Collaboration is always an interesting experience, because it’s never the same in any project. Everything depends on how prepared you are, and overall, who you’re actually collaborating with. Compared to our first ‘attempted’ pilot (let’s not even go there), our collaboration skills have improved by a mile. Here is the funky lowdown of it all.

Overall, we didn’t really have a lot to do with the writers for most of the process. We worked with them when it came to providing prompts, whether that was written, on their part, or in the form of video, from our side of it. When we requested tasks of each other, there was little, to no problem in getting things done. We asked to have scripts written by a certain date, and they were all extremely good at following through with our requests. We did have some communication issues at the start, when we were just working with prompts, however we took steps to resolve them. As the production period loomed over, I personally didn’t find we had any communication problems with the writers. However there weren’t any problems, I did find to feel a little disconnected from a couple of them for the majority of the semester.

Heidi, one of the writers, actually worked with us through every step of the pre-production, and production process. It was really incredible being able to work so closely with at least one of the writers, as it really helped ensure us that we were staying true to their vision of where the scripts should go, as well as our own personal, and creative visions. We could tell that she really wanted to be there for the team, and wasn’t interested in just doing the bare minimum. I know as a media team, we really appreciated it.

One of the other writers we worked closely with was Monty. Unfortunately we had to ask our original actor playing Duncan to leave, as we were having communication problems with him. Monty stepped in as the role of Duncan, which ended up actually working out incredibly, as Monty had so much involvement with writing the characters, and he knew exactly how to play it, and how himself, and the other writers were wanting him to be portrayed.

For the first time ever, I was also working with actors, who I didn’t know prior to the project. In the past, I have only ever worked with actors I know, or at the very most, worked with friends of friends. It was really strange for me, and something I wasn’t used to at all. Working with actors who I had never met, did cause me to feel slightly anxious at times, as I didn’t want them to look at us as unprofessional, since we are only a student film. I just kept reminding myself that they are amateur actors as well, and if anything, they were probably much more nervous than I was.

The only trouble that we really had with the actors, was trying to find availability that suited everyone. This was something unavoidable, and we were prepared, knowing that this would be something extremely difficult to work around. It took a lot of planning, but in the end, we managed to make everyones timetables work.

Finally, our media crew. Personally, I couldn’t have asked for a better team to work with. I think that we all had our doubts when we began the project, as our first pilot was such a flop. I think what worked for us, was that we really sat down and came up with a strong game plan. We knew we were capable of so much more, which I think is what helped us push to create something we were actually proud of. I’m so lucky to say that I made some amazing friends in our team.

Overall, collaboration went smoothly, or at least as smoothly as it can really go on an amateur film set. We all came in with a similar creative vision, and desired outcome, which I think is really shown if what we produced.