Concept
I chose the airport setting to show how surrounded people are by signs and symbols in everyday life. This includes both purely informative elements, such as boarding passes or passports, as well as personal belongings.
Many of the objects we carry with us or consciously choose to own contain signs, symbols, or specific visual characteristics that often reflect aspects of our personality. An airport is a place where all of these different signs and symbols come together within one shared environment. I found this mixture and interaction especially interesting and wanted to explore it within my project.
Process
I used Figma to organize my ideas and structure the overall process. At the beginning, I wrote down several ideas and gradually refined and narrowed them down. Once the core concept was established, I created a moodboard and then started working on a shot list.
The plan was to capture two different types of shots: environmental shots to establish the airport context, and more detailed shots that focused on specific objects and their characteristics. Through these close-up shots, certain signs, symbols, and forms of symbolism also became more visible.
The concept was adjusted and refined every day until it gradually took its final form. However, during and after the shoot, I still had to remain flexible, since some things did not work out exactly as I had originally imagined.
Before starting the actual filming process, I wanted to experiment a little and get a better sense of what the final outcome could look and feel like. For that reason, I created an animatic first. This was also the first time I experimented with sound, which helped me better understand the atmosphere and direction of the final piece.
After that, I spent an entire day filming in the photo studio. We also had to reshoot a couple of scenes the following day. We used a treadmill for several scenes, and it almost everything on set temporarily became a tripod at some point.
Post production
This semester, I was able to spend more time experimenting with sound design again, especially with layering different sounds together. It made me realize once more how much detail and work can go into even a short clip.
Learnings
One major mistake I made — which later cost me a lot of time — was unintentionally mixing warm and cold lighting on set. I was actually aware beforehand that this was something to pay attention to. However, on the small camera monitor everything initially looked fine, so I assumed it would work out. Unfortunately, it did not. In post-production, I tried correcting it using masks and color adjustments, which only worked partially. For future projects, this is definitely something I will pay much closer attention to directly on set.
final film
Conclusion
Sound has a huge impact on the overall feeling and quality of a project.
It is important to start experimenting and practicing as early as possible, since the final result will often turn out differently than expected.
Warm and cold lighting should not be mixed uncontrollably on set.
