Monday, April 30, 2012

#15: Final Course Reflection

This semester in TCF 312, I've learned a lot of great, practical knowledge about working on set and dealing with lighting, as well as some theory that pertains to the particulars of how one chooses to approach a scene or a film from a visual perspective. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the books that were assigned and intend to keep every last one of them as additions to my filmmaking arsenal.

Coming into this class, I'd say that lighting was definitely my weakest area. I had a pretty good grasp of the basics, but had never really had the opportunity to work hands-on with such a wide array of professional lighting equipment as I did in this class. The knowledge I've gained just from getting the chance to work with Kinos, Arris, and other lights, will be of great benefit to me moving forward. A lot of the specifics of F-stops and color temperatures were fairly fuzzy to me at first, but I feel like this class helped bring those concepts into sharp focus.

While I've got a good bit of experience developing and shooting my own film projects, I've typically always worked with a close-knit group of people with whom I'm very familiar. As an aspiring director, it's important that I become accustomed to working with large crews on a much less personal level if I hope to achieve success in the "big time." This class has done a lot to help me in that regard, as I've been pushed into a number of projects with people I hardly know at all. While always awkward at first, I find that a group of people with similar interests working toward a common goal tend to warm up to one another fairly quickly once they're on the ground running with cameras and lights blazing.

On top of everything else, I've gained something else very important from this experience. I've gained the absolute certainty that filmmaking and working within the visual medium are, without a doubt, exactly what I'd like to be doing with my life.

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