Well. The last week or so has been full of twists and turns, but I think we’ve just hit the biggest ones. We have decided to release ourselves from the burden of trying to continue our current project, Human Resources. We are not going to reshoot an of the pilot nor shoot anything of the second episode. We proposed this in class on Tuesday to Robin and received the green light to go ahead with a different project yesterday. Serial 2.0 is going to take us back towards the beginning of the semester and ‘Car Wash’- the dialogue prompt that Jen, Bridie, Joan, Gianella and Eve created. We all talked and decided this was a project that we not only enjoyed (creating and consuming) more but also thought it was a lot more reminiscent of the concept and examples of the Web Series that we’d discussed earlier in the semester. Of course, this is a massive change and it’s not one we’re treating lightly. I will now go through some reasons we’re stopping Human Resources, why we’re going back to the ‘Car Wash’ stage and what our plan is from here.
The heart of our decision lies in the fact that our own hearts weren’t in the production of Human Resources. This semester has been incredibly all over the place, for everyone. But we want to come out of the studio with someone that we’re proud of, and something that we have had input in the initial creation of. Human Resources hasn’t always been a lost cause, but we have gotten to a point where none of us have any motivation to continue or finish the project. It has become a seemingly un-achievable task that will reap no rewards for us. We have felt disengaged with the process of creating and writing the script, and feel that it is not the kind of thing we wanted to create when we came into this subject. Plus, the script did not fully adhere to the location and actor parameters that we established in the beginning, which has made shooting more difficult than it could have been.
Now, I understand the un-professionalism of abruptly deciding to stop a collaborative project. However, as university students, if we feel we are not getting as much out of the subject as possible then we have the right to change our direction and work if that decision is in our hands. We also felt that we were putting more into the project than some of the writers, even though they were the ones who had given us this script which we had such limited input in yet had no choice in making. Furthermore, our plan for shooting was crumbling before us. We didn’t have an actor for a main character, didn’t have access to our (strongly) preferred locations, and didn’t even have a day when the majority of the crew could actually attend. Overall, we didn’t believe we’d be able to create anything worth the time and effort we’d have to put in.
More than a specific desire to stop our current project, we want to make something that we are passionate about. Something like ‘Car Wash’ that is short, snappy and clever. We have gotten so caught up in the production of Human Resources that every shoot feels like a weighty, rule-bound and somewhat forced creative process which is not what creating something should feel like, especially when we wanted to make something dynamic and fresh. Going back to ‘Car Wash’ doesn’t necessarily mean creating something related, it just means going back to the creative space and energy that helped give life to the idea. I believe that this will reinvigorate our motivation for this studio and help us finish the semester on a much more positive note.