Overall Progress

This has been a very hard project towork on, not because the target was particularly hard to achieve, but because of the problems encountered along the way.

When I first learnt about this project, Alex and I were put in charge of meetings and job roles etc, however this was quite difficult due to some people wanting to do everything, and others not doing what they wanted because other people said it louder. This was a problem but we got passed it easy enough and moved on. We also had problems deciding on a theme, and even a name for the show, the characters, everything.

There was an awful lot of friction going on within the group when we first started, and we didn't get much done at any point. We then split into two groups, and it started to go a bit smoother. Our group spent a lot of time planning and organizing ourselves so we could do everything, while the other group grabbed a camera and went to film. I think this shows how different certain people in our class can be. Many of us just want to go out and film, whereas the rest of us are quite happy to plan and prepare so when we do get to go and film we know what we need to do.

While i believe we worked better when split into two groups, i couldn't help but notice that one or two people in our group seemed to be doing a lot more work than other people in our group, which got very annoying after a while when someone is sitting around doing nothing and you're working on piles on work, however we got it all done, and nobody really argued about it. I noticed that several of us ended up taking on far more than one job. For example, i was doing camera work, however i also ended up taking charge of costumes, budgeting, helping with marketing and being the production assistant. I also booked the room and the teacher so we had somewhere to film and an actual teacher to be in it, and i drew half of the stroyboard.

Once we had got a script, and a shotlist, we decided to storyboard and show. This was alright, as we just had to decide what shots we wanted and how we wanted them to look, but in the end wasn't stuck to as well as it could have been. We had some more problems when everyone got really annoyed with Mike for leaving with all the contact details of our actors, however it was talked through when he got back and we all calmed down and got back to work. He upset one or two people with some of his blog posts, but ultimately, they're there for your opinions so we can't complain.

Once we got to filming, i thought it worked quite well. Granted, we didn't stick perfectly to the shot list, and the storyboard was ignored a little bit, but we got the footage we needed and it worked quite well. I think Matt L said he didn't like the "That'll do" attitude i had towards some of the shots, and i totally agree with him, i don't like the phrase "That'll do", especially not when filming, however as we were filming after school, and one of our teachers had to stay behind - AND we were quickly running out of time, i decided we didn't really have time to re-do every shot as many times as i would have liked. Hopefully, when it comes to filming the next episode, we will plan it slightly better and try to stick to the storyboard so we can get the shots better first time.

After filming the first episode, we decided to change director so Dave was doing it. Almost as soon as we did this, some of us saw it as a mistake. When Dave got some control, he abused it and ignored us. This caused problems because when we said we're filming at lunch tomorrow and e-mailed the cast, he then decided we hadn't told him despite all of us informing him. He then sent the cast some very inappropriate e-mails calling saying Mike's script was "shockingly painful to read" which is really unfair. This upset several members of the crew, who then realized that Dave was just being a jerk to everyone and it was barely worth working with him. He then decided not to allow anyone on the set, as last time - despite him not being there - decided the set was too busy so we didn't need to be there.

Despite me being the cameraman, i wasn't allowed to be on set because i said i didn't want to film the second episode because i tried my best and people just sat around bitching. However after talking it through with some others, i agreed i would film it, but Dave again wasn't listening so didn't realize this. We got to school the next day and had a big BIG discussion about what we were going to do and how we were going to sort these problems, and after everyone calmed down and said what they wanted to say, we all got on a lot better.

As a director, Dave started to listen to what people were saying, and as we could move the laptops and tables around at Long Road, it was easier to work in one big group as opposed to being split up around the room at Coleridge. I think that despite several rough patches and one or two days when i could barely bring myself into school as i couldn't stand the project anymore, once we started talking again as a group instead of in small groups within the team, things really got going and i have quite high hopes for the future of this project. If everyone talks to one another when we are making decisions about filming and times and stuff, i think we can work incredibly well together, like we proved in the final few days of getting the first episode complete.