One thing I learned from creating my portrait assignment was that the specifics of how a film turns out can be somewhat unpredictable. What I mean is that when you make a film, you try to control all the variables that you possibly can - but ultimately you cannot control everything. Part of what makes a good film, I think, is its ability to account for and take advantage of those things that the filmmakers couldn't control. Certainly there are varying degrees of control, from filmmaker to filmmaker. At this point I wouldn't say I am good at either of those abilities described above.
For example, Matt Phillips was the DP for my film. He strikes me as very capable of doing that job and he seemed to know what he was doing the whole time - and I thought we communicated and worked very well together. Nonetheless, after shooting the film I noticed several technical problems with the footage. Several shots were underexposed. The composition wasn't always really innovative or interesting. Some of the shots that we got only one take of (because they required props of which we had limited resources) went on too long or were imperfect in some way. At the time I felt like we both did a good job of keeping our eyes on what we were doing, and yet there are these problems.
I guess that just tells me that next time I need to be more obsessive about every shot. I would say something about my classmates work, but I've already written too much. I'll just say that it made me wish I'd done a better job on my film.
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