Midterm Exam

1. What are the three parts of the production process? Pre-production, production, and post-production are the three parts of the production process.
2. What are the two new parts of the production class that we use in this class that can be found in marketing class under 2 of the 4 P's? Product, price, placement, and promotion are the 4 P's. The two that we use in class are placement and promotion. This is how things that we produce are going to get out into the world. An example of placement is putting your video on Youtube for people to see (because the best video in the world is nothing if nobody sees it!). Then, we use social media to promote our videos to other people via spreading the URL and promoting our video and ourselves.
3. What is the most important part of the production process and why? The most important part of the production process is pre-production. This is when your team gets everything together and gets organized so that the production and post-production processes move smoothly. Without pre-production, the rest of the production process couldn't happen.
4. What is the best part of your experience in this class and why? I'm sort of a [baby] tech-junkie, so I really enjoyed the class when we went over how to use Final Cut Pro. It's like using ProTools, only it deals a lot more with visual aesthetics. I had been waiting to use Final Cut Pro all semester, and it was really satisfying to actually start with it. Now I really want to start fooling around with it. Although I know that pre-production is most important, I feel like production and post-production are the most fun!
5. Explain how you like working in groups in this class, and how has your team grown. Evaluate your team. I usually like to work solo, but working in a group has really worked for me in this class. Everyone in my group is reliable and brings a different talent to the table, and we all have fun ideas. It's interesting to get together every week and exchange ideas and see what's going on in everybody's head. But, while we don't have all of the same ideas, our aims are all the same. We want to produce a reputable video and distribute it to the public via placement and promotion. We're currently coming up with shooting ideas and we all have a good vision for our show, our PSA, and our promotional spot. The Family's on the right track.
6. How have you grown in this course thus? Has it helped you critically think and have you applied what you have learned in other courses? Explain. What do you expect to learn in the second part of this course? I have learned a lot about pre-production so far. I think pre-production deals a lot with critical thinking and application, because it deals so much with other people and their motivations, so I would definitely say that I've begun critically thinking even more than usual. Naturally, I have applied these principles in my other courses, because I'm taking 3 CM courses right now - Radio, Video, and Sight, Sound, Motion. The current events/staying connected with the world/current events sort of thing applies in all types of Communication. I expect to learn a lot more about direct production and post-production later on in this class. I think we're going to start a lot more shooting and editing.
7. Evaluate Doc Chris. Is he doing an effective job coaching you and preparing you for the production and post-production process? Do you like the fact that social media is being used instead of textbooks? Explain why. I think, for what we've done so far, we have been prepared well by Doc Chris. I think this comes a lot from Doc Chris' copious real world experience. The only thing I wish we had a little more of was the technological side, which I hope will come later on in the course. That's the only thing that I feel like I'm going to be just a little confused about, unless we learn by doing, which I'm totally fine with too. I like using social media instead of textbooks, though. I don't have the longest attention span in the world, so learning the way we do is preferred for me. It's very hard for me to sit in front of a book for a long period of time, no matter how interesting the topic!