As I have just proposed my advertising campaign last week, the timing was nothing but perfect for week 5 reading “How to Successfully Promote Your Festival”. As you probably guessed, this is exactly what I’ll be rumbling about in this blog post. Let’s go.
I have mentioned maybe a hundred times that I am very fond of marketing, advertising, branding and everything that has to do with sales and communications. I was very excited to have an opportunity to manage the advertising for MIYFF, and even more excited to receive such positive feedback from the team. I figured that it’s very important to keep every ad consistent and working towards the same goal, communicating the same values and the same idea. We want the audience to have a clear understanding of what MIYFF is about and what’s the image around it. As Rambousková says in her article:
Your festival needs a clear visual identity that the potential audience will easily comprehend and that will distinguish the festival from other events.
I’ve also looked at some of the other film festival’s aesthetics and noticed that they all are very similar and maintain a consistent appearance and ‘mood’. The short promo for KVIFF that we discussed in class, for example.
Another example is the design of MIFF ads, which are always colourful, bright and somewhat goofy.
And even the iconic Cannes film festival keeps their posters consistent: modern, sophisticated and glamorous, which is exactly in line with the festival aesthetics and positioning!
It was an interesting observation to find out that all the high league film festivals are consistent with their communication strategies, so I figured that we should follow. Below are the images I found so far:
All of these are consistent in two senses:
They are all very similar visually: black and white, old photos showing famous filmmaker at a young age.
They communicate the same idea of possibilities and ambitions, the value of realising your full potential through a starting point, the idea of “just the beginning”.
Another interesting insight from the reading that intrigues me was the term “key visual”. It’s more than a logo, but also more precise than just the ‘mood’ of the festival. Rambousková described it as:
Your festival needs a clear visual identity that the potential audience will easily comprehend and that will distinguish the festival from other events.
In regards to our key visual, I guess it’s first if all the logo, and, secondly, the aesthetic of the advertising campaign. I propose to use red and white shrift on the pictures, which is within the same colour palette as the logo and will, therefore, enhance the brand image.
It’s been an incredibly productive week and I am very excited about progressing further with the festival.
Word count: 416
Cited:
Bohdana Rambousková, “How to Successfully Promote Your Festival (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 97-114.
Time flies and we are already a month into the semester. Scary stuff. On the bright side, however, the festival is coming along nicely and there are quite a few things to discuss. Being aware of the word limit, I will focus on discussing our progress so far in relation to labour division and team-work, which I’m learning a lot about this semester.
It’s the second studio I take where the entire class is working on one big project. My first experience took place in semester 1 2018 when we were making our very own live talk show. It had 2 episodes both of which we successfully broadcasted over a 2 week period. It was one of my favourite uni courses and I enjoyed working in such a large team a lot. The difference, however, was that prior to the beginning of any practical assignment each student was assigned a specific role like floor manager or cameraman or producer. The studio has been running for a while, it was all planned out and polished and we just had to take on pre-determined roles.
This semester the situation isn’t quite the same.
When a bunch of students with little to no experience get together to organise such a massive event as a film festival from a scratch, one would expect it to be a mess. Even under the guidance of a professional, it’s difficult to establish an efficient team and get everyone together, leave alone pull off a festival in less than 3 months. Nonetheless, we seem to be doing just that.
From the very beginning, I watched people quickly identify their skills and interests and find an appropriate job they can do towards the festival. Even though we didn’t have specifically identified job titles, everyone seemed to know what they are doing and what field they are operating in. I found it particularly interesting that we divided ourselves in more or less the same groups as it was advised in this week’s reading by Andrea Kuhn. Production, planning, venues, event planning… You could trace all of these ‘departments’ at different tables in class, which, for me, confirms that we are on the right page. Though, some of the aspects we should focus more on are ticketing and awards. I’m sure these will come up later in the planning, but it’s something to keep in mind for sure.
Another take away from the reading was the final paragraph about maintaining a healthy environment in such a stressful process as film festival setup.
Working for a low-budget film festival demands a lot from everyone involved. Things will get hectic and things will go wrong both before and during the festival, so you should be prepared to deal with high stress levels. Don’t take your stress out on volunteers or on other people further “down the food chain” from you. To help keep your team motivated, it’s important not to take people for granted; make everyone feel important and part of the festival. Their additional motivation will help reduce errors and create an atmosphere where everyone can deal with problems more easily. Sometimes something extra like a shared dinner for everyone right before the festival can work wonders at bringing everyone closer and motivating everyone that extra bit. Never forget to thank your team—they deserve it!
