear (H4n) , lenses, cameras (7D), and lights. The most I learned from was using the lights I used in El Camino, the first short film we made this year. Not only did I learn about the Noir genre, but also the many of ways to light a scene to make the image more appealing. I was able to use this techniques I learned during that and improve the lighting in the documentary I made (Youth and Government). The are I need to work on in my filmmaking is the story-telling aspect, which is a HUGE area. I know the filmmaking techniques, but I cannot tell a good, visual story. I honestly don't know how to improve my storytelling because if I knew, I mostly likely already would have tried it.