This week went pretty well for me. The online portion was a bit challenging, especially on Wednesday when I accidentally slept through the homework submission window, but it mostly went well. It was nice to film stuff without worrying about attending a class, and I could relax and work on getting good shots.

2. What was the most valuable thing you learned this week? Why?

The most valuable thing that I learned this week was to go out and plan shots. I went out on my first day of shooting without a plan, and essentially just shot what I thought was cool, and as it happened almost none of them turned out well. I looked through the footage and decided what I liked and didn't like and I just went out and shot them again, but with a better plan in mind. There are still a few shots that I would have liked to reshoot, but walking out to the bridge took way too long, and there was a very short time frame where the lighting was how I liked it, so it just wasn't possible.

3. How were the Skillshare tutorials? What did you like or not like about them?

I didn't really like the skillshare tutorials. They took way too long to teach very little, and most of what they talked about could be figured out within 2 minutes of fiddling with iMovie. They really didn't help my project at all, and I would have appreciated videos on shot composition much better, or something that I could have actually used.

4. How did you feel about the Capture a Location project? What went well? What could go better?

I liked this project a lot, mostly because I liked my shooting location and I liked just walking there and listening to music as I went. It was, however, very hot. Some of the shots could have had better lighting, but going out to film them at an earlier time would have been pretty brutal. I might try to find a way to shoot my next project indoors because shooting outside for a long time can be intense.

When looking through the Vimeo group, I noticed that other people's videos used a lot of shots on the same subject. They would take a video of an area and then reshoot the same spot from a different angle or at a different time. This is something I didn't do, but I probably could have, because it helped add shot variety without disrupting the flow in weird ways. All of the shots in my video are of different subjects, which can make it hard to follow how one shot relates to the previous one. Part of that is the filming location, which ended up being narrower than I expected. I couldn't find a way to show where the shots were located. Because of the way the bridge is - with metal meshing on each side - I found it nearly impossible to include both the foreground and background at the same time with good shot composition, so I had to compromise and include separate shots of the foreground and background. This made it so that the location of the shots was unclear in the last two shoots which were shots of the areas behind the bridge.

I had fun shooting with my DSLR camera which enabled some shots that I couldn't do without it. The shot where I have a close-up of a metal fence post that then focuses on the freeway behind it was one of them, and I was very happy with that shot. I initially planned to use that technique of changing focus manually to solve my earlier problem with the foreground/background but unfortunately, it just looked weird, and the camera shake was too extreme. I enjoyed using the camera, but I could definitely get better at using it. My camera should also let me do a zoom-in so I might try to use that in a future project.

I also wish I could have gotten more shots from higher up. For the shot of me walking along the path next to the wall, I had initially planned to take it from the hill that is right above the path, but then I climbed up and found that trees interrupted the view of the path. I again had to compromise and take the shot from foot level, which led to a good shot, but it ended up being pretty similar to that other shot of the bridge later on. Next time I might bring duct tape and a meter stick and tape my phone up somewhere high.

5. Do you feel like you have a basic understanding of iMovie and shooting videos on your phone? Why or why not?

I feel pretty good about iMovie. There might be more tricks and tools that I don't really know about, but for the most part, I felt very comfortable using it. Shooting videos on my phone was good when I started using pro video mode. It allowed me to have very fine control over exposure and focus, allowing for good shots. Shooting on my camera was more fun, but it took more work to carry around and position the camera. For future projects, I plan to continue with a mixture of phone and camera videos like I did for this one.