My experience of collaboration in this studio has been the most intensive, demanding and probably the most successful collaboration I’ve had in my course so far. I’ve done several group projects, but the majority of them have been presentations, research reports and the like. The creative collaboration aspect of this project set it apart from the collaboration experiences I’ve had in the past.

One of the biggest differences that I noticed was that everyone in our group had a legitimate drive to contribute, and perform to the best of their ability in their roles. I’m not sure if this was a result of the creative nature of the project or its high percentage value for our overall mark, but I found that there was notably higher commitment and effort across the board. Another big difference was the specificity of the roles that we were assigned at the outset of the project. It helped immensely to allocate roles such as director, producer and sound recordist early on, because it allowed us to divide up the work in a way that was fair and logical. In previous group projects I’ve found that the division of the work is difficult and can often lead to conflicts, whereas in this case we had no issues at all.

I also found that the amount of actual ‘collaboration’ that went on in this project was a lot higher than others I’ve worked on. We collaborated on almost every aspect of the film, including the script, shot listing and creative decisions while shooting and editing. We were lucky in that all of our group members were outspoken about their opinions and were not shy about contributing ideas.

I found the experience of collaboration in this project to be a very valuable learning experience. It was particularly helpful doing the editing in pairs/threes because it allowed us to view each others techniques/skills and learn from each other. I learned a lot from watching Dylan and Jenny and I’d like to think they learned a bit from me too. A number of our group members were quite experienced in this type of project from working on RMITV, and I feel that I picked up a lot of useful skills from working with them throughout the process.

I think we also learned to communicate a lot more effectively as a group, and hear everyone’s ideas. Particularly for me, who as the director found myself in a bit of a position of authority where the group looked to me for making certain decisions, I learned to hear out everyone’s ideas and make an informed decision based on that.

Despite the fact that the film stemmed from my observation, I did not feel weird or uncomfortable with people in the group contributing and adding to the idea. On the contrary, I welcomed everyone’s contributions and saw the film in the end as a collaboration.