[Experiencing Asian Hate] Ending this production...

This production is an interview documentary that tells a story about ‘Asian hate’. Asian hate refers to the act of hating because of the color of the skin without any meaning or purpose, and further, violence and abusive language. Ever since the Covid pandemic, Asian hate has surprisingly increased, and there are so many issues coming up that Asians got attacked by others in some countries. Asian hate is rising on a serious problem in our society at the moment and many Asians get worried and scared about this situation. So, we thought this is the right time to bring this topic on to our production. Basically, a video begins with an interview by asking questions to the cast, three Asians, Japanese, Korean, and Nepalese, answered the questions and shared their experiences of being discriminated against. It made with their honest experiences to show the more realistic way and comparing how is it different before and after Covid situation. Also, putting animation intro and examples situation when the Asians get attracted to show

more in a documentary way. Through this production, we would like to show how serious it is and how Asian feels it directly and this problem is still going on.Widely, we want to let the audience know that we need to consider this issue quite seriously and make effort to sort it out.

This project consisted of two members, I and Taime. I prefer to work with a small number of group members, I wanted to make a group with one or two. I basically had an idea for this project, and the person I needed was the editor. The part that I lacked the most over the three years of studying was editing. Luckily, I had a Taime who is good at editing, and she needed a producer, so we had a perfect team. The roles were already decided, but overall, the two of us worked together to help each other. Basically, as a producer, I was in charge of various documents such as the idea of the production, the overall video content, format, casting and shooting schedule. Before the semester started, I wanted to make a documentary about marriage, the subject of the FMP that I had been thinking about for research. To make more specific, the subject has decided as an Arrange marriage. But it was difficult to find a suitable casting, we needed to change our whole production topic. I and Taime struggled for a while, trying to find ideas. We decided to talk about something that is related to us and that we often experienced, and as a result, we chose ‘Asian Hate’ as a topic. As both of us are Asian, it's something we've experienced at least once. After the topic was set, it moved quickly. I immediately started the casting and it was not that hard. After that, while making the storyboard, I made the contents and images of the overall video also, I made a list of suitable filming locations, searched for them, and tried to visit beforehand to see if it was a good place to shoot. In addition to that, I continued to perform various roles such as shooting plan and contact with the performers, preparing meeting places, and reserving

equipment. In the pre-production process, I expected that it would be tough to do it alone because there are more things that the producer has to do than the editor in this part. However, it seems to have been much easier with Taime, she helped me a lot. Also, we did a lot of research and looked at examples of people around us, and we pondered on whether this documentary could be delivered to the audience in a way that would be interesting when we stayed in the library. Production was going through very smoothly as we prepared and I also helped Taime when we were doing post-production, searching footage we want to put and giving opinions of rough cuts. She also helped me when we are editing sounds. Although it was a two-person, I'd like to say the teamwork went so well throughout this production. It seems to be a process that shows respect and consideration for each other's opinions. However, I can’t say the project process was not without difficulties. It didn't fit with the production plan I had made while changing the subject, and it was a sudden change all at once, so it made us confused and hard to re-store construction. So, the project was completed a little slower than expected in the production plan. In the media field, a lot of work is done in teams. For teamwork, smooth communication and cooperation with members are the most important parts. During Production, I learnt how to communicate effectively, respect others’ opinions, and resolve conflicts amicably. If I have another project as a group, I would be a person who leads group production in a better way.

First of all, I started by creating the production documentation. This includes the project's topic, purpose, the importance of the subject, form, style, and overall production plan. I created a Google shared document for easy sharing with team member, so they can easily write down their ideas at any time when it comes up in their head. Since I had played the role of a producer before, there was no difficulty in performing the role, but this time I wanted to become a more professional producer and use a much higher quality ability. So, I did some research about Producers was uploaded on YouTube. Among them, the research that touched me the most was ‘Top 10 producing tips by film courage’, which was a video that showed a little bit more advanced tips that a producer should have. It had lots of content, especially, the phrase ‘Don't Rush’ that influenced my production this time. I am a kind of rush person who plans to finish all the shooting in advance and want to use the remaining time to develop the work in abetter direction or use the time to re-shoot if necessary. And I thought that behavior would have better results for the overall production. However, in this lesson, such behavior is shown to give burdens team members or reduce their creativity. So, through this research, I made the production plan as easy as possible this time and tried to make it a plan that could be modified and deleted according to the situation but still have fixed format and organized properly. Another research was ‘Producing Movies:a good study of the perceptions producers should have' and he is working as a producer. He talked about the actual work he is doing in the field and said that re-writing is the most important ability that a producer should have. He mentioned that a producer has a lot of work that needs to be written documented compared to other roles, so it is important to re-write and correct it. Then the work gets better the more you touch it, and the number of mistakes is reduced as it continues to evolve. Originally, I tend to edit frequently, but after realizing this, I read and revised it at least 10 times to make a document or create

