Post-Production Reflection

Gabby's Hungry Adventure from Chang Jung Lu on Vimeo.

I made the final video with Michelle, who I've known for a long time so I knew it would be a fun experience. We easily came up with a topic for our video, which is something we can relate to: the struggle of finding food in Hunter. Almost everyday we face the difficult question of what can we eat that day, so I thought making this video as a way to make fun of that would be enjoyable for us to do.

Michelle came up with the idea and I instantly agreed and then we went to plan out the scenes with a storyboard. We originally wanted to film mostly in the cafeteria as our actress, Gabrielle, another friend of ours, looks for food but she finds it incredibly difficult with the outrageous prices. Unfortunately, our story had to change quite a bit after getting kicked out of the cafeteria after being there for a few minutes. So we had to brainstorm for a bit about what we can do to use the footage and audio we already collected and we decided to incorporate the vending machines, which are equally frustrating and unreliable. So we were able to keep our theme even with the change we had to make with scenes. Looking back on it, this part was the most frightening time for me when making this video because of unforeseen circumstances and time constraints, so I'm glad that we were able to handle it and pull through.

I'm also very grateful at how patient Gabrielle was despite our changes and directing. It was really awkward and funny at first when filming and recording her, because we couldn't stop laughing since our topic and the script was so funny to us, but when it came to getting the scenes done we worked well and fast. Michelle and I pretty much filmed everything together. We took turns taking shots of the scenes. If there was a scene someone had a specific image for or just felt more comfortable doing, we would let the other person do it. I feel like we shot the scenes pretty equally based on who was comfortable filming certain scenes.

The audio was also split evenly. Sometimes when someone was filming, the other person would be busy recording audio, such as the room tone to get an ambiance sound in case we wanted to use the background sounds of the cafeteria or hallway instead of using music.

With editing, I feel that the editing was split evenly as well. Michelle would piece the clips together in a cohesive manner, to make sure our story made sense and flowed. Then we would both look over it to make sure we both agree on the length of the shots and if we liked how everything looked. Since we both had a similar image in mind of how we wanted the video to look like, it wasn't too hard to come to agreement with the video. I found many of the sound effects and the background music to use for our video, which Michelle seemed to like very much after showing her what I found.

I think we are both very pleased with the outcome of our video. Creating this video was great experience and I'm happy I got to do it with my friends, which I'm pretty sure made it that much more fun. To be honest, I don't think the video could have came out as well as it did if I were to have done it on my own, so I'm glad I was able to do it with Michelle.