Overall, I thought this assignment turned out really well, as a group we very quickly came up with an idea that we were happy with and we were able to execute it the way we wanted. What really worked well in our final mix of the audio work was the breadth of audio styles we used to make the assignment as enjoyable as possible. As a group we were all on the same page throughout as we wanted this to be a really enjoyable assignment, we wanted the final audio product to be really entertaining which I felt like we accomplished well, keeping the tone light throughout the piece.

Throughout the course of making this assignment my group were constantly evolving what we wanted it to focus on and the way we wanted to display the message we envisioned. As a group we decided pretty quickly we wanted to focus on attention seeking behaviours and narcissism on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook which is where a lot of our original research was centred around, but the further it went along and the more in depth we looked at the style we wanted to use for the assignment the more we focused on media sensationalism and the ways news programs are solely focused on keeping our attention by making the news more entertaining, adopting a news content model much like a social media newsfeed. Both avenues we focused on I found really interesting and as a group we really wanted to display our audio work as a sensationalist ‘A Current Affair’ style news program which definitely tied all the aspects we wanted to centre our work on.

I found it interesting and concerning originally that part of the assignment was centred around research, but it was actually great because I felt like it made my group really think about what we wanted to focus on so that we chose an area we were all interested in and would actually enjoy learning more about. I really enjoyed working in a group for this assignment as we all got on well and worked really collaboratively, being really open to ideas and always talking through what we wanted to do with the piece, and we never really disagreed with anything during the entire process. I’ve worked in a few very dysfunctional groups in the past and I have to admit this was one of the most harmonious group assignments I’ve ever done which was really great and made the entire process much more enjoyable. I’ve learnt a lot in this group assignment about how to work collaboratively and bounce ideas quickly off each other to end up with an idea we are all happy with and all want to do, which I know is a rarity but I will endeavour in all of my future collaborate work to draw on the experiences I’ve had working in this group to be the best group member I can be.

I also really enjoyed being able to work in the audio domain as it is where I feel most confident, although it did get frustrating at times working in Audition as I really did not enjoy that program, I’ve worked with a lot of different audio programs like Pro Tools, Logic Pro and Ableton but this program I found to be the most fiddly and awkward to work in, I’ll be honest I do not look forward to having to work in this program again. As a whole though, I do enjoy working in audio more than video and I really think it allows you to work around a lot of mistakes, as there were a few occasions in the mixing process where we were able to take out a lot of stutters and awkward pauses, forming more coherent and stronger lines which just would not be possible if we had to match the audio with a visual.

The main issue I felt we had with our audio piece were the areas where it felt like it needed a visual component to hold the scene together, which is something that must plague a lot of podcasters and audio documentary makers and It is a challenge that would be good to tackle at a later date. As a whole though, I was very happy with how the assignment came out and I look forward to working collaboratively in future creative works.