A lot of work over the past 7 weeks has gone into this Project Brief 4, many ideas have been presented, attempted, scrapped, chopped, changed and developed. Now that the work is over I look back and can see things in the media artefact that worked and didn’t.

To my delight, there are far more successful elements of the Project Brief than there are problematic elements. The camera work and editing all were pulled off nicely. The concept came from our minds to the screen nicely. The overall production value is of a good quality, and the research is highlighted without totally controlling what is happening on screen.

The problems were mainly of a ‘what if’ type of viewpoint. I mean if we had more time I would of liked to create more options throughout our interactive video and created a better narrative. Making the overall project a better experience for the audience. Also being able to even have test subjects run through our ‘choose your own adventure’ to see the popular choices, and create some research finding of our own. Instead of presenting and establishing others research we looked into. There’s a lot you can say and think in hindsight. However I look at all the problems as successes, because by knowing what you did wrong, or could have done better, you can learn and improve further throughout our university careers and beyond. 

As the first collaboration piece of work in my University career and in my development as a media practitioner, there are many things I have learnt and can take away from this experience. Firstly I still believe it is very important that the group working together needs to share the same attitude and passion for the project and idea, with everyone wanting the same result. Without this camaraderie the end result will not be what any of you wanted. I was lucky that my particular group made it clear to each other form the beginning that we wanted to achieve the same thing in the project, both how we developed it, worked on it and the overall end result. This made us work more cohesively as a group. Secondly, it needs to be a total group effort. This is in terms of motivation and work ethic, with all members taking on a leadership role in some way, that way all elements of the project get done and come together without something being neglected. It’s the ability to rely on one another that keeps the whole process moving efficiently and productively. Finally, you need to be able to work with each other’s strengths, while not playing it safe. Collaborating is a great way to learn and develop skills from others who may be more experienced in some areas, so it’s important to not let the experience pass you by without learning from one another. While also focussing on what makes its group/crew member great, relying on a person’s strengths to get you through that particular process, as well as working as a team to help and learn from what they know. It’s all about team work and focus, it’s not about being an individual, but gelling as as group and functioning as efficiently as possible.