Week 9 was a very important week for various reasons: one, we learned the whole concept of staging and rehearsing, and how it was pivotal not only for the talent but also for the film crew to coordinate their roles in order for the whole film set to synergise. Two, it was a chance for us to collaborate with our peers and get to know what each and everyone’s motivation was for the final project.

In terms of the staging exercise, there were various factors that came into this – it was teamwork, learning the different types of roles in a film production and not overstepping your boundaries once you have established your film role. At first, I thought that this process was tremendously tedious and would take forever to film. It took a while for everyone to get comfortable in their roles but once we got the groove of the technicalities, everything started to flow faster. One of the few things that I learned from this exercise that not only are the actors and actresses are in the spotlight but so are film crew. For example, there are a lot of responsibilities that the Director’s Assistant would have to oversee, artistic choices that the director of photography would have to make and so on. I was privileged enough to have experienced some of the major roles and that is, to be a director, a focus puller and an actress. Experiencing the variety in these roles has enabled me to get a better idea of how I would run my own film production for one of my observations. Experiencing the role of a director was what appealed to me the most because I’d like to see one of my observations come to life, and potentially being the director for that would be a fulfilling experience.

As for the second part of this class, we had the opportunity to mingle and figure what it was we wanted to do for the final film project and essentially, find people who had the same idea as I did. For the past two assignments, I had chosen to work individually due to creative differences I have encountered whilst attempting to film my own observations but this time, I thought it would be a perfect learning experience to collaborate with people whilst learning and growing at the same time. Because this assignment gives you a chance to work on two videos, it was provided every avenue for us to work individually as well as collaboratively. Jack, Liv, Aria and myself decided to work with each other – even though we did not have any ideas at the time, we decided to work together anyway with consideration to our different skills and different ideas.

I can honestly say that I am looking forward to working with these talented individuals!