Once again, I feel like our team is excellent at supporting each other and remaining positive and motivated. It was one of my concerns that the stress of it will cause problems between people, but it seems that the pressure only brings us closer. Let’s hope that it will stay this way.
Word count: 473
Cited:
Andrea Kuhn, “Who Is Organising It? Importance of Production and Team Members (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.” in Setting Up a Human Rights Film Festival, vol. 2, Human Rights Film Network, Prague, 2015, pp. 71-83.
Today I went to the French Film Festival at Palace Balwyn, where I got to experience a film called ‘The Sisters Brothers’. Before I go into expressing my sentiments about that particular event, let’s take a step back and talk about Richard Sowada’s speech back in week 1.
When Richard was talking about the development of a film festival, I was excited. Beginning from him glueing the posters around the neighbourhood and fighting off the competitor flyposters to hosting sizeable events that attract thousands of people, it amazes me how you can turn a small local event into a big deal. Not going to lie, as much as I respect authentic filmmakers and their creations, I am mostly interested in the commercial and organisational side of film festivals. Organising a festival that brings in a big audience and generates a high income, developing marketing and advertising strategies and positioning the event as a brand. Now that sounds exciting and I loved hearing Richard’s professional insights on the matter.
Now, considering that the French Film Festival runs for almost a month and hosts hundreds of screenings across Australia, I expected it to be a big kind of deal, something unique that’s different from our everyday cinema experience and I was excited to see the way it’s run and presented. After attending the festival, however, I only have one question:
Why?
There was nothing different about this experience from going to watch some American-Pie-type-of-film at my local cinema. Except for I would’ve probably enjoyed American Pie more because that movie was one of the most boring, borderline suicide-inclining movies I have ever seen. The cinema was nearly empty with the exception of 5 old people who clearly had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon, and I wouldn’t even guess that there was a festival going on in the first place because there was nothing signalising it. Okay, there was a couple of sad posters in the corner that were practically invisible next to a colourful ‘Captain Marvel’ ad, but that was it.
So, if there is nothing different about a film festival that makes it an experience you couldn’t otherwise participate in, why even bother setting it up?
According to Peranson’s article, there are 2 models of film festivals, a business one and an audience one, where the former focuses on revenue, corporate presence and overall glam and the latter on simply sharing their low-budget films with the audience (Peranson 2008). Again, judging by the amount of high-budget films, corporate sponsorship and major competition, I would classify the French Film Festival as the business model, but it certainly didn’t feel that way. It didn’t feel like an audience-orientated festival either, because it was so broad and heavily marketed and because it lacked soul. It didn’t feel like anything to me and, frankly, it made me not want to go to a film festival ever again.
So, my key insight from my festival experience and from Sowada’s guest lecture was that simply choosing a number of authentic movies and screening them over a set period of time under a certain logo doesn’t make it a film festival. It has to mean something and it has to be a unique experience for the audience to engage with. Otherwise, what’s the point of it’s meaningless?
I hope that MIYFF won’t be nearly that shallow and dead and will actually make an impact on the guests. I will certainly do everything I can to make sure of it.
Cited:
Mark Peranson, “First You Get the Power, Then You Get the Money: Two Models of Film Festivals“, Cinéaste, 1 July 2008, Vol.33(3), pp. 37-43.
This week we watched a documentary about the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, also known as KVIFF, and, even though there were many interesting insights I took from ‘Film Spa’, I am limited to 500 words to express my raptures. The main learning I will focus on in this reflection is the political influences on film festivals.
It was clearly illustrated in the film that, for a long period of time, KVIFF was under strict control of USSR, which heavily influenced all areas of the festival with the mission of spreading communist propaganda and turning an international film festival into an elaborate celebration of Soviet regime. The support for this argument for this can also be found in the course’s readings:
“…the Czechoslovak New Wave was roundly ignored by apparatchiks using the festival for propagandistic ends, to cite but one ignominious case of unwelcome Communist interference in the festival’s operations and curation…”
– C. Howard
“Despite the festival operating perforce under the sway of Soviet propagandists for many long years…”
-C. Howard,
There is no denying that that was the case, but it also had me thinking: are the film festivals now really propaganda-free or are they just promoting a different agenda? For example, in week 2 reading it was mentioned that Tim Robbins’s speech was bluntly anti-Trump.
