This semester we had the opportunity to collaborate with our peers on various tasks and exercises in class. In class I thoroughly enjoyed this and found it to be very productive. The most effective collaborative work done in class were our own experiments early on in the semester. Each person in our group of 4 had to have their exercise completed within half an hour. Due to various helpful suggestions and everyone putting an equal amount of effort into one another’s projects, we all finished with in our time constraints. For my particular exercise I planned to use a single tracking shot in replacement of a cut. I wanted to follow one subject and then follow a different one after an exchange of some sort. Whilst I knew roughly what I wanted to do, I was unsure of positioning and the finer details. The most helpful part of having group members was being able to discuss ideas with them and have instant feed back. One of my fellow group members suggested that I work in the hallway with my subjects exchanging a note through a door. From this suggestion I was able to figure out my camera movement for my transition to my second subject. I would walk backwards with the camera following my first subject and then turn my body and walk forwards to follow my second subject as they exited the class room into the hallway. The other issue was how I would record sound. A group member agreed to hold the audio system and follow me with the camera. I would not have been able to record audio and video at the same time had I been alone.

Ultimately I would have liked to have some of my fellow classmates to help with filming for my final exercises. However due to my location being two and a half hours away, this was not possible. I did make filming by myself slightly easier by using a Go Pro which can easily be operated by one person. What I did take away from the collaborative class exercises such as the one mentioned above, is discussing my ideas with the people around me. Therefore when it came to making my exercises, I made an effort to include my subject’s in the film-making process. I would often ask their suggestions on how to shoot waves or what would be the best mount or method to capture a particular shot. As I had originally planned to have some panning shots of surfers but was not confident to go out in the deeper water without a board and just the camera, one of my subject’s agreed to go out with the mouth mount and suggested that he sit parallel to the waves and turn his head following near by surfers. After my experiences of collaborating in class I learnt to make use other’s knowledge and expertise.