a reflective statement

In the group project--short advertising film for Brighton Fringe Festival, I performed as a camera man after analyzing my personal abilities (the relevant courses I had taken so far in University). I had accomplished a few projects for photography, videography so I was experienced. It was more about the reason that I needed more practice opportunities of camera use. I visited a group of fringe artists in Brighton University from an art society. After conducting some short interviews with my interviewees I found it difficult to communicate efficiently as a camera man. Technically I was still weak in managing the focus as the interviewee looks at times blurry finally in Premier. It was difficult to decide what room to be used as interviewee's background as some thought my footage looks messy in the background. Lighting was hard to control as I had no idea in what location the artists would let us film. From my tutorial I leant some camera techniques such as how to professionally take a shot (to consider more for editing it is better to keep the shot static for a few seconds before moving) and how to switch shutter speed to a appropriate number while filming in the artificial lighting environment to fit in with electrical system. I picked up a editing music video's core technique that rhythm of the music should better synchronise or correpond with either the camera movement or movement of figures in the image, concretely or abstractly. Compared with other group members, I was not brilliant in public speaking so in the pitch session I only raised a few questions concerning contact issues. We had one group member specify in animation and the rest of us in charge of research, camera, editing. However there was no clarified roles distribution in my group, which caused finally the imbalance work load between members. We had no clear idea who is doing what even till the pitch time. I should have communicated more with them about the roles as it was critical for completing the project in the most efficient way. I remember discussing with them but some thought we didn't need any clear cut roles division and we should collaborate with each other in everything. I could not persuade them the specification was important but I also believed it would provide more chances for each of us to participate in different fields. Looking back I do not think it was the best approach as we ended up having one person edit the whole video and most of his footage used, which was unfair.
We proposed that we would have three visiting representatives from three age groups and follow them with camera filming them join local fringe events. We did not plan realistically and thought about if we were able to find these representatives and there would not be any events actually about fringe. We should have had an alternative plan always ready. My personal alternative approach was to make the most of artists list given by fringe office. The challenge was then to find the appropriate fringe artists who would actually do some rehearsals and preparation in March or April (The festival was always held in May). Despite we were given the contact details, it took those real artists a long time to reply to emails so we finally had to ring them individually. Some of them would not move to Brighton until they were about to perform in May so if we wished to find them we had to have budget to travel to cities like London and Manchester. Some do not usually do rehearsals. Rarely there were artists who would do much before the first delivery date. I finally only managed to contact two artists while the rest of the group seemed not to have made much effort to contact people. I was always unsure if it was only my responsibility to do networking( as it was not clarified in roles). I filmed with the Brighton uni students and a local comedian but not much of my footage were used (I will submit all my preliminary footage in the journal). We had a conflicting idea about if we should use my footage from actual artists as there would be only two of them so it can look abrupt inserted in the middle (including interviews and some of artists' producing process on a bus). They would rather use some random but vibrant footage of street artists in Brighton to meet the brief of a colorful, exciting, edgy and wacky music video (my interview clips look too formal). The reason they gave was that it was firstly only a draft and secondly audiences would not care if people in the video were artists from fringe or not. There was only need of giving a vibe about the city in May. We ended up producing a decent music video of living in Brighton but it lacks concrete content about actual fringe festival (its artists, events coverage, three visiting representatives which we promised in the pitch). My footage about the two artists were not entirely used and we only had another member's footage as he invited his friend to be in the video and filmed her wandering in the town. None of us actually participated in his filming process and I did my own filming too. We are a big group and sometimes not everyone can make it for a filming simultaneously.


The client seems to be satisfied with our final product.

I always struggled in teamwork and I had two group projects this term so I visited my tutor for Creative Documentary and she suggested that I always actively do some research, plans and present my group members with them whenever a project was started. The secret to persuade others successfully is to show others you are organized and always possess evidence to show about your proposal so you can transform the group work into personal effort. In the industry after receiving project brief it is critical to raise as many questions about its form and content and do more research about the topic. It proves that we could have tried some other approaches such as animation-based video with which we do not have to worry about artists availability while providing the festival's vibe.