Time To Reflect

 Wow! The first project of the year has been completed and it truly was a roller coaster. A lot of things have happened to get my final product. Regardless, I have survived my first project for media studies and I am very proud of myself! Before I can fully celebrate I want to take a step back and reflect on how this process truly went. 

Firstly, I wanted to address how the commercial I spoke about in my planning and production blogs did not align to my final product. Now this is a major concern on my end. When I initially was planning I had a very simple, mundane idea of what I wanted to achieve. Honestly, I wasn't too happy with this idea especially since I was told to use my creativity. That is where I lead myself into making the “Get ready with me x get to know me” style video popularized from TikTok. I was so excited to do these ideas as I felt like I leaned into my creativity. It also made sense to me at the time since the TikTok videos are typically under 60 seconds making a perfect length for a commercial. I went through the whole production process with this idea. I filmed my video, wrote a loose script, edited the video for hours, but when I finished I wasn’t content. Instead of feeling fulfilled I finished the video I felt like it was missing a lot. So, I turned to my peers in my class to ask for feedback. Most of them were positive and really liked the video so I was thinking about keeping it. But then a friend of mine explained to me how she interpreted the loose requirements given to us about the commercial. Once she explained it I instantly understood how my video didn’t achieve the main idea of this prompt to make a commercial about myself. At this point I was lost but I decided to start a whole new video. This meant planning, production, and editing all over again. This time I was quicker with my process. I had already learned the new features of CapCut, picked out photos and videos, and had ideas of songs to include so the production process boiled down to a shorter period of time. Eventually I finished my new and improved “all about me commercial” and I was ecstatic. Truthfully, I am not the best at understanding prompts correctly. I will understand something but I often veer off in a different direction and forget to go back to the chief point being made. Of course, usually I am writing essays so going back to edit is much easier but now this tendency of mine has spilled over into projects which is definitely a difficulty and flaw I must work on. Nonetheless, the video ended up being a more appropriate representation of an “all about me commercial” especially given the confusing process at the beginning.  

Now that that mishap has been addressed, it is time to go back to reflecting! Here is a couple questions I asked myself: 

1. What new technology did you learn to use?

This whole process brought me plenty of time to learn new softwares. Primarily I used CapCut to make the videos. I learned a lot about what each button meant and sifted through plenty of settings. One thing that I found good was the feature to extract audio from a video. I was unable to find songs I wanted to use on my commercial so I used this feature to use those songs. I would screen record a video and then extract the audio which then could be used. Another really interesting thing I found with audio was fading in and out of songs. I played around with these settings so much. At first I had the same fade in and fade out and volume set for each clip of music but after listening to the audio a couple times I realized that each segment of audio needs to be treated differently so I had to test out what sounded right per audio segment. In total, Capcut was an essential piece of software in this project that I got to learn how to use. 

2. What do you think you can do to make the next project better?

For me next time I will definitely be planning more. I assumed that I could breeze over the planning process and jump straight into production and play it by ear. Quickly I learned it is not that easy. I usually am a “Type A” personality so the lack of planning for this project was definitely my main concern. Next time to ensure a better end product and also a more laid back production process I will be making sure a plan is in place early. I will also conclude all research fully before starting. Once again with this project, I assumed I could research as I went. Given the laid back nature of this class compared to other AICE classes it was easy for me to forget that these media projects must be structured well in order to have a smooth process and overall better project. Thus, my main take-away would be to plan efficiently to make my next project better. 

3. What did you learn about the process of putting together a project? (General)

Putting together a project is a huge complex process. The best way to think about it is that there are two levels with a ladder connecting them. Level one is where you start and level two is the final product. Each time you miss planning, skip out on editing, or miss filming its like skipping a step on that ladder and making a deadly step up to the next level. Everything in this class builds off of each other. If you miss out on a step you start to fall behind and it affects the end product. I truly did not think the process of putting together a project would be as confusing as it is. Yet, I am excited for the next project and apply what I have learned. 

My biggest take-away from this reflection is that I need to plan better. This whole experience has exposed me to the process of filming and editing which I am grateful for so then I could make mistakes and grow from them.