My role for this project is the Assistant Director. For the Post-production stage, I gave comments on the rough cut on which part to be improved, to be taken away and so on. I also went on to shoot the b-rolls of the traffic light and the bus arriving at the bus stop with Winnie and Josephine, cause the DP couldn’t make it. We shot it with a Canon 5D Mark II for we realize that the b-rolls are after all a need after viewing the rough cut.
During the Post-Production stage, I’ve learnt not to underestimate the importance of B-rolls. They make a great difference in telling your story or in ensuring continuity. Initially, after finding out that the film which contain our b-rolls were ‘spoilt’, we didn’t go on to re-shoot our b-rolls as we thought that they were not important. But after viewing the rough cut, we feel that the story and the edit is too quick and doesn’t allow the audience to absorb what is actually happening in the story. Hence, we decided to re-shoot it, but since we didn’t get to shoot it on film, we used a Canon 5D Mark II, which quality is similar to film’s.
I also learnt that we should not edit on our laptops and do it on the FCP stations itself. We faced problems in reconnecting our media to the file on the station as our editor did it on our laptops. Not only does this may pose further problems, but it also waste a lot of effort and time as well. Also, before beginning our edit, be sure to check or set our project settings as these will affect the quality of the output. Incorrect output is like…throwing our efforts down the drain. What’s the use of shooting it nicely if the final product looks…wrong?
All in all, I have to say that this project teaches me to be a lot more patient…or has been testing my patience. Nah..I’ll go with the former. From the problems we faced during the pre-production (we couldn’t get the bus on weekends and we are only given limited time to shoot it), the production stage (we have limited time to shoot and…we still overrun!) to the post-production stage (my editor didn’t set the project settings and edited on his laptop), I think I’ve persevered enough and glad all these are over. Hope that we’ll do so much better and things will go more smoothly for AFP 2.