a storyboard. Also, I tried to improve it for the better by showing it to Taime, a team member, in the middle and receiving feedback. Obviously, the more diligent I put in, the better the results stood out. In this process, the part I was most concerned about in this project was the location setting. I searched a variety of documentaries that attracted me most was the visual part that the background feel, color, and composition. So, when I was looking for a filming location, I imagined a lot of what the atmosphere would be like in that place and how would be seen on screening. Then I selected a place that is most suitable and put it into the list, I visited the places in advance to see how it looks actually and check similar what I thought. For good shots, I had to take care of the time, the weather, and even the time of sunrise and down. To be honest, in winter, the sun goes down after 4 pm, the most thing I cared about. In the casting part, I tried to visually diversify. I thought it would be more effective for people from various Asian countries to come out to explain this story, so I hired people from Nepal, Japan, and Korea. Through meeting with performers, I could explain to them what style of video we will make, what questions we are going to ask and what answers we want, and for what purpose we intend to make this video. I also explained about the costumes for shooting. I already picked up three locations and chose who is be there in a specific place. I asked them to come dressed up that fit the place I had prepared, and I imagined the suitability of the clothes and the place. Also, I rented a library room for rehearsal to borrow equipment and think about various shots and editing. During the actual filming, we did it naturally as if we had practised and prepared. After that, Taime edited using Photoshop and Adobe Premiere, and I helped her to find footage and continued discussing the ideal image I had in mind and drawn for this work. I kept presenting opinions that I would like this style of editing to be like this, and through communication with the editor, we made decisions and made revisions. As a sound designer, I looked for various background music and thought a lot about which song would be fittedour video. I knew how to use Adobe Audition, but to learn more professional sound editing, I studied a book called Audio Audition CC.There were various skills that deal with sound, but I learned Multi Composition which is an audio effect that plays a role in making the sound clear and audible and applied it to this video. There are also various settings in it, but among them, I used the Pop Master to make the slightly blurry sounds more distinct. Overall, the process seemed to have gone well. As I mentioned before, it seems to have progressed very easily after the topic was decided. I tried to make it better as we are quite late to start. I contacted the performers often to make a schedule for shooting dates and meetings to explain our project and let them understand. I think that is the reason they accepted this subject easily and express their real story fluency. It has shown up in the video well. In addition, I chose background sounds that is fit for production and reduced noises. It worked well too. If there was a little disappointment, it was that I did not make a proper script. It was a 5 minutes video, and I felt that a storyboard and production documents were sufficient, but since there was no completed script, I tended to be lost. Like we got into off-topic were mentioned during meetings or in interviews. As there is no script that holds the central axis as to whether this content is acceptable or correct, the content changes frequently and seems to be confusing. It was a part that made us feel we did wrong, which we thought were short and simple, were too short. If I do like this project again, I will start writing the script as soon as the subject and content are decided, and based on that, I will make a storyboard and try to get into the centre of the overall production.

