Even though the quality of our work has improved for the second project, I feel our collaboration was not successful enough after all.
During the three stages of project one, everyone participated in discussions and filming which was a good start. Everyone had their own job to fulfill. It was only at the postproduction stage when everyone participated less in editing. Perhaps it was because everyone was not satisfied with the beach scene. Yolanda and I basically edited it. Sylvia and I did the color grading. I feel bad that my idea as to how to frame the beach scene was unclear and difficult to achieve. It was since then that our group started to fall apart a little bit.
I guess it was wrong for me to assume that everyone was too busy and thought of the second idea all on my own. I thought that everyone was satisfied with the plan when they did not object the concept after sending them the messages. On the day of filming Project Two, everyone was a bit lost. They were not sure what to do. Kris also asked two of her friends to come to help out with the lighting. It wasn’t good. I was just in a bad state to be organized and be able to work as I did before. We should have met in person rather than messaging online—at least talk about the plan for an hour before the filming. Sylvia must have disliked the shot so she passed her cinematographer job to Rachel and Yolanda. I think it was inappropriate but I couldn’t get her to do it. We finished the scene rather quickly later with Rachel and Yolanda handling the camera even when they were not familiar with the camera. It all went so wrong and I couldn’t fix it on set.
I’ve always tried to do my best for everything I do. I later understood that Slyvia was not happy about the look of our set—especially the Arri light in the shot. Yet, she did not tell me back then during filming. I thought it looked fine. It shouldn’t have been the reason for her to abandon her job on the day of filming. She was also the only one who knew how to use the camera. I’m always open to communication but this time, we’ve failed to do so. I guess the ultimate problem lied in the lack of discussion before filming. If only we have talked about the second idea as a group beforehand, all of this would not have happened. It was also just baffling that no one objected or questioned my concept when I sent those messages. I wanted the best for this project, but nobody was on board. Perhaps, it was all my fault. This has reminded me of my last collaboration with Sylvia; and I sincerely hope that I can talk about this with Slyvia later and resolve the problem with her. No problems cannot be resolved with good communication.
