Throughout my experience in this media program, I’ve set myself up for failure when it comes to collaborative group work because it’s never a thing I’ve enjoyed doing in the past, but I’m quite surprised at how well it’s worked for me in past studios. Obviously collaboration is a massive part of media and film, so to me the most important thing is to have an open mind about different ideas from different people and let things roll out rather than cut them when they first stem. Especially in this studio, where ideas are really important in our current process, collaboration can really be a hidden gem when trying to flesh out an idea. “I always find that if two (or more) of us throw ideas backwards and forwards I get to more interesting and original places than I could have ever have gotten to on my own”. This quote by John Cleese became apparent to me in a collaboration task in week 2. We watched a short film titled J’Attendrai Le Suivant (I’ll Wait for the Next One) and were prompted to discuss how we think this short film could be the beginning of a feature film. It’s always quite difficult to start this discussion off, because there are so many different ways you could take it. A good place to start for us, was deciding on who the protagonist of the story was going to be and we chose the main female of the short. We threw out ideas and tried to see which one stuck. We had a few ideas that revolved around terminal illness, the afterlife and even a bit of a comedy.

Group flow is important to the overall dynamic, each member have to be open and willing to submit and accept ideas. There is this magical chemistry that is created through collaboration. This flow generates movement from one idea to the next. Because it seemed to be quite a simple task, I think the ideas were easy to spit out. Had this been a more difficult task, I think this really would have tested us both as a group and individually. There needs to be a balance where the task is attainable but challenging enough for the members of the group to push themselves.

The group dynamic we had worked really well, because we supported each others ideas and added our own spin to them and tried to see how far we could develop them. Feedback is really important in this group environment, it helps keep things on track. In a exercise like this one, where people are sharing ideas, work needs to be recognised, otherwise members of the group with become discouraged from sharing further ideas.  Even though we didn’t have a concrete idea to present to the class at the end of it, just a few different ideas, I still think this was a really great exercise to get us into the concept of collaborating.  

References:

Cleese, J. (1991). A Lecture on Creativity. Available at: https://vimeo.com/18913413 27:20mins.

J’attendrai le suivant. (2002). [film] France: Philippe Orreindy.