“A measured, yet still Trump-thumping speech honouring Miloš Forman and Václav Havel from new Crystal Globe recipient Tim Robbins steered proceedings further towards a liberal footing….”
-C. Howard
Similarly, I noticed after some further research, almost every film festival serves another purpose other than simply showing a movie. Environmental Film Festival promotes eco-friendliness, Melbourne Queer Film Festival promotes support for LGBTQ community, film festivals dedicated to a specific culture promote, you guessed it, the culture. A similar concept was mentioned in week 1 reading:
The umbrella term of activist film festivals – including human rights film festivals, so-called radical or subversive film festivals, disability film festivals, eco or green film festivals, etc.,- offers particularly interesting cases to study the practice of thematic programming with explicit outreach arms.
-De Valck & al.
‘Katia’, you might say, ‘ you can’t compare communism to tolerance and social justice!‘. You would be right, they are very different things, and I am in no way calling environmental awareness propaganda. I just think that one way or another, there will always be different political agendas present at film festivals, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Nowadays, most of them are correct and positive, and promote respect and acceptance, and, thankfully, none of modern film festivals’ speakers addresses the audience as ‘comrades’. But it doesn’t change the fact that there are always certain topics and views actively promoted and sometimes even pushed onto the audience at film festivals, no matter how right or wrong they are. I just think it’s very interesting to think that a place of art and international friendship can be used as a podium to communicate certain ideas and promote change.
Word count: 495
Cited:
Howard C. 2015. ‘Local and/or General… Of Time and Place at the 50th Karlovy Vary and 6th Odessa International Film Festival’, Senses Of Cinema, no. 76.
Howard C. 2018. ‘A Time of Reckoning? The 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’, Senses Of Cinema, no. 88.
De Valck M, Kredell B & Loist S 2016. ‘Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Practice’. Routledge, New York, 2016, pp. 1-11.
As the Dream Team is still working on our re-imagined project, I want to take some time to reflect on the journey we’ve taken as a group. A lot has happened since week 4 and a lot has changed, and I want to go through these 7 weeks one more time to see where we started, and where we’ll end. I found these questions on canvas and I liked them. Thus (I feel so fancy using this word), I’ll use them as guidelines for this reflection.
What impact did you want your project to have on your audience?
When we started planning our project in week 6, we wanted to change people’s grim perception of the West and showcase it’s welcoming and friendly community. Even though that part of Melbourne has a bad reputation, most of the people who badmouth it don’t know the area at all and simply give in to the stereotypes without trying to figure things out for themselves. Our aim was to educate people on the matter and to shift the reputation of West Melbourne to the better. We were planning on doing so by basing our documentary around the Walker Close community centre. However, when it became apparent that this plan was no longer a viable option, we had to quickly change our project and its aims, goals and impact with it. When that happened, we had no time left to reflect on the possible impact and deeper meanings of our re-imagined documentary. All we had in mind was doing something, pushing forward, not failing the course. When I think about it now, I realize that the impact of our project didn’t change that much. It became less straightforward and compelling, but also more honest and lively. In our final piece, we were able to show the viewers real and unbiased opinions from the people who actually live in the West, and these time from the people who had no agenda promoting one thing or another. And I feel like this form of our project had more impact on the viewers than the first version ever could. Maybe it wasn’t all glamorous and pretty, maybe it was rough and chaotic, but it was honest and unbiased. And people can feel that.
What opportunities, people or knowledge has your documentary projects enabled you to engage in?
Oh boy. Where do I start? This studio was a real rollercoaster, and so far the most stressful and problematic course I’ve had. However, I am not complaining at all, because I could learn a lot from it and grow both as a filmmaker and a person.
First of all, hats off to the Dream Team. It was a privilege working with them and I took a lot from these friendships. Secondly, as I discussed in my previous posts, this course provided me with an amazing opportunity to learn to let go of control and emerge myself into pure exploration. In most of my previous courses, I would be in total control of whatever I was doing and my ultimate goal was to complete each assignment as perfectly as I could and get an HD. Of course, it would be good to learn something on the way, but it was always about the destination and not the journey. I would be lying if I said that high grades are not a priority to me anymore, they certainly are and I genuinely cried the other day when I got a DI. However, this studio, I was forced out of control, from behind the steering wheel and into the backseat. I think it was an extremely important experience for me and it’s something that will help me greatly not only in my future studies and professional career but personal life as well.
