One of the most pivotal learning points I have learnt from Project Brief 4, is the importance of understanding and respecting each group members different approach to academia and time management. Personally, my work ethic designates small portions of each day to a project, making it slowly progress whilst continuously form. The nature of PB4 as a group task with multiple components and layers, meant that there had to be symbiotic relationship between group work and personal initiative. Luckily, due to the successful teamwork dynamic my group shared, we were able to contribute through individual’s progress to the project’s process. Initially, we discussed our Media 1 strengths and weaknesses allowing forming a clear common-ground understanding about what we wanted our PB4 to look like, and whether it was actually achievable. Thus, pre-production stage focused on the Media 1’s structure and teachings, establishing that the history of public to private broadcasting held significance to our given topic ‘institutions’. The pop-culture and music industry we discussed is arguably an institution as we see the genres strong influence over audience’s habit and beliefs, paralleling it with the sphere of influence present in the broadcast era. As a subcategory we chose K-POP, as it’s controversial nature provided each member with a genuine interest and desire to research. Using José van Dijck & Thomas Poell article Making Public Television Social (2014), we could see K-POP’s ‘social media’s infiltration on all segments of everyday life [that] has impacted the fabric of social institutions, disrupting broadcasters convention production and distribution logistic’ (2014), thus making through social trends, collectivist communities. Therefore, the production process of PB4 was successful due to the communicative relationship made between each member of the group. As we all shared research responsibilities it allowed each member to find genuine interest in the controversial nature of K-POP, whilst attempting to find a modernised definition of institutions today.
However, within the production stage problems arose regarding the designation and responsibility of editing, as people became situated in hierarchical areas of influence. Unlike pre-production, where each member of the group could go home and contribute research that furthered the shape of our currently unknown puzzle, productions designation of responsibility made the group dynamics re-structure. By having two individuals to take physical control of the audio and visual files post rough cut stage, it only allowed for the other members of the group to contribute physically during weekly meetings. As we did not want to ‘share’ the files – in fear that exporting a working Premiere Pro document could corrupt footage – it reconstructed creative rights that were previously shared equally.
As a way of overcoming this problem, we devised a schedule of meetings that allowed each person to contribute a percentage of found footage. This allowed each member to still have an active role in the project’s formation, along with relieving the burden of editing unfairly falling onto the members shoulder who housed the file. Consequently, the group continuously discussed the production process with one another, yet the responsibility to edit whatever homework was left did eventually fall onto a specific individual. This is one element of group projects I will keep in mind for the future, as it is not fair for one individual to fall behind in sacrifice for a group mark. As we became aware of the lengthy time it would take to edit, each member was assigned specific tasks that would help contribute eg. writing and editing of scripts, finding footage for video, translating news articles from Chinese to English etc. We aided one another by capitalising on the personal strengths we found in the course (e.g. I wrote scripts, Kris translated Korean media items, Vanessa found footage, and Isobell edited). These tasks weren’t designated completely to one person, and everyone pitched in and helped with one another, however it was due to our communication skills and initiate that the project’s weight was shared among all of us.
Each media’s construction demonstrated different affordances as there was an audio and video based media. The audio essay seemed pretty straight forward; recording a dossier, a script, inserting sound effects and attaching reference files. In contrast the video file was quite complicated and multi-layered. Having to juggle visual elements with narration and audio editing, the videos referencing and organisation become messy as files were sent through USB’s were lost and corrupted. However, my having the two medias present it taught us the conflicting and similarities found within each other. As audio is a singular and one sense experience, whilst video has two active senses with multi-layered visuals and components, we experienced the difference length of time each took to construct and to cite.
Conclusively, Project Brief Four’s collaborative process has been a great experience and has taught me about teamwork, time management, the creative process along with the construction of audio and video based media. I will definitely take forth the significance and important of teamwork demonstrated from my group, hoping to establish the same productive and respectful relationships made contextually.
Van Dijck, José and Poell,Thomas (2014) Making Public Television Social? Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenges of Social Media, Television & New Media 2015, Vol. 16(2) 148–164 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav. Sage Prints, London.