Link to website: http://cargocollective.com/project4cropped
One of the more successful parts of this project would have to be the website. It isn’t just a video on the blog, its also a part of a greater website with a giant, blank, white page as its background. The “about” page that I typed was good enough to explain our project. What I did was focus on explaining the video and websites inspiration from social media, the Internet, and Instagram. It also goes on to talk about people’s potential perceptions of the video (i.e. porn vs. art). Hopefully the “about” section will give the video some much-needed context as there is no voice-over or explanatory text in the video.
Another strong part of this project I believe is the video itself. It seems vague and confusing at first, but it really is a very well produced and edited piece of footage. Each picture was specially cropped into squares (like with Instagram) and the shots of the model were perfectly captured. However, the choice of music was a bit strange. I understand that the techno beat of it was meant to capture the idea of technology and the rise of Internet media, but I still felt that the music didn’t exactly fit with the pictures within the video. Perhaps something more orchestral or classical would have been more appropriate, but since the artist of the song we did use was my teammates friend, it meant we didn’t need to worry about copyright infringement and so we used it.
However, there were some major issues while collaborating on this project. For instance, my group was completely blank on ideas of what to do when looking at “audiences”. We eventually settled on the Internet, but it was still a long while until we actually though of it. On top of that, because of our differing university schedules and vast distance between our homes, it became difficult to find times to meet up to work on the project. Despite this, we were able to find some time to meet up and I made the effort to go to her house to work on the video and the website. In addition to this problem, though, we had continuous trouble with the collaborative contract because so many of the steps were either contradictory, exactly the same, or just incredibly vague and confusing. We still aren’t entirely sure whether or not we actually completed the contract correctly, or at all.
Perhaps the major issue I had in this project was a growing feeling of inadequacy. The idea of focusing on the Internet, making a website, and using photos of close-ups of human skin were all Rose’s ideas. It wasn’t pressure or anything like that, but rather I just had no ideas at all and she had these great ones. The only idea I had was putting photos within a video to put on the website (as opposed to just a gallery of photos). I’m usually a very creative and imaginative person, but being the one who has almost no ideas of how to approach a project is a bit depressing. I can only hope that this creative slump will pass soon.
One thing I learned while working on this project was that the bigger the project, the more people that are needed. While in previous projects in the Media 1 course I did everything myself, this much larger and significantly more complicated project required two of us to work on it. We might have found it easier with another person in our group, but we ran out of people in the class so we adapted. I future media projects (specifically in my broader development as a media practitioner), I will have to accurately measure how big a project might become and get the exact right amount of people needed for it.
Another thing I learned during the making process of this project was that group members sometimes have to really step out of their comfort zones. Working extra hard is one thing, but the traveling to an area I had not heard of, let alone know how to navigate, was quite uncomfortable to me at first but I got over it eventually. The nude photography was also a little awkward at first, but I also got over that as well. I expanded my comfort zone, which is needed in some group collaborations.
All in all, I think that this was an interesting project to work on. Despite the difficulties involved, the fact that those difficulties were overcome and the important lessons learned are what made the project itself more challenging and, as a result, more interesting. While I do think changes to the project should be made (the removal of the collaborative contract and the annotated bibliography), it was still a good project to be involved with.
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Oliver Clark