End of Year Video Reflection

This year in Video was pretty good. I learned a lot of stuff, had a lot of fun, and made some cool videos. Even though I'm not continuing video next year, all the skills I've gained should help me into the future anyway.

In terms of technical skills, I started to learn some of the more advanced effects you can do in Premiere. In my most recent project, the short film, I learned some color correction and lighting effects, as well as some audio effects like filtering out wind (sort of).

The skills I probably had to use the most were collaboration and communication. Most of the time, they kind of went together. Throughout all of the second semester projects, I had to work in a team to get videos done. Whether it was knowing what to say in a shot, or even something as simple as telling when the camera was filming, communication was important. This semester was also probably some of the most fun I've had in e-Comm. I have some great memories: filming our music video up on the catwalk, being generally dumb for the Napoleon Dynamite trailer, and making an actual short film. Working with other people was really fun and helpful. Even when things went wrong (messing up a line, wearing the wrong clothes for a scene, or the daily "forgetting to fix the audio settings"), we learned from it, and got better.

Project management has always been somewhat of a natural skill for me. I usually get projects done on time, and I'd say they turn out fine. I do have a habit of getting distracted with most work, but I have an unnatural like for editing, so I usually go for like three hours straight, but I don't even care, because it's fun to me. Time managing while filming is fine, too. There have been many days where we goof around too much and don't get much done, but we've always finished on time.

Leadership is still probably my weakest quality. Most of it is just the fact that I just hate telling other people what to do, but I'm not a good leader anyway. I probably have gotten better, though; I feel a bit more comfortable in leading, at least in video, though it's probably just me being a perfectionist. 

Overall, this year was great. I've honestly probably learned more in my eComm classes this year than any of my other classes, except maybe Japanese... but this is an eComm blog, so that doesn't matter. All the projects turned out pretty good, and even when things didn't turn out how I wanted them to, I still learned something.