Reflection: 4/4/11

Reflection
What knowledge has been reviewed? What new knowledge has been introduced?
Once again, through several presentations, general knowledge of music videos was once again reviewed. General camera techniques and distances, color and lighting effects as well as editing styles were once again looked over in these presentations because music videos tend to share similar traits in these areas. Some of the new pieces of knowledge that came to light was the method silhouetting as mentioned by Katherine in her presentation. In terms of film, the act of placing a powerful light behind a person makes it difficult to visualize the front of the subject and thus, looks dark and in contrast with the light allows only a silhouette of the subject to be seen. This allows for mysterious looks and emphasizes motion performed by the subject as that is the only practical thing that can be seen. Katherine's presentation also emphasized the use of hidden message and how certain movements provided the audience with little hidden messages. Silhouetting can be used in a dark setting, especially in our own films to create a sort of mysterious, awe-struck setting.
Did I solve any problems today? How? What didn't I understand or find difficult today? What can I do about this?
Because of the time pressure to finish the music video established due to lag in presentation and lack of class time to work on our projects, we had to rush to collect all footage required for our music video. We to rush it and collect all footage required. There were two areas I found difficult today. The first involved my own presentation of music videos. While I found it easy to stand up and talk to the audience without looking much at the notes or the computer unless I needed to refer directly to it, I found it difficult to actually present. By this, I mean maintain the formality as needed in the presentation of knowledge. I suspect this to because of general spur-of-the-moment thinking and lack of practice, which means I will have to rehearse more. The second is the concept of lip-syncing in a music video. Nic Tse was our "singer" but it was difficult to get it done to due the pace of the words recited in Chinese. Therefore, we found that create a general mouth shape was sufficient, or simply just to make it look like we were saying it right but were really just random mouthings with only true mouthings for identifiable words.
Evaluation
How successful was I in achieving my goals today and why? How could I/my group make use of time more effectively?
There are two parts. The first is the presentation. My goals were to use as little of the notes as possible which means more eye-contact, and be informative. I was good at looking at the audience though I occasionally looked at the screen to quote or to read out which is not always good but in some places useful. I was quite informative, breaking down my presentation notes and explaining it to the audience. Thus, I believe in this aspect I was quite successful. The second act is the final filming. This was to get footage required to edit though we might need reshoots later. Much of it was not well done because, not to offend, Nic Tse's lack of ability to dance though his singing was moderately good. It therefore seemed very amateurish. Despite this and several takes, we managed to get what we needed albeit at a somewhat lower quality than desired. Thus, the success here is not so great. We should spend more time on it outside school to get more and rehearse more, but also utilize all time available to us to get this done.