I played an important role in my group by doing the sound design, camera operating, having the music composed for our film, consistently showing up and putting in extra hours, and by being amenable throughout the whole process. This assignment gave me the opportunity to take on more of a collaborative rather than leadership role, as there were people with stronger visions than me in regards to the style and story of the film, as well as more experience. That’s not to say that I did not have an input but more so that I feel I contributed through showing different perspectives and possible avenues to take, which as a result meant our group was more confident in the path we did follow. 

I’ve always found the creation of a final film the hardest aspect of studios, which is usually a result of the challenges of creative differences — as creating media is generally artistically driven — clashing schedules, differing strong points/experience in media making and technical limitations; it is difficult to share and co-create on software like premiere. I think I found throughout this project that I didn’t have the same level of experience on PremierePro or understanding of all the editing processes on there. This is obviously an omission in my media making skills and I will need to work harder to teach myself PremierePro conventions outside of class times, or team up with people with similar levels of experience — so that my team members don’t have to teach me. It was very valuable having someone like Dani in our group, as she really knew all the technical aspects and maintained a vision throughout the whole making process. I want to be more proactive in my contributions through having a better understanding of the software, the role I will be fulfilling and investing in tools that make content sharing easier. 

In the future, I want to have more of a role in the editing, to learn better habits with big edits and because I think that group work flows better when everyone is together putting in the same amount of time, rather than taking separate parts home to work on (which vary in size). I feel like this was also a result of a lack of defined roles when starting our project together; we rarely stuck to set roles and I feel like this made completing the assignments harder due to a lack of clarity/accountability.  Therefore, next assignment I want to allocate more time to working within the editing suites as a group, which would also mean that one person isn’t having to navigate the whole piece off the bat — Thankyou Dani. To aid this, I think it would be good to have a more defined conversation before starting a group project about what set times weekly people can spend together editing outside of class time.