cat documentary

My learning goal is to learn and study my house cat’s (there are 3 of them) personalities and behavior. To experience and learn more about documentary making, film making, narrating, voice acting, and video editing. I love good documentaries, informative videos, and films especially if they are presented in a fun way. To understand my cat's behavior. I love cats and I love observing them and taking pictures/videos of my cats. There's just something interesting about them, like standing atop of a sofa or bed, licking themselves, smelling each other, drinking water, etc. My cat, Binshi, has a weird thing he does every night where he goes to a toilet, printer, sink, or bag and does some weird things on it. To analyze and understand better my cat’s behavior. What I hope to achieve is I understand, learn, and care more about my cats.

Product Goal

A short documentary about how my cats live and their behaviors, personality, routines, and attitude. It must have good cinematography, good narration/script, and good editing. My documentary will include voice-over, pictures and videos of my cats. It will include fun and wacky moments of my cats goofing around the house, such as them fighting against one another, inspecting an item, or standing in a box.

[Paste Crit. Aii (Product Goal)]

Reflection

Video editing is a lot harder than I expected. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a video, especially a documentary like this. I learned through my experience that each cat has different behaviors and personality, and not every cat (such as Binshi) needs to be shown affection other than with food, water, protection, and shelter. Cats don’t really have depth unless you put them in unique situations. One of the things I didn’t mention or allude to in the documentary is that my cats like to go outside the house through the roof and onto other houses. During video editing, you also have to learn all of the basic techniques or you’’ get yourself screwed and confused and with some anomalies in your video. And there is going to be a lot using the undo feature for beginners . Using my phone camera was pretty easy, just hold it steady as possible and try to follow the cat wherever it goes. Voice over is pretty hard but just try to find a quiet environment and don’t be shy speaking into the microphone (I used my phone microphone because I felt like it has a better quality). Script didn’t need to be long so I kept it short and simple, since I want to prioritize the use of clips and visuals in my documentary. My tip is, try to see if you can use your chosen video editor and then when you struggle, try to look it up on the internet.

Product Evaluation

Definitely a lot can be improved if I don't procrastinate, spend more time and effort, and don’t rush it during its development. I should have added music too. I should have removed all the footage I consider unnecessary, increasing narration, more detailed and polished script, recording it horizontally etc. The video felt more like a compilation than a documentary, because of the lack of direction and goal it had, and its short narration. I should have been more detailed and descriptive with my cats. I should have met with my supervisor and kept reminding myself every time there is no ‘major’ homework (being communicator, thinking, principled, and balanced) I also shouldn't have been confused and mixed between objective b and product, and know the difference.