Things I Learned About Using Production Technologies

While I would not straight up say that understanding the technology was hard, I did encounter difficulties here and there. First and foremost, the Canon camera proved to be rather complicated at times. My biggest issue was it's weight inconvenience. The camera was just heavy enough to where it slowly began to make your arms ache after holding it for 20 minutes. Because of this, it made a quick and speedy filming process difficult at times. This was definitely not okay! Along with the weight problem, the Canon was also recorded in very poor quality when the light was dim. The images appeared grainy and un-professional! In order to solve these issue, my group and I learned that using an iPhone was the best bet most of the time. Whenever the lighting was low-key, it meant an iPhone needed to be used. iPhone cameras have been adapted and built over the years in order to capture a crisp imagine in low lighting - something Canon cameras are not meant to do. The Canon was reserved for special shots that our iPhones' could not achieve such as a rack focus and that was it!

Another vital thing I learned is that technology does not have an endless battery supply! Our Canon's died on us countless times during production, and all of us walked off of set with almost completely drained iPhone batteries every day! A huge lesson learned from this is that bringing a changer for all of your devices - even if you don't think you'll use be using it that much - is vital. You never know when you may need something with a battery, and you definitely never know when it will die! Chargers are important!

Alas, we come to the lights. While the industrial lights were EXTREMELY necessary for the outcome of our film, I had made the same mistake time and time again : touching the super hot bulb. I never did burn myself, but on numerous occasions I would yell "ouch!" *dramatically shakes hand out of dramatized pain* after touching the bulb by mistake. Those industrial lights pack some serious heat, and should really be handled with caution. Another thing I learned from these lights is that they have a built in safety feature where they automatically turn off if they get too hot. Many times during production, we would keep the lights on for an extended period of time, and they would shut off. We would either have to wait for that light to cool, or switch that over-heated light out for the second one, and wait for the cycle to repeat. Only using the lights when necessary - kind of like only turning on the tap when you're using the water - was a good lesson I learned in order to minimize the heat created by the lights.