Rantings about video productions

I'm not biased to anyone in particular here, and I don't claim to be an expert - all these are my personal thoughts and opinions. And I'm also not gonna say any names.


As our final assignment for Media Appreciation, we were divided into groups and were told to create a video based on the genre that was randomly picked by a group member. The available genres were drama, sitcom, food documentary and travel documentary. We were given more than a few months to plan, script, film and edit.


I'll start off with the most basic - captions / fonts in the video. It would be safer to ask an English-proficient group member to go over the captions, subtitles, or any text that would be added into the video as a visual supplement - I was utterly at awe when I saw 'sauce' spelled 'sos'. I think even in university, we would already be able to differentiate English with Bahasa Malaysia.


And also the font types and colors - it should be casual-ish without being to hard to read, and the color should be more of a neutral one, though contrasting with the background. It would also be better to have a rough script than absolutely nothing but spontaneity.


Camera angles and movement are also quite important - too much movement makes audiences dizzy, too little is equal to boredom. The best reference? Real life programs that are relevant to your video genre. Observe and take inspiration and ideas from there.


Timing is also crucial - it just seems weird when actions and speeches are out of sync. And I personally would   let the video go through some pilot testing - get some random people and show them the video, then interrogate them for their opinions. Some scenes are harder to nail than others, and especially for some parts, a little more struggling and crying might be called for, as for some emotion, other than constantly texting.


But as far as some first-timers go, we actually did pretty well - we as in the entire class. However, some may need to look for better locations due to lighting and background noise. Like I said, these are my personal opinions, not biased to anyone.