So I think I’ll discuss our pilot episode for the web series as per the order of this blog post’s title so it can be a positive sandwich where ‘the bad’ is in the middle but it begins and ends more positively.

Okay, so after having watched our original cut of the pilot, I didn’t really think it was great. And I mean, I don’t think any part of it was that good, technically, because it was obvious how many mistakes we had made. However, after watching it again, there were a couple of good things about it that should be praised for. Firstly, our choice of location for the office. It wasn’t necessarily the best place but it was better than having that old, boring, white office environment. The location we chose had black and wooden walls so the backdrop was a nice contrast on the colourful hair and monochrome outfits that most of the characters donned for the shoot. And it was nice to step away from the typical office setting and have some colour despite the dark humour.

Speaking of dark humour, the actors’ performances were really good in setting this tone for the web series. Though we noticed that the characters lacked depth or some more oomph to make them more distinctly distinct from each other on screen, the delivery of the lines were on point in helping showcase each character’s personality.

Now onto the not-so-good parts. We really did make a tonne of technical mistakes. First of all, lighting was just off. I don’t really know what was going on there, and I probably should since I was on lighting. But like I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I kept shifting roles so my focus also kept on shifting. The eye lines were misaligned in a particular scene, and we also didn’t follow the 180 degree rule (an actor was looking left to right, and the actor opposite to them was also looking left to right instead of right to left). Some shots were out of focus and the audio was just bad. Partly because of the locations we chose which had this annoying airy, ringing sound in the atmosphere. And lastly, editing the pilot in the last minute. It was edited during a class but the audio wasn’t synced up, so when we got to adding the audio it was much more difficult to do so. And when it was being finalised, it was happening literally before the pilot presentation where everything sort of just came crashing down.

And I guess, the simplest way to say it is that all these mistakes were made because we were downright unorganised and rushing. It’s not that we intended to but it just happened that way. We were pushing for time and we did our best to get sorted as much as possible before and during filming. But we were also rushing to get the filming done on the days that we were, especially on the first day because we did waste some time with figuring out camera shots and angles. We also had some of our crew act in the pilot so that’s why some of us had to take on more than one role. And also, there is always that fear of being called out for not doing anything/contributing to the team so you just pick up whatever equipment and start doing something.

So basically, our pilot episode sucks (though there is a new edit that has been made which is an improvement from the original cut).

But a comment that we got from the presentation when my group straight up said this before we showed a scene is, “be proud that it sucks”, because that is why we’re at university learning about this, so we can learn how to do it right. It’s all part of the process.

And in saying all of this, it was the best mistake we made.

As a group, we have critiqued ourselves fairly harshly and we know everything that is wrong in the production of this pilot episode. But doing so helped us be more motivated and inspired to produce something better and greater than this because we will definitely be learning from our mistakes as we go into more production work.

From doing this, I have hope and more of a positive outlook as we make improvements to our work ethic. I know that we’ll be more stricter on sticking to our roles and by not rotating roles will helps us to do this. And we decided on not switching roles so we can maintain a consistent visual aesthetic and we know that we’ll work better and more efficiently since we’re working in areas that we’re confident on doing. I also hope that we follow the production schedule more closely because although I’m hopeful that we’ll produce a great web series, I am aware of the time we have left to complete this and there is a lot that needs to be done so we really have to make sure we’re not slacking off and ticking off things in our to-do list.

I’m sure there are many more things that we have learned and can improve on from making the pilot episode, but for now, that’s all I’ve got in my mind.

Everyone in my group just clicks and we do all work well together, but something else I love about working with them, beyond our group chemistry, is that we all share the same vision, the same dream and that’s what makes our team really come together.

I mean, we are The Dream Team after all.