Major Project - Final Reflection

And so the last post and reflection starts being written while thinking and reflecting on everything that has happened not only in this year and in this particular unit, but the entire learning curve that all these years have given me and where I am today compared to where I was 3 years ago. In this post I want to talk to you directly, the reader, for you to have an insight of what I have become as a person and the outcome of this learning process, impacting in my life everyday more and more. 

 

For those who don't know, I started doing videos back in 2007. I remember my first ever video was called "The Kidnap" and it was about a girl that comes out of her flat and gets kidnapped by some random people, ends up in a 'Jungle' that was actually just some bushes on the back of the building where I used to live and she escapes. Sounds simple and not elaborated at all and it wasn't really. I remember I shot that on those little DV Videocameras that your parents used to have to record videos during holidays since smartphones weren't a thing back then. After the 'success' of the Kidnap among my classmates back at school in 6th grade, I decided to do some simple videos of me messing around at home and just recording people and doing something with that, I even remember I entered a contest from Doritos to make a commercial for them, but of course I didn't win. One of the things that makes me laugh the most is how passionate and dedicated about it I was, knowing that a video made on the spot with no script crew or anything, with 2 friends that happened to be staying overnight at my place, would even have a chance against professionals for a commercial for Doritos. At this point it was when I realised that I actually loved doing videos just for fun really and not even thinking of what others thought about it but making sure I was having fun by making them. About a year or two after, "The Kidnap 2" became a real thing and was filmed with more people, different locations and a more detailed story. This was actually the story of how the kidnapper from the first movie escapes from prison, which happened to be a park, and he how two new police detectives (from which I was one of them) were in the hunt from him, but in the end he escapes (spoilers). And just like this, many other small videos were being produced, directed, filmed, edited by me and although I knew the quality wasn't great, I still enjoyed them a lot. Imagine that all I used was a small videocamera, no tripod, no sound equipment, nothing apart from the small camera. After years of doing that, me and a friend started writing our first story together for a film called "An Attack in Suit." It was actually a very nice piece that we ended up filming for a project in school not only in Spanish but in French as well, so that was my very first time I actually translated an entire 20 min video from Spanish to French and then had 5 hours of dubbing sessions with all the actors. That was stressful, but fun. The success of our film was so great compared to all the other ones from other groups, that it was shown in school for a couple years, even though it was awful haha, but I no one really knew how to do anything better so I was really the only one in the whole school with a bit of talent for that. After that, me and the same friend decided that we were going to write and film our final piece before our final year of school, and yes, it was the so awaited conclusion of "The Kidnap 3." I realised at this stage that 4 years had passed since the production of the first one and although my equipment wasn't much better, I had learned some things about pre-producing a video and working on a story. The idea was to use a lot of people from school and nice locations as well, but sadly for one reason or another, it was the "masterpiece that never got published." After doing so many videos at school, including school projects, President of the school council campaign, videos requested by the school headmaster to myself directly and some others from friends, I felt that this is what I wanted to do and I wanted to Learn more about it. At this point I remember I finally changed from iMovie to Final Cut 7 which was a massive transition, but very important one, although sadly the moment didn't last long as I found out that my old black MacBook didn't take the pressure and crashed. At this stage I took the decision with the help of my dad to buy my first iMac, but that didn't happen until I moved to the USA back in 2011. This was very likely a huge step not only in my life as a person but in the world of media as well as I wanted to learn more about this world and I realised the school to which I went for my final year was perfect for it, because not only had a TV Pro and Advance TV Pro course, but it also had a live news produced every single day at school, which was actually broadcasted on every TV and hallway in school for people to watch after their first class. Although I didn't get the chance to do this until my second semester as I was required to take TV Pro first and this was a unit on Advance TV Pro, I enjoyed the entire school year by working on videos with better equipment and having such a great teacher as Miss Zimmerman was, who taught me all the basics about TV and I owe her the majority of knowledge I have obtained in general in this business. I believe that for any topic you need to learn the basics first in order to progress on it and man she did a great job teaching me those basics and a bit more. I had a great experienced rotating rolls on the news channel as director, producer, sound operator, camera, floor manager, B-Rool operator, Graphics, Visual Mixer and TelePrompTer operator. We used to do them alongside the Advance Journalism class who were the ones that did every morning the research on daily knees and had about an hour to writte a story about it and get it ready to then be the news anchors an hour after. All this work and the having Miss Z as a coach, took me into winning second place at a competition called Skills USA, which was come thing quite big back in the country. It was my great success and a lot of worked had payed off and I was very happy about it and I think at this stage is when I decided I wanted to study this further and try and make a career out of it. I even was camera assistant and Visual Mixer for the Minor Leagues of Baseball, which I only did once, but it was an amazing experience. Not long I found myself graduated from school and accepted in what seemed to be like my new home for the next years, which was the Broadcast Media course for UCA. 

