Throughout the BCM 114 Making Media course, I choose to create some cinematic short videos as my digital artefact. The reason why is, I am a media production student who barely have the experience of making short videos and do postproduction works myself. This blog post will show you guys with how I apply my videography knowledge into this project. My purpose is to use cinematic videography to improve storytelling, and let my audiences have a better experience when they are watching reels on Instagram.
The ‘Human-Centred Thinking’ from the second module especially the IDEO Field Guide to Human-Centred Design, was helping me to shape my approach. I learn that I must understand the user experience to create impact. By really understanding my target audiences which is my followers’ preferences on videos and their responses. With this, I can apply my videography techniques to shoot and edit videos in a cinematic way which will also suits their favour.
Next, I start to do some research on the content. I have been scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to look for high view’s short videos. But most of the video is about some random things and definitely not the content I want for my short videos. Instead of finding ideas online, I decided to come out with a storyboard first and the idea for my first video is “random walk in the city”.
The whole process for my cinematic short videos project has some different stages, including planning just like what I had mention above, shooting, and editing. Although I am a student who is studying Media Production, shooting and editing by myself is a big challenge for me. I had invited one of my friends who is also media students and have a lot of experiences in shooting and editing to help me. One of the major challenges during the shooting process was I cannot find the place that matches my storyboard, and I have to replace it with somewhere similar. But luckily, I still got the footages I want.
Moving on is the postproduction stage which is also the most complicated stage. This is one of the areas that I did not have too much knowledge in. I started to find some tutorial videos about editing cinematic videos and colour grading videos on YouTube. It really takes some time for me to apply the knowledge that I learned from those videos to my editing work.
After the postproduction stage, I had posted my first short videos on my personal Instagram account. After a couple weeks, the video now has 2,444 views, 109 likes, 10 comments, and 12 shares. From the comments that my followers gave, I can tell they really like the videos. But, comments of just emojis are not feedbacks that I want. So, I asked one of my followers for feedback and this is what she gave me.
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Integrating what I had learn from module 2 into my digital artefact has been a fun experience. The process of empathizing, researching, and learning is a pathway for me to create a good quality cinematic short video. As I continue developing my skills and knowledges, I will apply these principles to my upcoming projects.