From a personal point of view, it was a satisfactory result. Basically, I want to say that we did well in terms of the overall atmosphere of the video because it seems to have reflected the warm, calm and a little serious feeling we had in the process of making this video. I'm also proud of the intro scene in front. Since I had never applied animation to my production, I wondered if this would be effective or would rather ruin the video. I thought a lot about whether to include animation or not, but now I am satisfied with it. This animation intro has become a key point in the overall video.We wanted to make this as short and concise as possible to express clearly what we wanted to show, and I think that part was well expressed in the final video. If there is one thing that I personally regret, I think the visuals are a bit lacking. There aren't many cut angles and various scenes, so I thought that it might look a little boring to the audience as scenes from the same angle were constantly appearing in the interview scenes. Also, there aren't many atmospheric scenes between interviews, so it seems to make the video look more normal. I think that was the part we should be paying more attention to. Basically, the work as a producer is hard to see in the visuals on screening, but what I liked about it was the background and location setting. While watching the video, the setting of the place helps to enhance the beauty of the image, and it seems to fit better because the performers wear the style of clothes I asked for. Moving on to the sound design part, it seems that I tried to make the sound as clear as possible, but it still has a bit immature. Since the filming itself was filmed outdoors and in a place with a lot of people, it is natural for people's sounds to be recorded, but it doesn't seem like it was done perfectly in the process of editing and designing the sound. There are some minor tweaks, but there are some parts that don't sound perfectly clear, and there are some lumped sounds left. A book called 'Sound Design' describes it this way. “When using a microphone, keep the

microphone as far away from them as possible to avoid being affected by wind and ambient noise as much as you can.” In that respect, the part where I used a Pin microphone to move away from the noise and point it toward the speaker seems to have been well done. The problem seems to be in sound editing, I read books and studied but still need to learn more about it. The above book says that the most important thing when editing sound is to receive the recorded original file right away and edit it. This is a method that can capture even the most sensitive parts of sound editing through Adobe Audition and can put the recorded original sound in the video as closely. However, I didn’t know how different the sound would be after rendering the video from the original, but reading the book showed me that it is definitely different. I should have tried to find out more research and information about it deeply when I’m doing sound editing. The time to think about how to make this sound clearer was short, and the number of re-edits seemed to be less. Nevertheless, I learned a lot by looking at these good points and imperfections. This project was an opportunity for me to grow further. It was the first time a project with a small number of people, and that made me more focused on work. More concentration is needed than a big group because I have a lot of things to take care of. However, through this process, I learned Video Making Production more clearly and also could get a wide perspective of various roles doing a lot of research. It also helped me to think about how to be better as a producer and sound designer, what to focus on the most when the audience sees it. It seems to be the first project I have worked on very professionally. Next time, if given the opportunity for a video production project, I would like to make a more upgraded production. In the video part, I want to make a more interesting result than this work by adding unique and diverse scenes. The part that enhances the visual beauty seems to be the most important part as the visual aspect of the image is strong. To do that, I want to learn how to enhance visual beauty and create colorful scenes. Also, as a producer, next time, I want to make a video with more certainty by writing the script and making the form according to the process. In the sound design part, I feel that the editing method is still lacking, so I will learn various editing techniques and put the sound into the video without any deficiencies. In addition, I would like to get camera skills. When shooting a camera, the technique or angle affects the video a lot, so learning

about that part will be very helpful when you take on the role of a director or producer. After finishing this production, looking at the result, I think it is a video that reflects social reality very well. The media industry is changing a lot these days. One article says: ‘‘The era in which provocative images survives’. To that extent, media these days tend to focus on provocative things. With the success of YouTube, the era has come where anyone can easily access videos in their daily life. Because of this, people get bored with similar things and want more stimulating things. However, I assert that stimulus production is temporary. It was fun and interesting at the time to watch, but after seeing it, we often have sceptical thoughts about what is left of us. It doesn’t mean that provocative videos are bad. It makes our lives become a little more colorful. However, videos such as documentaries that contain social issues or important messages must also be protected. I think it is necessary to think about what kind of society we live in and what is happening around us, not just for fun. In that respect, I think our production has taken an important position in the media industry. ‘Facing and communicating with society and showing our purpose’. I think that is something we should focus a little more on in the future in media or under the creative industry of media.

While making this piece, I kept thinking about whether this topic was suitable for making a documentary.I've been told that I came here because I wanted to, so I had to take risks like racism. Then during living here,I was also getting used to it. But I realized it while making this video. Whether I came here because I wanted to or not, it was impossible and shouldn't happen.Prior to the interview, I first heard the stories of the three performers through a meeting. It was so sad. As we talked with the cast, we felt that we were taking these issues for granted.We did not recognize that thought in our lives. It has become a natural part of our daily life. But no matter which country you are in, nothing changes. It doesn't matter if they have different skin colors, different faces, or different words. We

are just people who eat and breathe the same thing, born in this world, raised with love by loving parents. We are the same human beings. I made this video because I want the audience to feel that emotion while watching this video, and I want them to know this is still going on.