Assessment Task Three: Self-assessment

Production Project 2 – COMM 2323

The Social Studio Documentary Group

Tutor: Christina Heristanidis

Worked successfully as a team member

Our group worked very cohesively and well together, so I found it really quite easy to work successfully as a team member within it. I think the fact that we all knew each other previously helped a lot, because we knew each other’s personalities and how to communicate properly with each other. I knew going in to this that each of us had very strong-minded personalities and so this might lead to a few clashes when it came to decision-making, but I think that once we each settled into the groove of how we worked as a team I found my role as something of a mediator between the others helped us work cohesively together. I made extra care to listen to everyone’s input, and helped act as a mediator when the other’s weren’t listening to each other too well. I also made sure that I delivered on everything that I committed to do so that we could work efficiently as a team and be able to rely on each other.

Successful time management

We began filming really early on which was a blessing in disguise for us, because we then had more time to plan subsequent interviews and editing sessions. I had a discussion with my group early into the semester about how I thought one of the best things we could do was to just be really honest with each other about our other time commitments, so that when things started to get really busy towards the end of the semester we wouldn’t get frustrated or angry with each other.  I made a point of keeping them updated and asking them what they had on throughout the semester too so that we could plan editing sessions together around times that would be convenient to us. I also made use of weekends, coming in on Sundays to edit when there more editing suites available and I had more time free. When it came to editing, I made sure that I sat down at the start of every session, watched what we’d done so far and then made a list of everything I planned to accomplish during that session. I gave these goals time flexible time limits throughout the session so that I wouldn’t get stuck obsessing over minor details, and could instead move on and keep progressing. Because the sessions were usually hours long, I also set little alarms to remind myself to take a break and eat some brain food, and then come back to the editing suite with a fresh set of eyes to keep editing with. Because we had to slot our filming in between other uni work and jobs, I made use of my time in the car on the way back from the interview by uploading the fresh footage to my laptop so that we wouldn’t have to sit at uni for an hour waiting for it to upload once we got there. I took care of most of the communication between us and The Social Studio, and I tried to manage my time doing this wisely by often composing and responding to emails from my mobile while on the train or tram.

Marketing role (role in organising screening)

I can’t really respond to this section because we haven’t yet been given any opportunities to contribute to organising the screening yet.

Good technical skills in chosen production role

For this project we didn’t actually elect specific production roles but instead chose to share in the roles of producing, filming and editing together. I found  this to be extremely beneficial because it meant that I spent the semester improving not just one of those skills, but all three. I made particular effort to work on my filming and editing skills before it came to shooting for this project, because I knew this was where I lacked. A couple of weeks before we shot the TSS parade I booked and borrowed the exact equipment we were going to be using and took it home over the weekend so that I could get really familiar with how it operated, and practices filming with it to see what worked best. I filmed a short sequence around the house with my sister, and then uploaded the content and started editing it together. To get my editing skills up to scratch I started watching lots of different Final Cut Pro how-to videos on YouTube on other sites. I found this to be extremely helpful in learning how to efficiently use the program, and this also meant that by the time it came to edit our final doco together, my technical skills were of a much better standard.

Excellent problem solving skills

We ran into a few different problems throughout the course of this project, but I found that creative thinking often helped me come up with solutions for them. The first major problem occurred when we were shooting the TSS fashion parade, and we ran out of camera card space before the show actually started. I remembered that I had brought my laptop and camera cables with my in case something like this happened, and quickly started uploading the footage to my laptop to free up space so that we could continue shooting the show. We ran into another problem on the next shoot where we’d forgotten the right audio cables for the microphone, and collaboratively came up with the solution to move the camera up close to the subject and record the audio through the camera. This in the end presented more problems when it came to editing because the sound wasn’t the greatest quality, but upon reflection we all decided the interview footage wasn’t as great as what we’d shot at the fashion parade, and so decided to focus on editing that together to music. Another problem we ran in to when coming back from the interview shoot was that none of us could stay back to log and capture the footage in the editing suites, so I simply started uploading the content to my laptop in the car to save time and so that we could keep the footage safe.

Took responsibility for role

As I mentioned above we didn’t elect separate roles, but instead shared responsibility for them all. I shared the responsibility for producing the documentary by taking control of the majority of the communication between us and the Social Studio right from the start, and also formulating questions for our interviews and then conducting them. I shared in the responsibility for filming by helping book and transport all the equipment to our shoots, shooting the footage itself and also logging and capturing it. When it came to editing, I also took responsibility in sharing this role by being present at all group editing sessions and contributing to them, coming in on my own time to edit, giving up weekends to edit the footage, and spending whole days editing 9 – 5 when it came closer to the deadline.

