Well, its done. I have officially made a webseries. The undertaking was so much more demanding and complex than I could have ever imagined, and every day I learnt some new lesson or skill. Going forward as a media maker I have things I’d do again, but overwhelmingly it’s been a case of learning from mistakes.

This was the largest group I have ever worked with on a production and it was enlightening in terms of co-ordinating a larger production. As with any time I work with a new group you have to navigate new dynamics. The first few production meetings admittedly weren’t very productive as we sized each other up to see what our strengths and weaknesses were and who would take on what roles. Later meetings I took charge and made it my role to keep everyone on track, make minutes, confirm decisions and assign tasks. This considerably sped up the process and we were soon catching up to other groups. As I had never worked on a project of this scale I made sure I was involved with every aspect of it in order to properly take in how each part works together. I attended all the auditions, worked as a director, cinematographer and sound operator during filming, and was involved with the editing process as well. The only area I wasn’t quite as involved was advertising through social media, as Sally and Amber had that well handled and taught me a lot about the processes they went through in creating content for the page.

Throughout the semester we had several guests come in that proved invaluable in teaching me the true scope of making media. As of now all my content has been self produced and self distributed, and the platform was either my blog or youtube. Simple. Well I soon learned that the real world is a little more complicated. While the talk presented by Evan was certainly informative and inspiring, I feel Steiners talk had more information that was pertinent to my interests and course. I hadn’t thought so far ahead as to ponder how I would go about pitching a show to anyone besides in the abstract. To be faced with the reality of the process got me thinking about how I would go about doing it. As director of the Melbourne Webfest I thought his experience as the person being pitched to was invaluable. I have been on both sides of the job interview table and I definitely felt like I learnt more about applying for a job when I was the one doing the interviewing. It’s the same with Steiner, having someone who had ideas pitched to them had a better idea of what we should be striving for.

This was by far the greatest media undertaking I’ve ever done. So far my projects included a self produced video character study, a soundscape and a group produced music video, but even that only had four members. This time I was working with a team of four writers, and 3 other media students, not to mention the eight actors! Collaboration on such a large scale was intense, and nothing like anything I’d had to manage before, and I don’t think I did very well at it. As a group we tended to play our shooting schedule by ear and I think we definitely could have benefited from a more structured shooting schedule and more planning. As far as working together on set, I think my greatest challenge was stepping down and letting someone else call the shots. I caught myself several times taking charge when the director at the time faltered and I had to work hard to maintain the balance between offering help and advice and taking over. This was particularly hard as DOP, whereas boom operator it was easy to let myself be directed. Collaborating with so many people, it was difficult to merge all our different creative visions, especially in editing, and while there were choices made I wouldn’t have gone for it was a good exercise in working as a member of a team and in the end I enjoyed the benefits of having so many people working on a single project. There were small benefits, like always having someone on hand to get food while we kept working, and big benefits, like having two teams working to shoot two scenes at once and being able to get through so much. I would never have been able to create something on this scale by myself.

Realising the limits of what I can realistically create by myself has been a frustrating journey this semester. At the same time that I was creating the web series I scripted, filmed and edited a short video against sexual assault for the RUSU Women’s Department, and despite the scale of the two projects being vastly different I found the effort comparable. I am no longer baffled by the army of people it takes to put together professional productions, only the organisation that goes into those projects. Working from another persons script was a great experience for me, I often struggle with coming up with an idea and then realising it fully so having one presented to me was great, however it was also limiting in that I had to stick to what was given. This studio was so many firsts for me, first time working with a dialogue and plot driven project, first time filming around such a busy and constraining location, first time working under someone else on a project. I wish I had a chance to do it again, cause I know I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of them from complacency, but at least now I wont underestimate the effort that is needed for projects of this scale again, and I wont make the same mistakes going forward. It’s very likely I’ll make different mistakes, but they’ll be learning experiences as well and they’re all part of the journey.