Here is our Final Project Brief 4 Link. Do share your views guys.

When I first heard of last project being a group one, I was excited as I’m a team player and my confidence boosts up as many tasks are divided amongst us. I was hoping to either get ‘mediums’ or ‘audiences’ as a topic for the final project brief. Fingers crossed and bang here comes ‘mediums’. Now other question came into my mind who would be my crew for this project, obviously i didn’t wanted lazy ones cause then all the burden would have been over my shoulders. Luckily Sandy and Kristien were my partners for this brief. Each one of us really had put a lot of effort into making this a successful project, although, our original idea was different, we were working on website  and talk about different mediums all together then changed to produce it in a documentary style but later on with the advise from Rachel, we focused on Video Games as a medium and how other different mediums incorporate into it. It all went smooth and easy, we narrowed down to one thing and it was easy for us to showcase our final presentation being inspired from ABC’s ‘Good Game’. According to me, the successful aspects for our project were firstly the script, Kristien worked immensely on script, putting up all the educational quotes together and to present it as a script is what I consider a tough job but for him it was easy as he is into story writing so I reckon that might have been the reason. Secondly the setup for the project, I took the responsibility to setting up for our shoot, at first we decided to book a study room at building 80 of RMIT, but Rachel suggested to check out the basement of building 9 where the editing rooms are. We all loved that area, it was exactly of what we were looking for, the lcd, the sofas and the ambience, it was quite so no unwanted noise could be captured in the sound for our video. By using three different cameras, the broadcast style angles and some extra lighting, it looked almost like a tv show setup. Apart form these, everything we collected for our production dossier (sounds, bibliography, pictures, Logos and drafts) is what made the our final outcome as a success.

In terms of problematic aspects, I think being my greatest strength becomes a problem for me sometimes. Editing is where i excel but its the sound part the troubles me. During the editing stage I discovered that by using different cameras, the sounds that were recorded were in different different frames per second, one source of sound was a bit speedier than the other one. So I had to make sure that proper lip syncing is present in the video and most importantly to normalize the sounds together so that it is clear for listening. I knew that with Sandy and Kristien on board, they would help me out with finding the background score and other its and bits of it. Overall, I think for me that would only be the problematic aspect. I’m not sure if this counts as a problem or not, I have some reservations on the acting part, although Sandy and I did well as per our consensus, but I think some elements were missing that could have really made it to the next level, other then that, I think we all are like minded which maintained a good outcome of our project. 

what I learnt in the making process about collaboration that might be relevant to my broader development as a media practitioner is the understanding of your team mates as it is the team work that reflects onto your projects. Listening is an another aspect to it as everyone puts their thoughts and ideas to the table. It is not about whether I like it or not, it is about whether the idea works or not? With Sandy and Kristian we made sure in our contract that we would listen to our ideas and would discuss will it work or not, and in this process i learned that you have to put your ego aside even though you want something to be added into it cause in the end, it is not about your work, it is about our work. Other than that, I believe that one must only take responsibility of certain areas where they are good at utilizing their key skills, Kristian took responsibility of writing and the direction, Sandy took responsibility of maintaining production dossier and inputting his expertise of gaming into it and I took the responsibility of post production stage. Each one of us were good at these areas and in our project it reflects that how well we did.

To comprehend, my experience has been amazing working with these guys and I’m sure that by going through this collaboration process, it would benefit me as media practitioner.

Today was our shooting day. I must say I thought this thing would be over in like half an hour or so but took us 2 hours to complete. It’s interesting to notice that just a mere 5-7 minute video takes that long. During the shooting process we had to face sound issues from the outsiders (people were walking in by, shoe taping, chatting). We sorted it out and then started with it. We managed to set up the three cameras, two microphones and one lightning source for that place. We connected a laptop to the lcd at the back to display footage. Kristian was holding laptop nearby the camera so that we don’t mess up the dialogues. After the filming, the footage was saved in my laptop and now I’ll start the rough cut over the weekend, whereas the rest of the crew will have to find royalty free music/sound effects to be added to the edited video later on. We are satisfied of what we have done so far, lets hope the video in the end comes out good. Rachel had a look at our video, but she would only comment when she sees some editing done.