Assisted on another shoot or mentored a fellow student

- During the semester Maddie and I often looked to each other for support because we were both lacking in technical skills at the beginning. Throughout the semester as I learnt more about editing and Final Cut Pro from different YouTube tutorials I taught Maddie the same techniques so that she could progress with me too.

Self-assessment score: HD 93%

Dawn of the Digital: The Hunger for New Media Has Spread

The last seminar of the series was a good one. Unfortunately because it was the last one of the year not a lot of people showed up (we had the same problem with ours the week before) but this was more due to student laziness than a lack of promotion, so I gave them a D for promotion of the seminar. I thought the content was focused and relevant, and they also had a particular section focused on how to break into the industry that was very helpful so I gave them an HD for that criterion. They got a D for guest’ relevance, because although they were diverse and had different perspectives, I thought it would have been really helpful to hear a woman’s perspective on the industry. I thought Dan Monheit had a lot of great advice about starting your own business though, something that I couldn’t remember anyone else in any of the other seminars speaking about. I thought his encouragement to start a business young and to keep learning and striving for success even if you hit a few roadblocks was very inspiring. I also really identified with they way he described traditional advertising as being  largely interruptive, to digital advertising which strove to get people to actually opt in to participate instead of disturbing them. I gave the quality of the facilitation a D. Overall it went pretty smoothly, but although I liked the idea the group had had to have the guests sit on a comfy couch instead of hard stools, I think this backfired on them because they guests were so positioned low on the stage that I could not see their faces properly when they were talking from where I was sitting. I thought the #dodigital  twitter feed was well monitored (well it kind of had to be, being that it was a digital-themed seminar) and so I gave them an HD for participation, and finally I gave them an HD for promotion because I saw lots of flyers around campus and really liked the trailer that they had produced for it.

It’s Alive: Why Radio Survived the Death of Traditional Media

I thought this seminar was extremely well prepared and ran pretty smoothly. For the first criterion, ‘seminar content is focused and relevant’, I gave them a distinction. I did this because I thought the questions they asked their guests were very relevant and tailored towards finding more about how to actually get into the industry, rather than just the way it was run. I particularly liked how they asked each of the guests to share their own personal story of how they entered the industry, as it provided real life examples of how to do so rather than just general advice. I would have given them an HD but I felt that even though I enjoyed the band performance at the end, I didn’t think it was entirely relevant and felt like it was kind of tacked on at the end just for added entertainment. That said, it did make the seminar more memorable and break up the talking. For the ‘guests relevance to topic and career development’ I gave them ah HD. I liked the fact that they had four guests from very different positions at very different radio stations. I thought it was particularly great that they had May Hu from SBS there, because she provided a very interesting perspective on radio from a different culture. The guests were also at very different stages in their career and of varied ages, and I felt this helped to give a broader perspective of where a career in radio can lead. I gave the group another D for the ‘quality of the seminar facilitation’. They did have a few different sound and lighting issues that were noticeable, but I really liked the way that they had structured the seminar and talked to each guest individually before moving into the panel discussion. I awarded them a credit for audience participation, because I didn’t think there was a whole lot of this. And finally I gave them a HD for the promotion of the seminar, because I had noticed a lot of signage and marketing material online in the lead up to the seminar.

28 Minutes Later: In Television

I found this seminar enjoyable because it seemed rather well planned. I gave them a D for the content being focused and relevant, because although they covered a lot of interesting areas like how comedy translates from production to onscreen and the best ways to pitch a show, I felt there could have been more content on how to actually break into the industry in the first place. I gave the group an HD for their guests being relevant, because I thought their choice of guests was quite diverse and they all had quite different experiences and personalities but brought something different to the discussion. I did find Matthew Saville’s contributions to be particularly entertaining given his comedic streak and frank honesty. It was a shame that their one female guest pulled out at the last minute, and so the panel was all male. I gave this group a D for seminar facilitation, as I found it was put together quite well but I thought the flow of conversation was a little bit awkward at times. I did however think that the production values of the trailer they made were very high. I also liked the way they had structured it in bringing each of the guests to the stage individually to talk to them on their own before starting the panel discussion. This let us get to know the individual guests a lot better and allowed the chance for them to share important information such as their own story of how they got into the television industry. I awarded this group a D for audience inclusion, because although they did have a Twitter feed there wasn’t much other opportunity for participation. And finally I gave them an HD for the promotion of the seminar, because I saw a lot of flyers on campus as well as material online promoting the seminar, and again I was really impressed with the trailer they created for it.

