Every studio we seem to have to write and take time to reflect on collaboration and this semester it seems to be a vital component of film-making that needs to be addressed. For the first 6 weeks of class we didn’t really have to create a lot of things as a group, or be graded as a group, but this final assignment is heavily focused within groups. Our group ended up being the largest of the the 7, with five people in total it was a classic example of too many chef’s in the kitchen. We had assigned roles, but as the pre, post and production process continued along a lot of us ended up blurring those lines and helping each other out in different areas.

With such a large core group it was difficult to find meeting times that everyone could attend, and in the end we were never able to have a full core group meeting with all 5 members attending until the post-production process was happening. It would have been helpful, and looking back very vital to just have at least one or two seasons to consolidate our groups goals, and to help us all bond and get to know each other. I have previously worked with Jess on other RMITV productions, and am close friends with Dylan, but have never really worked with him or Hannah and Alex either. It was also a difficult process to trust everyone with their roles. This class has become one of my favourite classes, and I wanted to make a product that I could be proud of and something that I could be happy with. But I decided that for the teamwork to work I needed to just focus on completely my job as cinematographer as much as possible and hope that the others could complete their job as best as they could as well.

That was the most conflicting aspect with collaboration that I had. At times I wanted to take over and make this my project, and help control and dictate what would eventually become the end result, but the whole point of working in a group is to share ideas and then as a group fix any problems, or complete the jobs together. I feel like as a group we never got to a point where we would hang out and just joke around, while working on the project. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves at times, and couldn’t see the fun and different ideas each person could contribute.

Like last semester, I forgot that I’m not making this film, but we are making this film. And that this end product is a amalgamation of our collective hard work. I can’t take sole credit for this film, because in essence it isn’t just my film, and it’s something we all made and it is something we all hope to be proud of.