Reflective Statement and Film Reviews Link

Here is a link to all my film reviews: https://jnl146.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Collaboration%3A%20Film%20Lecture%20and%20Program
(Labelled under "Collaboration Project: Film and Lecture Program)

Collaboration Project - Reflective Statement

Before the project started, I was really excited at the prospect of working in a group. I looked forward to working with other students, thinking of creative ideas together and being able to support and help each other. At the beginning of the project our group was flowing with ideas and it was difficult to settle on one idea quickly.

However once we were able to decide on the character "Fashion Man",  our ideas seemed to come together quite quickly. We assigned roles by identifying  each others strengths and weaknesses. As a result  Noah became the Director, Rachel  the Production Designer and I was the Producer.

As a group we really enjoyed acting out a variety of skits and stories that we formed around Fashion Man.  This helped us to understand the character more. It became evident that we had something that was really quite funny and someone who had enormous potential to appeal to a large and varied audience.

I felt the role of the Producer best suited me as I am naturally organised and like to work to a schedule or plan. I am also able to work to deadlines and like to be finished ahead of any due date.  I also am aware however that I need to give myself the necessary time to understand the task or the skill area as due to the way in which I process information this can be difficult. 

This project has taught me how difficult and complex a project can be when team members are not able keep to the schedule.  I felt that I had an inadequate and unfair amount of time left for me to animate my work because our proposed timescales were not adhered to. The knock on effect of this was that I felt incredibly pressurised and very stressed.  I was frustrated because I knew I needed more time and I felt that disappointed that I wouldn't be able to produce work to the standard I hoped.

My group became increasingly slow as the project progressed and our communication which had not been good throughout,  suffered a lot.  Two weeks before the deadline we were still in the designing process.  Consequently,  designs weren't finished and I didn't feel able to properly fulfill my role as the CG Modeler. I regret this as I was looking forward to modelling in Maya.

Despite my increasing frustrations, sense of panic and stress, at times, I felt able to behave in a professional manner with those around me and remained calm and positive in any discussions that we were able to have.

As the producer, I always tried to motivate my group by communicating with them in person and on Basecamp.

Overall, although our animation didn't come across as clearly as our animatic and things remained incomplete, I know that I did the very best that I could as the Producer of our group. I love the character that we created and was pleased with the idea but I am disappointed we didn't manage to get the full potential of it across.

Working as a collaboration has taught me that not everyone's needs are the same and they will prioritise differently to me.  I know I need more time when using software and to be more confident in my opinions and decisions. I probably should have said this at the outset of the project so that the group were fully aware of the group and individual expectations, weaknesses and strengths.