Final Reflection Pt.2 (post production)

This project has been a long journey, one that naturally required a lot of planning but this time went much differently. Often times, plans don't work out how they are expected, especially when involving more than one person as everyone is on a different schedule. In that way, expecting having to change plans is the best way to avoid disappointment and creative blocks. However, it's most definitely not often that a mass pandemic is the cause for projects not completely going according to plan. This set of interesting circumstances has taught me how necessary creative risks are, because you never know what might come up. Expecting the unexpected has been a major lesson because of this.
  This final reflection post production process will be different and similar in some ways to the one I published pre production process. At that point I had only filmed almost everything required for my piece, and because I wasn't able to film the rest with my main actor, I had to get creative.  I filled in the spaces with short shots of news articles and audio clips relevant to the purpose of my project that I didn't originally totally consider including, it was just an idea in the back of my head in the beginning of the planning process, that proved to be useful later on. I made the graphic for the title, and figured out how to make the background transparent and work it to look like a seemingly professional title scene. I made it with the main colors of the transgender flag, choosing the singular pronoun "she" because I like simple one word titles, and it worked to include the three colors that make up the flag without having them repeat. During editing, for sound I changed the volume from being at 100% at the blank screen as it transitioned to the title, and then with the first shot being my makeshift radio I lowered the volume to 30%, making it obvious that the news clip playing in the opening is going from non-diegetic to diegetic, otherwise known as going from not being a part of the scene to being a part of it. I put a lot of care into editing, making sure certain shots were edited tightly enough to make it flow cohesively, picking out audios, overlapping and adjusting the volume to suit the particular scene, and coming up with the graphics for the title, and then choosing a font similar enough to the title but slightly more simple for the opening credits, placing them strategically within the scenes.
  The filming process was much more simple, though it was my main actor's first time acting, she was extremely easy to work with and was a natural with how she conveyed emotion in exactly the way I envisioned. It also helped that there was no dialogue within this piece, there was supposed to be but that was something I had to change afterwards since quarantine I could not plan to film that scene that was supposed to include dialogue, and had to cut it out. That ended up working fairly well out of all the other more pressing inconveniences. I made sure to take several different shot types for each action she made within the piece, to make it as dynamic as possible.  Some excess shots proved to be useful for what I was lacking from having no chance to film the rest of the piece with the main actor. Overall filming was the much easier portion of this process and ran much more smoothly.  If I had to rank it from easiest to most difficult, it would be filming, planning process, and then editing. Planning and editing took up a considerable amount of time, whereas I spent two days in a row filming to break it into chunks.

  Overall, this took a lot of time but despite the inconvenience of COVID-19, I am glad this project gave me a creative outlet during these highly confusing times where there is no real structure to my days anymore and they are kind of just blending into one. It gave me an opportunity to talk about a topic that is extremely important to me, and to work with somebody who belongs to that community and get an even deeper understanding than any of the research I put into this project could ever offer; personal experience. I'm not completely satisfied with the turnout of my project, because I had big plans that I was going to throw myself into for this project, and the current circumstances were very limiting to those plans. However, I don't regret the project despite not being totally satisfied with the product, because of the numerous opportunities it offered me that I have just listed.