Learning Cycle

Stage 1: I like to push myself to achieve on film what I have in mind. And that can only happen by trial and error. So by setting myself difficult scenes with effects and visual compositing I would plunge in an unknown world to me and try until I achieve my goal. Therefore I would say that I start by the concrete experience. I have to try and see the outcome in order to localise the problem in post production. You don’t learn in film school every aspect of filmmaking as in 3d animatrix for example. To become a pro in every field you would have to commit your entire life to learning. With my past experience in filmmaking and acting , I can confidently say that I have a routine which allows me to set a scene, the lights, the camera and direct the actors comfortably. The difficult part would come later with the end result of the shot. There are suddenly many question to answer while filming and many more after. That is fascinating to me and that motivates me in getting the as close as possible to what I have in mind.

Stage 2: Once I have loaded the shot onto my screen and identify the problem, I would start with my research. There are many websites one can visit and refer to depending on your objective. In visual effects in Adobe’s After Effects Professional, my favourite sight is Video Copilot which you can find a link on my blog. There are many tutorials to watch and learn. My favourite aspect of that site is that you learn so much by doing these tutorial that once you have to do a project you can apply tricks of many tutorials and merge them together in order to compliment your project. That aspect of learning is very interesting because there is a double learning experience. You don’t only analyse what you have done wrong and what you should do in the future but you realise as well your progress. That would be my reflective observation if I would refer to Kolb’s learning cycle. Having realised my learning progress, I would then precede to a second analysis stage where I would try to create a more adaptive approach that suit my project and me better.

Stage 3: I believe that now starts the abstract conceptualisation. The result I will have gained by now is called a draft. I will serve a reference guide to future enhancements. I hav something to look at repeatedly and can therefore make alterations or conclusions to on how my strategy will change during the course of actions. During that stage I am learning far more than before as I am in a advanced stage within that project and can related to many sources, trails and errors. I can determine whether the lights, the camera angle or the entire approach was wrong. Therefore, my future steps will be more accurate. Having said that, the tutorials I refer to can be followed at a faster pace. The pace of my workflow will have increased drastically and be more accurate. The result of the changes I will have made will be more visible and tackling a second shoot will be more confident and professional. At that stage the original idea in my mind will have changed, as I know the result already I am seeking, and therefore the I can start making a far better shooting plan for the second approach.

Stage 4: Before I used to go with my original Idea and enter the set with an average plan to my average idea I had in mind. Now, with the previous shoot’s experience, I would have changed the approach the workflow and the strategy with which the shoot has to enfold. Here the active experimentation is achieved whereas before was just an experiment. Knowing what the shot needs to look like and how long I need handles at the beginning and at the end for example, by now I would have created a far more detailed shotlist - a list decrypting to each department what shot is needed for the final edit – in order to check all the assets needed to create the final product in post production. To be a bit clearer with a simple example: A compositing shot for instance with one character talking to his in post duplicated twin in the very same shot, the actor needs to act twice in two different positions incorporating different acting. Further to that the camera needs to be lock off so the splicing of the shot can be done easily and in just on click of a button. Are both characters interacting with the same object in the same shot, then it becomes trickier. An example I was dealing with is a shot consisting of a person sitting in one car and his twin sitting in the other car looking at each other and the windows close. The difficult task was that the camera was on the side pointing at the first twin in the foreground and the second twin in the background. By shutting the windows the glass would become a problem in the final compositing. Have I known that before shooting I would have a fare better result than I have in the final edit. Sometimes there are just no time for re-shoots and I have to make the best I can to satisfy the client. But now that I have gained that experience in that example I can say that next time won’t an active experiment but a concrete experience.