Collaboration

Over the last month or so, working on the final film with Alaine, Ryan and Chynnae has been an interesting process. Because of several different reasons, we only had one full shoot with everyone in the group present and contributing. There’s not a great deal to be done about this, but it alters the dynamic.

For example, Ryan was away for the first shoot, then Chynnae couldn’t make it, and then I was away. This meant that a lot of the collaborative side of things were done in the Google Doc we shared. This was different to how I’d worked before – most things we needed to know were posted there and we had to read them in our own time, rather than discuss them in a meeting.

As is abundantly clear by now, filmmaking has to be a process of collaboration if it’s going to be effective. Because of this, I think we were at a slight disadvantage because of the lack of a solid group who were all able to attend. We never seemed to really set into concrete roles on set, apart from Alaine being the director. There were shoots where Ryan was on camera, and shoots where I was on camera, and as such, neither of us ever settled into the role. When I arrived at shoots I was wondering what my job would be, not how best to do my given job.

Because our roles were never really locked in or confirmed, it generated a lot of difficulty because people were often trying to do other members’ jobs for them. When we were shooting the scene with Jenny, while I was technically operating the camera, Alaine and Ryan essentially took over – not to imply that I think they were in any way trying to undermine my role, but because they’d both run cameras on other shoots, they were used to being in charge of that area and as such continued in that way.

But, as I said, that’s just how the way it goes sometimes. I think that the one shoot everyone was at worked well, because we were all able to actually focus on roles and work together creatively. Even if we did stumble a bit with creating a well rounded group where we had individual and clear stated tasks, we got there in the end, and it was an experience which let me see a different side of collaboration, one that’s a little bit less clear cut and easily defined, and depends more on consistent communication.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *