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On Collaboration

While more often than not group projects produce haphazard, rushed and disjointed material from a group that has barely spoken throughout, working on this film has been far from that. Whilst there were the inevitable hiccups in transferring files from one another, issues with technical skills, differences in cameras, editing styles, timelines and the withdrawal of not one but two subjects from the film, this project has been very enjoyable. Each member of our group was willing to help in whatever capacity, and we worked efficiently as a team.

Throughout the process of editing I realised that I enjoy editing with other people far more than I enjoy editing alone. When editing a film with multiple people, there are others to bounce ideas off and work through problems with. Here, although the initial structural edit couldn’t be done by five people at once, working through the fine cut with five different sets of eyes on the project was immensely helpful, as instead of simply watching the film over and over alone (and eventually going numb to it), we could watch it once, each notice separate things that needed to be changed, and offer different solutions to the problems presented. These sessions were always the most productive and enjoyable edits.

In addition to this, it should be noted that having one person edit alone, and then transferring the film to another person to edit the next stage of the film is not a productive way to edit. This simply ends up with a mess of different editing styles which ends up taking a large amount of time and energy to fix. This can be avoided by having one person control the edit, or by having more collaborative editing sessions scheduled (with a group of five this is always a difficult task however).

Having five different people with specific roles, although perhaps unnecessary for a project of this scale, was a far more relaxed way to approach a film, as each member could focus on their individual strengths. For example, Izzi and Alice took the lead as producers, contacting the subjects after we had developed the initial idea. This is the part of documentaries that I always find the to be the most stressful process, so having others to take on this role was very useful, and ultimately made the process much smoother and more enjoyable. Having additional people to shoot b-roll with was also very helpful as it took some of the pressure off, and further, by having someone else ask questions, and another record sound, I was able to really focus on my main task of cinematography. Many hands make light work, and many kind, communicative, enthusiastic and motivated hands make work fun.

For a group project, we really lucked out with this one.