Wow! There is no way I would ever have the patience or creativity to be a director of a movie. This past week in class we discussed all of the people that worked behind the scenes of film. Whether it was in the preproduction planning stage or the post-production stage, hundreds of people are involved in making a motion picture come to life. What impressed me the most about the extensive preproduction process was how much work went into the storyboarding process and the planning of each individual shot. I had no idea how much thought went into all of these scenes before the movie even went into production. The script was turned into storyboards, then to rough animations, then models, then digital animations, and finally into reality on set. I can't image planning that meticulously that far in advance for something I can not even see. I am such a "let's just try it and see how it goes" kind of a planner. I suppose this approach doesn't make me much of a planner does it? I would be so impatience in this situation. I admire the dedication of Peter Jackson to his films very much. The fact that he went to such great lengths to plan for his movies and poured so much time and effort into these projects is evident in the masterpieces of film he created.

I was also fascinated by the post-production stage of sound editing. Sound is one of those things in film that goes unnoticed unless it is done badly. Because it happens so effortlessly in real life it never occurred to me just how much engineering must go into the audio part of movies. It seems like such a fun process with a lot of experimentation and serendipitous discovery (a process that I would very much enjoy.) I am probably more suited for more post-production jobs because I like to take things that are already in existence and work with them to enhance and improve them, such as in sound engineering, editing, etc. One of my favorite things that we touched on briefly in class was how sound engineers used a variety of different recorded sounds overlaying each other to create the desired effect. For example, elephant footsteps in reality are very quiet, however in the movie they wanted a much bigger effect so they took a variety of different recordings such as boulders falling and concrete crashing to make a new sound track for the elephants' footsteps. This last class further opened my eyes and gave me a new appreciation for some of the specific behind the scenes work that goes into the creation a motion picture. I am anxious to see what next class will hold in store.