Reflection part 1 –

As part of exploring the art form of film, working together in a team is an important aspect and prepares us for future group situations. I have found that there are many situations in which group work is required, for example, group work when we were working in a group of 6 to produce our short film.Working together to intertwine our ideas was important and making sure everyones opinions and ideas were voiced was equally as important, as certain ideas may have made the storyline better, etc. This proved to be challenging in times of working with the director, for example, we found that there would be clashes with the cinematographers visual views and director.

An example as to how I therefore worked with other people during the project was during my editor role of our short film. I had the director with me when editing, along with helping the rest of our group when on set. As my role was in post production, I helped whenever possible.  I was working / communicating with my group members to create a successful outcome and to finish our film on time. Help included telling our producer what slate number the film had been on as I was taking notes to help me in the edit, along with carrying equipment, asking the actors if they needed anything etc. The achievement of gathering all footage from the timeframe given of 2 days was achieved.  The end product came together due to the fact that we were able to work together when needed and solved any arising issues. Issues included dealing with the time, for example, on the first day of our shoot – we were filming in a public environment therefore we had decided to use the early morning for long shots as there were no people. This took longer than expected making it an issue we did not previously think about, however we had resolved it on the second shoot day with wide and long shots of the virtual reality room. The edit did not require the long VR shots however it is an aspect that is important when filming, learnt from the mentors who gave feedback to other groups – always have extra footage. Other issues we did not expect included continuity of the VR room shots contrasting with the forest shots. This was not considered as much as it could have been during the filming on set, however it was a challenge faced in post production. To resolve the issue during editing, we used visual effects and other footage – the fact that we had spare footage was therefore again useful. Facing this challenge allowed my editing skills to however improve.

Reflection part 2 –

Another example as to how I have worked with others during the project is on an informative photography presentation workshop.  I had worked in a group of 3 providing information on photography including the technical sides of photography, the aesthetical sides, editing and how to tell a story with a photo. As part of expressing the idea of leadership, we all divided a section each and made sure each part of the presentation was said equally. Reasoning behind working with them was because we all knew about photography and different sections of it. This meant we each could say something and inform others who may not anything about photography. We communicated together by planning the workshop beforehand with 2 practice trials and editing a presentation together along with planning out the technical risks we may of had to face., e.g when projecting our presentation and work, the hazard of tripping on a projector wire, etc. Reasoning behind the whole workshop was to gain experiences of being a leader and improve traits a leader may have such as organization, passion, assertiveness and the ability to engage with others.

We wanted to have the experience of being in a situation where leadership is required along with informing others about something we are passionate about.  As the feedback we received was positive, we had achieved this. An activity we had after showing the presentation included everyone explaining the photos they went out and took, applying the knowledge they had just learnt from the slide. Their detailed explanations of their photos taken is also an example that they had learnt something and been informed about an aspect of photography, further meaning we achieved our aim. (Communicating with my group in a successful manner meant our aim was achieved.)

Issues we faced before in our practice runs included not being able to get the photos projected onto the screen along with un organisation of getting everyone outside to take photographs. That had improved on the final workshop and besides the fact that we did not have a camera to present with compared to one camera before, there were no unexpected issues.