Final Reflection

       My senior project was something I will never forget. I went into this project thinking that LE and I would have a great time dedicating all of our time to something we both really enjoyed doing. Fortunately for me, that is exactly what it was just more work than I thought it was going to be. At first, our project outline was completely different that what it looks like now. The idea we had evolved into something that we thought was manageable with the resources we had. Our original idea was to go to a music festival and film a video to expose the culture and economical benefit. After much discussion and planning, we decided that that idea would not work with the festivals in April. What I wanted to gain from the project was hands on experience with film equipment and editing software. With this in mind, LE and I took our passion for environmental awareness and made that our subject for the video. I am very glad that we chose to do a video revolving around the environment because it is very relevant to our audience. The nature we are presenting in our video are all very close to the metro area and some students have been to each location as well. Some may not know that these beautiful nature spots exist so close to their home. Our goal for this video is to display the scenery that each of these locations offers that can be accessed by anyone. At first we started out with one photography camera and one video camera. Both worked okay but the quality of the first video was less than ideal. The first locations we went to for the first video were Panola Mountains and the Bellwood Quarry. We also used our drone but we were too scared to use it to its full capability at this point in the project. For our second video at the Tallulah falls and Stone Mountain visits, we upgraded to a much nicer video camera that proved to increase the video quality extremely. Also for the second video we started to get the hang of the editing software, Premiere Pro. For our final video we used footage from our final location St. Phillips. The drone was our favorite piece of equipment at this point in the project because at St. Phillips we had so much room to fly it and because it was a secluded island, there were no national park rangers to tell use we weren’t allowed to fly it. After all the filming and hiking to different nature locations around the south, LE and I spent our days editing photos and videos to organize into our final. We encountered a few problems equipment wise along the way but overall it was a very enjoyable experience. I feel that I took advantage of this great opportunity and I would definitely recommend that underclassman do as well. This project was a perfect chance for me to take a hobby of mine, filmmaking, and actually dedicate my time to creating my own production.