This was my first project with a video camera and it gave me multiple important lessons which will help with future projects. The first of which is that you will never have enough b-roll. We ran into an issue with this when we needed shots of the Lion Shrine. None of the shots that we took were considered acceptable, so we needed to drive back out to the Lion Shrine to get more shots. Once we got there however, the lighting had changed and the new shots stood out far too much from the old. This was something that we were told in class, but did not truly appreciate until we actually needed more shots.
The second major thing I learned was how important lighting is for every shot. Whenever the lighting situation changes even slightly, you need to white balance because your shots will seem white washed. We had this happen with the shots we took on Tuesday because there was zero cloud cover and the sun in the morning was so bright that it discolored old main in the shots we took of it, forcing us to come back later in the day and shoot again. Unfortunately we still needed to use some of the shots from the morning which took a lot of time to color correct when we were editing.
I believe that this was a good experience to have because it taught me lessons on how to improve my later projects and make them look more professional. Even though the next few projects we will not have a script for, I am confident in my creative abilities that I will not have a problem with it. Overall, I was happy with how this turned out, and if I could only change one thing, it would have been to get it done earlier, so that we weren’t pressed for time.
