Thursday’s presentation was essentially an overview and narrative of our experiences in our group – the challenges, the successes and everything in between. It also provided the chance to showcase our creations to the rest of the class.

The following are the slides for our presentation. I acknowledge that some of them won’t make sense without the context of what we were saying, so I will explain briefly what each group member was exploring below:

Sarah began by providing an overview of our previous presentation to refresh everyone’s memory of our objectives. She also outlined our subsequent pre-production preparation and the allocation of crew roles.

Bonnie took over to explain the reason behind our new film name ‘Black Flat’ whilst showcasing our ‘official’ film poster. She then when into detail about how our shoot played out in relation to scheduling and time, film techniques and coping with the nature of a public, outdoor environment.

Sarah chimed in again with her experience as sound operator –recording ambient sounds, managing the sound pickup of our cast, the challenges of disruptive sounds ie. wind and water, and so on.

Alex then talked about the relationship between script editing and directing, and what she had learned through her participation across these two roles. Whilst Alex was speaking, we played scene one of Black Flat on mute in the background as unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to show the whole thing.

I was up next and explained how Jackson and I tackled editing process, specifically in relation to the structure and organisation of shots, continuity and audio editing and layering (see previous blog post for my full spoken piece). We then screened scene two of our film, Emily’s exchange with creepy Ted, which seemed to be really well received by the audience

Jackson concluded our presentation by talking about the score he wrote and produced for our film. Inspired by the original Teddy’s Bear Picnic, Jackson reimagined the track into a really dark, eerie version that fitted our footage seamlessly.

Overall, I think our presentation went really well as we provided an in-depth insight into Squadron’s last six weeks of working together. We made sure that we covered all of bases of the production process to give listeners a well-rounded understanding of our work, including pre-production, shooting, sound recording, editing and sound design. It was unfortunate that we were unable to screen both scenes due to time limitations, but we made the best of the time available by enabling each person a considerable length of time to speak, whilst still being able to screen the full version of scene two. Despite the thrilling nature of our work, I think we did a good job of keeping the presentation light and entertaining, as this is what audiences tend to appreciate the most.

It was interesting to see how everyone else’s production journeys had progressed through listening to other groups’ presentations. While some stuck closely to their original intentions, others took quite a different turn to what they had originally set out to do. It was reassuring to find out that we were not the only ones who encountered a few complications and setbacks, but nonetheless, all groups were able to take something away from the experience that will ultimately guide their approach to future filmic endeavours.

I think we all deserve a pat on the back for what we were able to achieve this semester. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride to say the least, but at the end of the day we’ve managed to pull through and produce some great content.