Lastly, I learned a lot about the concept of the documentary, both traditional and open space. Prior to taking this course, I never watched any documentary films and I didn’t know much about it at all. I feel like my understanding of the concept of the documentary, how it’s made and consumed has really increased. Truth be told, it’s definitely not something I want to do in life, and I don’t think my path will ever cross with documentary making, but the knowledge and the experience I gained through this course is priceless nonetheless.
What conversations have you had or relationships you have built?
It’s funny how I’ve been stressing over this project for the past few weeks, cursing at all the issues we’ve endured, and now I realize that it was all of these troubles that I learnt the most from. The most important conversations we’ve had were those panic and adrenaline filled talks when we were deciding how to salvage our project back in week 9. It was stressful and nerve-wracking, but also incredibly meaningful and important. That was when I learnt the most and grew in every possible way. It reminds me of something Sigmund Freud once said:
One day, in retrospect, the days of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
Sigmund Freud
I thought about it many times before. All of the most important, life-changing moments that shaped who I am today were not happy or carefree memories. And some of my most treasured memories are the ones of struggle as well. It’s not surprising that the most meaningful moments of this course were the moments of doubt, struggle and panic, – that’s when we get to learn and grow.
Why present work at the Living Museum of the West? What opportunities for engagement can an exhibition and event provide?
Firstly, I feel like our documentary really belongs in the Living Museum of the West. It explores the modern life of local people and it’s something that will be of great value in a few decades. Even though it is still an interesting film to see today, I think that it’s meaning and implications will grow in value as the time passes.
Secondly, I feel like the answer is summed up perfectly in this paragraph:
The distinct differences between these screenings and a traditional theatrical release, however, are threefold. First, with streaming video, the costly overhead of saturation booking and print striking for a commercial release was obliterated. Second, individuals had more incentive to participate because the screenings were free of charge and held in the comfort of domestic spaces and among familiar faces. Third, and perhaps most significantly, all the screenings took place in community and were accompanied by conversation and interaction. Individuals watching a documentary at the multiplex cinema, on television, or via a streaming media site rarely, if ever, strike up substantive, collective dialogue as the end credits roll.
Broderick Fox
By inviting people to the free screening at the museum and giving them an opportunity to engage with our project and discuss the topics they explore, we sparked a debate, a chance for original thought. Just like Fox said, people rarely give much thought to blockbusters they see on a big screen, personal computer or TV, the setting is just not right. Not to mention that many of these movies were not designed to provoke thoughts to begin with. They are a form of entertainment, they are something you watch when you are bored or in need of a quick dose of emotions. An exhibition like that, however, is a perfect setting for people to engage in a conversation and reflect on the meanings and implications of the projects. It’s a chance for them to talk and think about topics and issues that go unnoticed in everyday life. I think that this event is more than a university exhibition designed to show off our work. It’s a little getaway for people to take a step back and think. Which, as species, we don’t do very often.
In conclusion, this was a great semester. It had its ups and downs, but overall it was extremely productive and I got a lot out of it. Hopefully, the exhibition goes well and our guests can enjoy our work and maybe even take something from it.
Cited:
Fox, B. (2017) ‘Media: History, Theory, Practice’. Routledge, London UK
This Thursday we embarked on our search for the communities of the West. This experience was something completely new for me. We grabbed two cameras, hopped into Lindsay’s car, drove to the Circle and asked people 3 simple questions:
Where are you from?
How do you feel about Altona?
Where do you think people go to feel close to the community?
