Our dialogue with the writers has improved greatly, as I hoped it would a couple of weeks ago when writing my past blog post. Prior to the presentation we felt extremely disjointed and like we couldn’t get a set vision from the writers to take forward into filming past our pilot episode. But post-presentation and in class time we’ve been able to talk through what we want from the web series and to urge the writers what direction they should go in. We’ve started to become more of a team that includes the writers in our discussion of what we hope to achieve. This has come through having them be part of our Facebook group chat so we’re able to communicate with them whenever we need to and ask them their points of view for things like locations, props and casting (some of the writers are going to be present during casting).

Going forward I would like to continue developing our positive relationship with the writers and this will hopefully make it easier to discuss script changes and encourage the writers to complete scripts in a timely manner. The writers all seem really willing to be involved and are super considerate with delivering content and letting us know about any tension or issues that have arisen.

The miscommunication from the beginning of the studio, I think was the result of the swap over of teachers and trying to connect two different classes that have limited time to meet. Especially because the writers have other assessments to do and aren’t required to be as invested in our production as we are. This was frustrating as we were only getting limited information about what was going on and we were hungry for the collaboration element of the studio. But this is as good a case study of issues that can come up in production as any other. Sometimes it’s difficult to connect to the different facets of filmmaking and you just have to keep toiling on and focus on completing your job to the best of your ability and improving the skills you do have so you’re ready for when they’re needed. We did this through our in class exercises and video prompts.