Project brief four was a vast learning experience for me in many ways, and as with mostly all of my projects this semester, there were a lot (and when I say a lot, I mean a lot) of dramas, issues, trials and tribulations, as me, Georgia, and Eie Kie worked towards creating our final project brief of the semester.

Collaboration is vital in order to function as a successful and able media practitioner. This task was the first which we, as a group, had to work with. Throughout our course of practice, I’d be lying if I said it was easy to constantly keep in contact with one another, though, as we approached the end of our assignment, it became much easier to work as a team. This project taught me more than anything, that group work is so much of a better learning experience than singular work, as I learnt many editing tips from Georgia as we collaborated in creating our video essay.

We were told in one of the week’s lectorials of the importance of forming a relationship with our group members both professionally and socially, and I remember how the lecturer (I don’t remember which) told us to go out for coffees one day. This was a very helpful tip, as I realised the more I was able to spend time with my group members, the better we were able to work as a team, and coagulate our ideas into something great. I mean after five straight hours of editing, it’s hard to not have a laugh with the only other form of human contact in the room.

Some of our group’s main issues were definitely time, and organisation. The significance of these two elements is vital in any project, group or solo, so in order to maintain a steady pace at the beginning of our Project Brief 4 journey, we stated we would meet after each Monday lectorial in order to organise our assigned work for the week. Of course issues raised when members did not show, or we were strapped for time due to busy schedules for other classes, though we powered through as best we could. We had a few issues with illness and various external factors but were eventually able to find a balance that worked best for us, or atlas tried to. I learnt a lot when it came to understanding the humanness of my other group members, to be empathetic and to not get angry when things did not work out, or we were forced to change plans. I feel as though during the completion of our project, we all banded together, and were successfully (finally) able to communicate quite well via Facebook, student email, and google drive. As a whole, I can definitely see the final product as a perfect meshing of all of our collective ideas and editing in one.

The work in which we created definitely flows and honestly feels as if it is quite satisfactory; With our combined knowledge of Narrative, and our differing editing techniques, we were able to collaborate in order to come up with an original question which challenged us mentally and skilfully. Our work is inspired by the many examples we watched in our Media 1 workshops, as well as our own media ideas. I feel as though the video essay is quite creative and humorous, portraying our ideas on the relationship reality television has with narrative exceptionally. Our audio essay is much more formal exhibiting how heroes and villains play a part in American news, specifically 9/11. The amount research which it took to complete this project was extremly immense, though it is through this which I learnt so many things I’d never though of in regard to narrative affecting “reality” and the general publics relationship to story and the idea of heroes and villains.

I think structuring our project was difficult as we had a wide range of knowledge to show, but attempted to do so in a creative and entertaining way. Integrating all of our research into two separate essays was quite hard, though we managed in dividing Georgias research into the audio essay, and mine and Eie Kie’s into the video essay. I believe starting was the hardest thing to do, however once we did start, and the ideas began to flow, it was harder to stop than to keep going, so most of the work was done in 4-5hr chunks of editing time.

Seth was very understanding when it came to our issues during Project Brief 4, this was great though, as he had good examples to show during the workshops which provided us with an understanding what an audio/ video essay could and should resemble, as getting our head around the fact that not all essays are written was a struggle in itself.

Class discussion and feedback was helpful in other ways too. It assisted in our initial understanding of Narrative, and how we can broaden our ideas in order to form an understandable piece of analysis and thought provoking material. Overall, I feel our presentation of the work was good, though if we had to improve on anything ti would definitely have to be time management and communication skills, as they were our dividing factors. Though over coming these struggles was hard, and I wish we had left more time to edit, I am glad to have had the experience of working with Georgia and Eie Kie, as it helped me learn a lot about, not only Narrative, but working as a team in order to achieve a creative outcome.