This went much better than I expected. When we arrived at the Circle and started testing the cameras, someone just came to us asking what we were doing and then led us straight into a grocery store to talk to people they knew and film around. I didn’t expect such reception at all! I thought we would have to chase after people and convince them to talk to us. Instead, we got an interview within 2 minutes of our arrival. I filmed a little bit on my phone just to remember the scenery:
We got 3 or 4 vox pops that day, I can’t remember the exact number. It felt wildly different to any other project I’ve ever done before. And I loved it! I was learning and exploring something completely unknown to me and documenting it at the same time. I am used to having every little detail planned and under control. If I am at the point of a production where I take out a camera, I know for sure there is nothing new about the matter that could surprise me. But not this time. It was a pure experiment, pure exploration. It was so weird for me to simply give in and go with the flow. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel like just an assignment anymore, I felt like I was really learning something. At this point, I was glad things didn’t work out with the community centre. Allow me to get a little personal- I am always tense and worried about a thousand things at once. I freak out when I’m not in control and when I don’t have a revised script and a precise plan. And this time I found myself in a situation where I had no choice but to relax and take things as they come. I feel like this experience has led me to really broaden my understanding of how a video should be produced. I got to experience a whole new approach to creating a documentary and I learnt to let go too. I feel like this experience is really meaningful and will affect my further work a lot.
Going back to the project, I really liked the new direction we are taking. It might not be very well made technically, we’ll definitely have bad lighting and background noise, but I like what we have now much much more than a stiff interview in a dusty office. It feels honest and it feels real. We are putting our experience and ourselves out there, we are inviting the audience to share our adventure and our search for the communities. This is a real open space documentary, there is nothing conventional about it. We experiment and we document more than just a chosen topic- we document the whole process. And I like it.
This reminded me of a famous documentary Super Size Me. This film had a very low budget and the quality of the video is questionable at best, but it became one of the most influential documentaries nonetheless. The main character pretty much documents his journey on a crappy camera, simply filming what was going on. The vox pops and interviews in this film are a lot like ours too. They are not professionally set up interviews with impeccable sound and image, but rather rough conversations filmed on the spot. It’s calming for me to know that films like that can still be successful and get recognition and that there is a famous documentary that we can compare our project with.
I am still not sure where exactly we are going or what our final cut will look like. I have to admit, it drives me crazy not have every little detail planned and storyboarded, but it’s a great opportunity for me to loosen up a little and open myself up for new experiences. Wherever we end up with this documentary, I know that I will learn way more from it than I could from another neatly planed traditional film.
After we realized that the Walker Close Community centre wasn’t going to lead us anywhere, we started brainstorming ideas on how to save our project. We had some radical ideas like completely abandoning our initial topic and focusing on the museum but after deep and throughout reflection, we decided not to give up just yet. What we came up with is, to be honest about our experience and include it in the documentary. We planned to base our documentary around the community centre, we thought it would be the ‘destination’ of our project. Now it will only be one ‘stop’. I know it sounds confusing and I’m bad at metaphors, but please let me elaborate.
We were going to make a more or less traditional documentary on how the communities are formed and supported in the Walker Close Community centre. Now, we are turning it into a full-on open space piece. We are changing it into a participatory approach and we plan to be honest about what we are going through as a group. There were even talks about including our conversations and footage of us on-set to the final cut, but we’ll see how that goes. More importantly, we are going back to the roots, which is emergingcommunities. We thought we found the community in the community centre but turns out it’s not there. Would have been too easy I guess. Instead of covering our mistakes we are going to be honest about it and turn our project into an adventure of the search for the community.
I went back to week 7 reading and looked at the concept of open space documentary again. As I was reading these lines, it became more and more apparent to me that what we were planning to do with Walker Close community centre wasn’t an honest open space documentary.
Our theoretical model of open space documentary invokes collaboration, multiple iterations, decentralisation and migration across media platforms and through distinct communities. This theoretical framework – a way to understand and locate how open space documentaries differ from traditional fixed analogue forms and present some new possibilities for rethinking documentary theory – engages relational aesthetics, collaborative public art theory and landscape design theory.
Michael H. & Zimmermann P.
We were thinking about making a pretty little film with happy undertones and nice outlook. We were concerned with the final piece being clean and pretty and not with pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary approach and exploring something new. I have to admit, I do that a lot- I just want the outcome to look good enough for me to get an HD, and it doesn’t matter if I learned anything new or not. This semester the tables have turned. This time our film will definitely not be professional looking, but I know that I’ll learn plenty.
