Individual Analysis... Back >>>
My roles for documentary are D.O.P, promotions and editing. I am happy with my roles as so far I haven’t had much opportunity to be in control of the camera. I’m also quite creative and I think I have an eye for the best shots and angles when it comes to filming. I also chose promotions, as this is another creative role that will play to my strengths, editing is another creative role that I am pleased I have been given. So far I haven’t had too much to do within my roles (apart from promotion) but when we start filming our documentary I hope that my creativity will show through and the group will be pleased with what I produce.
The first thing that we went through as a group was choosing a production name. I do feel that it wasn’t entirely a group agreement on the name Rugulent, I for one opposed to it, unless it was pronounced ‘roo-gew-lent’. I contributed a whole list of words and names that we could use and mix up but I feel that they weren’t considered. I eventually agreed to the name as at the end of the day it’s the work that is the most important, not the name. Eventually the name grew on me, and I will admit that it is individual and unique.
As a group we started planning our own three documentary ideas so that as a group we could choose a main idea. My ideas were: stickler’s syndrome, size 0 and being unemployed. My favourite idea of mine was the size 0; my idea was that, as the media and many young girls are obsessed with the idea of being size 0, that I would attempt to become size 0. I have attempted this before for a documentary I made when I was at college, however it wasn’t how I imagined, partly because of my age (I was then under 18) I wasn’t allowed to fully get into the diets and fasting because of my parents worries of health risks. Now I am an adult, I would like to redo this, as I feel it has the potential to be really interesting. However, it was pointed out I could do this for a FYP; I think I will do this for my FYP as it gives me some more freedom.
Our favourite idea as a group was one of Louise’s. One of her ideas was to make a documentary on Bob Gibbins, a man who has over 250 love dolls in his house, it would have been really interesting to meet him and find out more about him and why he collects so many love dolls. Unfortunately, he lives in a very secluded area that is not reached by public transport, because none of us can drive; we had to scrap the idea.
We then moved on to our second main idea, we chose Graeme’s idea (A Dogs World) – focused on dog shows as we felt it was one of the ideas that we could get the most from. I, being the editor, thought it would be awesome to have a shock turning point in the middle of the documentary. The beginning would show all of the pros of dog shows and then in the middle it would turn to the cons of dog shows, I thought this was an interesting idea because most documentaries focus on one or the other, therefore being biased. I thought it would be interesting to let the audience decide for themselves, if we showed both sides that would allow that. I did post on our Facebook page a rough timeline that I drew up to explain my idea. The group seemed keen and we decided to go through with it. However, because of our pitch and trailer not showing what we actually intended to do, we ended misrepresenting our own idea. This disappointed me as now we are just going to focus on one or the other; I am frustrated because I think if we did it right it could have been amazing and interesting.
After having some issues in my home and personal life, I slipped into a depression (an illness I have suffered with from an early age) because of this I began to slack in my work for the group. I feel this was a major issue as I didn’t initially tell anyone what the problem was. Due to lack of communication on my part, I annoyed people in my group as they didn’t know why I wasn’t keeping up with the work. When I told the group what was happening they all understood. Eventually Jess had to pick up on most of my promotions work as we wanted to get it up on the site as soon as possible, we have decided that I will be given the reigns back and can redo everything for the next semester. I do feel that I have since taken a more active role on Documentary.
I will be the first to admit that I have had a time-keeping issue with giving in work to put on the website, and this is not acceptable. Jess and I have agreed that it will be the main thing that we will need to work on for the next semester.
Our main issues as a group were time-keeping and communication. Whenever we had meetings, it was rare that we were all there. Sometimes people were late, sometimes people had work commitments and sometimes people just didn’t show up. I have suggested for next semester that we each write down our timetable (and for those that have work, their rota) so that meetings can be made for when everyone is free, this means that there should be no excuse for missing a meeting.
Communication was a huge problem for us; Facebook was being used in place of meetings, and to post every thought, idea or suggestion. I feel that this can work with lists of things to do and such, but a lot of group members would assume that stuff they post on Facebook would be seen by everyone. I also think the thing the group needs most is face to face interaction.
Another thing I would like for us to change in the future is the place for the meetings, a lot of the time we have tried to have meetings in the MMC. I feel this is not the right environment for a group to have a detailed discussion about anything, let alone uni work. There are lots of people there, it’s very distracting and people often trailed off and went on the macs during meetings. I have suggested that we have meetings in study rooms in the library (one computer to look at website, table and chairs for face to face discussion, quiet and no distractions) this was initially ignored but we have since discussed this and agreed that the MMC is not the best place to have meetings.
When we had to pitch our documentary idea, it became obvious to not only us, but the rest of our class that we needed to change and weren’t working together. We had left everything to do to the last minute, naturally as a consequence we suffered and it was awful and extremely embarrassing for us all. We hadn’t rehearsed as a group (just individually) and because of this people went over their time slots. I personally felt that Jess and I had each other’s slides, my role is promotions, and although she had made the t-shirt and started the social network sites, I was the one who was left with the slide with the legal details and Ofcom rules, I feel this slide would have been better suited to a producer, as I struggled with what I needed to say and I wasn’t confident with my speech.
After our pitch completely fell apart, we realised and were told by Karin, that we really needed to sort things out otherwise we just wouldn’t work. It was a massive reality check. We left the class and had a long discussion where we got everything off our chest. Although at times it got heated; it was definitely for the best as it cleared the air between everyone. This was definitely a learning curve for all of us, myself especially, as I’m not used to being in a group with such strong personalities. We made it clear that no one can point fingers, no one can take all the blame and nobody can rest on their laurels. We all have our flaws, in our discussion we confessed to them all and as a group we came up with solutions for everyone. For myself I admitted that I had been taken aback by the workload for the website and kept pushing it back and back until eventually I had to rush it, this is obviously not ideal, and not fair for the group. Jess, being producer, said that she would be making schedules and action plans for us with our own deadlines for each piece. I feel this would be for the best (especially for me) as if I can split up the workload into doable sections, I can get everything done on time and as my work wouldn’t be rushed, it would be to the best of my ability. Having our work done in advance also means that we can go back and edit and improve our work.
A final agreement made by the entire group was that we have to meet up on a non-work basis, all the time we had spent together so far had been in uni on a strictly work sense. We all got on at the start when things were relaxed but later on in the semester we became stressed out and frustrated with each other and the work, taking out our issues on each other. I believe that it is because of lack of inter-group socialization that we have never bonded as a group. I’ve never thought that this would be an issue before, but I think that all our problems stemmed from the fact that we weren’t always comfortable with each other to say what we want, it would create a better working atmosphere and better working relationships if we all got together and hung out informally as friends.
We have arranged a meet-up when university is finished for the holidays, we have also decided to go to Jess’s and have planned some non-university related work that we can do over Christmas, this will help us get to feel comfortable with working with each other, and we also can see what our strengths and weaknesses are during filming, this is good practice for our documentary as well.
Now that we have all cleared the air, we have started to function much better as a group and the next semester looks a lot brighter for us all now that we know and are confident that we can work things out for the better.
Whereas I was unsure of how things would pan out at the beginning, I am now much more positive about the future of Rugulent Productions and I am looking forward to filming our documentary and I am sure that the future will stay bright.
