Final Reflection

As I look back on this course and my goals I realize how general those goals were, and as such it is pretty easy for me to say that I accomplished them.  However I will look at each goal and discuss my success with them severally.
Goal 1: I will learn with moderate proficiency to use the editing software Adobe Premire, and be able to teach students to do the same.
I feel that I accomplished this fairly well.  While clearly no expert, I feel that I have enough knowledge to use the program and with more experience I will be more expert in the ways.  In my experience as a teacher I have found that I learn a subject really well upon teaching it.  My hope is to be able to teach this program to others to solidify my knowledge.
Goal 2: I will learn how to use the manual settings on a camera and how to teach that to students.
This I can do so long as the settings haven't been changed to be inaccessible.  I feel very confinent in my abilty to white balance, and I have even looked at the settings on my old cameras at home, which I learned had manual settings (both my video and still camera have f-stops, who knew right!?)  So, I feel confident in using these settings and controls.  I would have no problem teaching it to my students.
Goal 3: I will be develop assignments and assessments that I can use in my classes that will be effective in determining the level of mastery for certain skills.
This I have done.  I must say, I look forward to using these assignments in my advanced film class this year.  I feel more confident than ever to teach these skills now that I have organized them into assesible chunks.  Even without this, my improved knowledge of the camera, composition, pre-production, lighting, sound, and editing will make me a better teacher of my foundational level film course.

Mind=Blown

So, I decided that I wanted to show 2 things that I feel are important in documentary filmmaking: Interview and Process.  I have a former students who, though he has pursued other studies than theatre, has continued to use his skill as a Mentalist.  I, being interested in this,  asked if I could make this mini-doc about him.  In connection with the assignment that I created for my students, I chose to film my B-roll of him doing his process of Mentalism with some random students at BYU.  The interview wasn't supposed to change locations, but it rapidly became windy and we had to move inside.  So to help in the transition I filmed him walking to different places.  In putting together the interview footage and the B-roll I found that the later questions served better to introduce the subject, while the earlier question served better to finish things out.  So the locations appear in reverse order from when we shot them.  Generally the project turned out well,, but for some sound issues which I am still figuring out.

Doc Work

I am interested in how documentaries show us processes.  Such a common theme in docs is the process that people go through to accomplish some goal.  This can be as intense and grand in scale as Election or as simple and poetic as the french film Glas.  No matter what they show the steps that a person takes to make it to the end.  This is enormously helpful in trying to create the semblance of a narrative in a documentary film, processes have a beginning middle and an end.  When coupled with an interview this can make for a very interesting project.  We see the process and the associated narrative, while the interview gives us the character and themes that are essential for so many films.  It is as if the elements of tragedy set down by Aristotle in the poetics can still have place in non-fiction film.  He listed plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle.  With this approach to process and interview we can see the majority of those elements play out.  This is why I chose to have the assignment be a process with an interview about the process.  Not only does it allow students to engage with the very technical aspects of documentary work in B-roll, lighting, editing, and interview preparation, but it also gives them some very easy to work with material to create an engaging narrative.