When talking about the new directions our film will take, we were heavily inspired by this video:
Thankfully, our position is not nearly as drastic as this guys but it is somewhat similar. We just faced a major crisis in our project and we are running out of time to make it right. I was really inspired by his honesty and bravery to expose his problems to the world like that. I have great respect for people who aren’t trying to be someone they are not just to keep up a reputation. So, we decided to adopt his approach and turn our project into an experiment. Grab a camera and a mic, go out and ask people on the street: where is the community? We have a much better chance of getting an unbiased answer from random people on the streets as opposed to a failing community centre. So this is what we are going to do. Go out and search for answers rather than expect to find them all at one location while filming our little adventure. This minor setback is only a push for us to continue the investigation, and we will NOT let it drag us down.
Cited:
De Michiel H., Zimmermann, P. (2013). ‘Documentary as an Open Space’, The Documentary Film Book, Palgrave Macmillan. 356-65
This week has been rather challenging for our team. We are facing a major crisis in our production and even though we are all hopeful and determined to get the best out of this experience, it sucks to watch the project we’ve been planning and preparing since week 5 go down in flames. In this blog post, I’ll try to understand how it all happened and why.
Somehow, I missed the moment when the friendly and vibrant community centre turned out to be a dead end. During our first few visits there, it all seemed very promising in terms of both content and cooperation. There was a huge variety of interesting courses and services going on as well as occasional celebrations and festivals. People there were excited and motivated to co-operate. We felt like we hit the jackpot having discovered that place.
When I think about it now, knowing what will have happened, I realise it sounded too good to be true. The community centre, it has a nice colourful facade that people who work there will go to great lengths to protect. And it’s easy to make anything sound good and keep up the happy illusion as long as you don’t let the listener get too close to see the truth. That’s why the first few meeting went really well- they talked, we listened, nodded and smiled. They wanted us to believe what they were saying and we wanted to believe it too. The minute we started to dig deeper, ask questions and want to participate in their programs things went downhill really fast. It began with cancelled interviews, declining friendliness and unwillingness to participate and soon we realised that the centre simply didn’t have much to offer. Turned out that half their programs and services weren’t even running even though they were still proudly advertised on the pamphlets. People seemed excited about our project up until the point when we actually showed up with the cameras. I honestly felt like they weren’t expecting us to actually be there, it was like they thought we would just talk about it and be gone. Which is probably what they are used to in the Walker Close Community Centre.
I know I probably sound like an offended little kid who was denied a candy and it’s fair enough. I really was incredibly upset when I first realised what was happening, and I was angry at the centre too. I am not anymore. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I came to a pretty obvious realisation- they don’t owe us anything. They never did. The centre is their baby and they try very hard to keep it running, which is obviously not going very well. I bet it pains them to see something they have worked on for a very long time not being even remotely successful. When they saw some students being interested in their centre, it was like a chance to prove that things are fine, great even. It was a chance for them to do what we’ve been so desperately trying to avoid – to advertise. And I don’t blame them, I understand. Why do they have to be honest with a bunch of naive students they never met before and let them know their centre is failing? Obviously keeping up the reputation of the centre is their main priority. I would have probably done the same. They didn’t owe us anything, especially not the truth that they don’t even want to face themselves.
I am not going to play the blame game. No one is to blame for what happened. All we can do is take a lesson out of it, and as long as we can learn anything from this experience then it was never a mistake. As I mentioned before, we wanted to believe everything they were telling us. We wanted the centre to be an amazing place full of exciting programs for us to film, we wanted it to be the place they were saying it was. And because we wanted it, we didn’t bother to ask ourselves “it that really so?” and double check the facts. Of course, we couldn’t have known, but maybe we shouldn’t have blindly believed their words as well. That’s one of my biggest weaknesses right there- I am embarrassingly naive and gullible. My point is, we were ready to blindly trust their words just because we wanted to. It benefited us, it worked well with our plans so we just accepted it as the truth and were done with checking the facts. We didn’t have any reasons not to believe them, but still… I can’t believe I wrote half of my blog posts about how there is no truth, and then made this mistake all over again.
The lesson I took out from this experience is not to trust anyone. Kidding (?). But I am definitely triple-checking everything from now on, especially when it comes to working with other people. I was also reminded that what is important for me might not be as important for other people. This project plays a big role in my life right now, but pretty much no one else cares about it at all. It’s always good to get a bitch-slap from reality and be reminded that no one owes you sh*t.
All in all, what happened totally sucked, but there is nothing we can do about it now. So we are going to move on, learn from our mistakes and be better.
