The most successful aspect of this film is that it has the ability to convey a great amount of content and meaning through the minimal shots and this is the reason for choosing an abstract approach. This has been an issue for many of the groups, as the topics are so broad we attempted to make broader statements through our piece by insinuating aspects of television as an institution rather than pointing them out in obvious ways.We believed by letting the audience work for the information that it would make the film more engaging and what makes our film different from the rest. This also ran the risk of not portraying enough information through these broader assertions.

The way we tackled this issue was by following structure similar to an essay. The first section covering the things we will be addressing throughout the film (intro), the three sections of birth, stabilisation and mobility (body) and blackness with voice over to end (conclusion). Another aspect that really worked was the use of repetition as it allowed us to place extra emphasis on the key points we wanted to get across to our audience.

The most problematic aspect of this assessment was finding time to meet up. Both of us have work commitments, other studies and both unfortunately had sicknesses throughout it. We attempted to overcome this through using skype/facetime but this was not sufficient enough for what we wanted to do. This forced us to have longer meetings and longer sessions of filming. A technical problem we faced was learning how to green screen the TV. After watching various tutorials online explaining how to use aftereffects we were able to finally finish it, and made it look a lot better than we were both expecting.

From this collaboration process I have learned a great deal about communication and cooperation. Before this assignment I had never used a collaborative contract, and when I was writing it, I felt it was slightly pointless as my partner wasn’t someone whom I thought would be difficult to work with. Being on the other end now I see its importance in creating it and using it even when the people who you are working with are cooperative and easy to work with. It created a smoother flow, as we already had our meeting times planned out, and our approach was similar, as we had created this contract together. For the future I will be creating collaborative contracts as well as following through with them.

I also learnt how to deal with unfortunate situations. For example both Bliss and I were sick during the course of this assessment task, but we still managed to keep up communication and keep working from our homes. We kept up to date with our meetings, even if they weren’t in person and managed to keep on time for the deadlines set. For the classes missed we communicated with other groups and each other.

I also learned how to use the basic software on Premier and after affects, as up to now I had been using IMovie. I still don’t have this software’s on my computer, but at least now if I need to use this knowledge for future studies I will be able to use the basics as well as advance my knowledge.

I believe these skills are necessary for any media practitioner, as even though there was no conflict between us, we still had to overcome some hurdles with our sicknesses. The key aspect that I believe we will both take away from this is firstly the importance of preparing on how we will communicate and then effectively carry out our plans of communication. This is clear through how we dealt with our struggle of not being able to meet up. Although it slightly limited us, we both faced the struggle together and approached it in a logical and effective way.

 We have also had some slight issues with uploading the film online… so stay posted for the link to the final copy!