 

The reason I wanted to share with you a brief insight of my story before university and on how I ended up being in a classroom at the Maidstone Studios back in 2013, is because I want to compare it to what I became now and the amount of stuff I have learned since that day. At first I wasn't sure how things were going to be, my dad was the one that didn't understand as much at the beginning how a TV course was at university, since it's more about arts that the usual science or social courses, like engineering, medicine, journalism, lawyer or any other. My dad didn't understand what was required from me as a person and so we both started to understand that in this are it is more important what you can do with your skills and knowledge rather than what a paper might say about you. You could be in a typical course with tests and quizzes and all that to see how much you have learned, but in this business it is not about reading loads of books and learning loads of terms, but more about what you can do in the area that you believe you are best, which in my case is editing. From my very first year I started to put as much effort as possible into my productions, mainly to be able to try to make the most out of them. The main goal I had from the beginning no matter what the outcome was, was to expand my knowledge and try new things I every video, because how can you be called a good cooker if you can only cook one dish? For my storytelling unit I decided to do a trailer a bit Hollywood style and include some green screen for the opening of it and also do it in black and white. I also remember I made my first poster for it. This was a very fun one to edit and make since it was my first video filmed with nice professional kit. For my directors unit I decided to record all the footage in 50FPS like The Hobbit, just to see the difference between 50FPS and the standard 25FPS. The outcome was nice but not relevant, but at least I can say now that I have done a video fully in 50FPS and can tell the difference. Finally for my documentary unit we were meant to create a video with the theme of someone being some sort of hero and in my case with my new team called Tekkers TV, we did something different than everyone else and instead of making a person a hero, we did a documentary on dogs being heroes and that is how Hero Hounds came to life. Before I could blink the end if the first year was upon me and I found myself right there in front of my second year. New experience and better version of myself was getting ready to affront my first and mos enjoyable unit so far, which was the Digital News. For this I also decided to step things forward and I decided to create my first and own virtual studio. This was actually great fun and hard work to make, but I believe it worked out really nicely. The colours, the theme and the video itself I believe it is one of my best videos so far. For my second unit I did something that reminded me to what used to do back in school for the newsbreak every morning, which was a studio live production. For this unit I became one of the 2 directors for the show and I had to direct a live show of half hour from a real gallery in a real studio. This was a great experience because I compared it to the gallery I used to work with back at school and although the the one at school wasn't bad, this one was bigger and felt very nice and proffessional. This was a great experience in general and I believe that this marked a step on my career as I directed instead of editing, which made me experience some very unique and different moment. After all this I found myself working on my commissions unit for which I did a video for the Orchestre de Picardie, about their projects and their future. This was actually really fun as I had worked with them during my first year, so I knew the people, I had seen what they can do and this was a better version of myself ready for making a better video. Another year was gone and my third and final year just around the corner waiting for me. 

 

With new bigger challenges, my third year was actually the big test of putting all my current knowledge and a lot of new one in action to fully produced a pilot episode for a series. For the first time ever, I actually had two focus on two areas and two areas only just like in the real world for the creation of a video, which was a really hard task as I used to like getting involved in other areas, but at the same time it helped me a lot into growing as a cinematographer and an editor. I have always been known for being a very technical person because that is what I love doing, which has been the reason why I do camera work and editing as well. I had a lot of work to do because I had two jobs, which required two different types of research and also a lot more work, but at the same time it was a lot of more learning and new knowledge which I have obtained and I am very happy about. I think that at this take the about of work that was put into Sunday League was huge and it was a long journey with a lot of ups and downs, but the most important part about it is that it was a learning curve all the way from the beginning. My dad was the first one to taught me that a smart person transforms a bad experience into a learning outcome, because a lot of time you don't learn something by reading, but from actually living it and experiencing it, so sometimes you have to go through bad moments to get a big learning outcome out of it. One of the most important things about this project is that it required a lot of teamwork and trust. Starting with things like not being part of the casting of the actors or deciding on locations, but at the same time the other members of the crew were trusting me as well into making things happen like having nice shots, editing properly and doing my job the way I was supposed to. In order for that to happen I had to do quite a lot of research and I also had to fail a couple times attempting some camera movements or some techniques while editing, but I believe that I have learned a lot about things like triple checking your shots are on focus, how to work during sunny days or on a really tight schedule. One of the things I am not that great at in general is written work. I used to be really good at it back at home in general due to debating for more than 4 years, but when it came down to writing stuff in English, I struggled a lot. I have been speaking English since I was 4, but it is very different talking and learning it than actually writing it all the time and speaking it all the time as well, specially when you have to be very formal and bring debate into a paper based on research. A lot of times I have some good ideas in my head but when I get down to writing them I am just not able to, for some reason I struggle a lot with that and I hope in the future this gets better and doesn't become a big issue. 

 

Right now I have no idea what is going to happen with me and my future. I don't know if I want to pursue this as a career or leave it as a hobby, because the thing I always used to enjoy the most was doing it as a hobby in order to be able to enjoy the fun of it. Right now all I know is I am getting married soon and I can sit and think what I want to do with my life, whether it is pursuing a career in the media industry or doing something else like hotel management, which is one of my other passions. Overall I can say that I have learned a lot and cannot believe that it has been three years already and also the end of it, I never thought the day would finally come where I could finally say I am done and I graduate from university. This is a major step in life and I am happy that I took it, because from all the good and bad experiences, I learned a lot and I will not take anything back. 

 

Hope you were able to read a bit more about myself and how the media business has changed me and how grew up to be the person I am today. If you sat and read all this I do appreciate it a lot as you took your time to know a bit more about myself. 

 

Thanks for everything,

 

Chris