If there’s one thing I realized during this process, it’s that I need to trust myself more.
From the very beginning, I wasn’t fully confident in my idea. I liked it, but I kept second guessing everything, the storyline, the shots, the actors, literally everything. Because of that, I kept pushing things off and leaving decisions until last minute instead of just committing to my vision.
Then after the first day of filming, I saw the clips and got really unmotivated. I started thinking like… "this is not what I imagined," and it kind of threw me off. I think that was a big turning point because instead of trusting the process, I started doubting it. I was super unmotivated and already had a lot of stuff going on so it was not a good time...
But as I kept filming, everything started to change.
The more footage I got, the more I realized that the idea actually worked. The shots started looking better, the scenes made more sense, and when I added sound and music, everything came together even more. That’s when I started feeling excited again.
I think I learned that filmmaking is not about everything being perfect right away. It’s about building it step by step. If I had trusted myself from the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have felt so stressed or unsure.
Now looking back, I see that my idea was always there, I just needed to actually believe in it and follow through and plan accordingly, like make a step by step plan.
So lesson learned: stop overthinking and just commit to the idea.
In the other hand, I thought making this film would just be about having a good idea and filming it. But it’s actually so much more than that. It’s about planning, problem solving, adapting, and making decisions constantly.
One of the biggest things I learned is how important it is to adapt when things don’t go as planned. For example, when the mics didn’t work on the first day, I had to figure out a way to still get usable audio. For this I just planned to use very subtle voice overs in areas that needed dialogue. When my location idea didn’t work, I had to quickly find another one. Even during editing, when I realized I was missing a scene, I had to adjust and plan to fix it later.
Another thing I improved on is paying attention to detail. Things like sound, lighting, and camera angles make a huge difference. At first, I didn’t think too deeply about those things, but as I kept working, I started noticing how much they affect the final product. Especially sound, adding the right background music and effects completely changed how my scenes felt.
I also learned how important it is to get multiple takes and options. On my first filming day, I kind of settled for what I had. But later on, I made sure to film scenes more than once so I could choose the best version. That made editing so much easier and gave me more control over the final result.
Another big thing was time management (which is still a work in progress). I realized that leaving things last minute creates unnecessary stress. Even though I was able to catch up, it would have been way less stressful if I had paced myself better from the start.
Overall, this project taught me that filmmaking is really about problem solving and creativity at the same time. Things are not going to go perfectly, but what matters is how you adjust and keep going.