FILMMAKING OPPORTUNITIES: FROM SALTY LAKES TO KAPADOKYA

As a filmmaker, I can basically say that what I'm passionate at would be my lifetime career and that is film making. But sometimes as a student, we either get lesser opportunities to practice this film making process or greater opportunities than the men in the field. Why so? Well sometimes the freshman schedule can be tight especially here in Turkey but also the opportunity to live in a foreign and touristic country such as this opens opportunities to go out and film.
I write this because as of now (when I actually wrote this) I'm on a trip to Cappadocia an ancient and mountainous city in Turkey. As soon as I heard that some of my friends would be having a field trip to the area, I asked if I could join as I saw an opportunity to travel and capture some shots of the beautiful area. (As such everything in nature is neutral, the art is what turns and shows the beauty of the things.) My friends and the supervising professor in question were kind enough to accept and I'm really grateful for that.
As of now, before we head to the landscapes' of Cappadocia, we stopped at the Salt Lake in the outskirts of Ankara.

Update (Around 10 am, June 14): We just left the salt lake and I was able to capture some shots of the market areas near the lake. I then proceeded to take some shots of the people coming and going to the lake. And Finally took of my shoes to try the salty waters. Beautiful experience. One battery is almost drained, good thing I have a spare.

Update* (Around 9 pm, June 14): I couldn't update this while I was on the way. It was a nice but really fast moving shoot. We went to the different areas of Cappadocia and had only 15-30 minutes to go around and explore the areas. So I had little time to shoot each area I visited. But this gave me a little experience of the run and gun style of shooting were you have limited time and resources to shoot.

While shooting I realized that the more I shot the more I found that the footage wouldn't be enough hence the thirst for more. Before I forget to write this, I attribute my ND Filter as the hero of my shoot. Without it I wouldn't be able to get that shallow depth of field while maintaining a nice light exposure.

Why do I write this post? Well, the main reason is to share my experience and also try to inspire other aspiring filmmakers that whatever opportunity that comes in front of us is a chance to improve and strengthen our film making skills.

Update** (Around 1 am, June 15): I've just reached home and opened my laptop, got a chance to view my footage for I couldn't do so while I was at the shoot. As I said it was really a run and gun shooting style. Some footages look pleasing, some not as much as I expected. But its all for the best for we get to learn from what mistakes we make. As of now, I'm copying my footage to the PC in my Projects file.

Update*** (Around 10 am, June 15): I'm about to start my editing, finished differentiating the videos according to the stops we made. That is to ensure that my edit would be friendly as possible. I really hope the final thing would turn out good. Finding it really hard to find the music as well.

Update**** (7:20 am, September 14): I finally completed the edit during my summer holidays. There was a bit of a technical setback amongst other issues such as tight internship schedules. I used Premiere Pro CC to edit my piece and color corrected it with Red Giant's Magic Bullet Looks. The final grading was done with Film Convert under the Flaat Preset.

The song I chose was Organic Meditations Three by Kevin MacLeod from incompetech.com which is very subtle and gives a monotonic vibe. I prefered the song over others I listened to because I felt it illustrated the lonely and spacious nature of the landscapes.

Finally, I would like to thank all my friends who were with me in the trip and our tour guide who took us to the various places in Cappadoocia. Enjoy.