Digging Up the Truth: In Documentary

Digging up the Truth: In Documentary was the most popular of the seminars, probably because of one particularly notable guest, John Safran. I gave the group an D for the seminar content being focused and relevant. I found that the fact that they had four guests instead of three meant that a broad range of diverse topics and perspectives were inevitably brought up. I found it particularly interesting when they were discussion the possibilities of interactive documentaries in the future as a result of the gradual integration of the internet in documentary story-telling. I do think they could have had a little more on how to break into the industry though. I gave them an HD for their guests being relevant to the topic, and liked how all of them had had substantial careers already and so had a lot to talk about. I appreciated the fact that they had a mixture of both females and males as well. Obviously a lot of people were there to see John Safran and he didn’t point, being both funny and informative in his contributions. I gave the seminar facilitation quality an HD, as I found it ran very smoothly and they had no problems with all the mini trailers they ran for each of the guests. Little things such as the pamphlet and flyers also looked great. I also found Andrew to be a really comfortable host and did really well to get the conversation going. The group got an HD for audience inclusion for the incorporation and actual use of the twitter feed, as well as the Q&A session at the end. And finally I gave them an HD for the promotion of the week’s seminar, because there was a lot of activity both offline and online marketing the seminar in the week leading up to it.

Filmenstein: The Director’s Cut

Being the first of the seminar series, I was really quite surprised and pleased by how well this session was run. That said, looking back on it there were also things that could have been improved upon, but this is understandable given the short time frame they had to prepare for it. I gave this group a ‘C’ for seminar content being focused and relevant, because even though I thought it was interesting the way they structured it around a ‘fake movie’, I thought there needed to be more content focused on how to actually break into the industry. I gave them an HD for their guests’ relevance to the topic and career, and I thought they did particularly well scoring Glendyn Ivin as a guest on such short notice. I’d just started watching his latest TV series Puberty Blues and had been extremely impressed by the production values and just how well it all came together, so it was awesome to be able to actually hear about the influences behind his art. I was also pretty chuffed when I tweeted him after the seminar and he tweeted me back. I thought the choice of getting a director, producer, and someone from Film Victoria was a good one as it gave a few different perspectives on the industry. I gave the group a C for seminar facility. Unfortunately this group was the one that was going to experience a lot of teething problems, and there were a few awkward setup issues like the mics not coming out of the stands, the table being too small and the light shining in the guests’ eyes. I also thought the flow was disrupted a bit when the host sometimes talked over the guests. I gave the group an D for audience inclusion, because they not only had a Q&A section but also were the first to come up with the idea of running the twitter feed. I would have given them an HD however I tweeted a couple of questions during the seminar and neither of them came up, so I’m not sure how efficient the twitter feed actually was in the end. Finally, I gave the group an HD for promotion, because I saw a lot of signage building anticipation in the lead up to it.

Media Industries II Self Assessment

I put a lot into the Evenception Seminar, because the field of event production was something that I was greatly interested in and I knew the more I put in, the more I would get out of it. My contribution was as follows:

Contribution and collaboration

There was honestly so many different stages and aspects to the production of tis event it’s almost hard to remember everything that I was involved in, but here is what comes to mind. I took leadership from the very first brainstorming class and acted as the scribe who notes down all the ideas we came up with, everything from ‘different types of events’ to ‘different roles in event production’ and ‘examples of events in Australia and internationally’. When the opportunity came up to be on a proper leadership board, I raised my hand along with Maddie and Jenny, willing and excited to take the added leadership responsibilities in co-ordinating everyone working on this event. It was not always easy to be in this position, and at times it was hard to motivate others who hadn’t invested as much in the project to work with us. We employed a number of different strategies to work productively as a group, including making sure that all brainstorming sessions were open to everyone and we asked everyone to contribute, even those who could not make it to class and gave them a deadline to contribute to the discussion online. We also made sure that all major decisions were signed off by everyone so that we could create something that everyone was proud of. While this worked some of the time, there were instances where people were just not pulling their weight, and the only thing we could do at that point was just to take on a bit of extra work ourselves and make sure the work got done. Although this was frustrating at times, in hindsight I really didn’t mind so much because I learnt a lot more by getting involved in all the different processes. Even though I initially didn’t want to host the event, I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and felt better for having done it. My contribution was quite diverse and varied but to just pick some points…I extended upon and documented the research we started in our first few sessions, I researched different guests for us to invite, I wrote the blurb for the event, I found inspiration for the design group and prompted them to start designing the different media we needed such as pamphlets, tickets, slideshows etc, I brainstormed a lot of the ideas we had for how to turn this event into ‘an event within an event’, I organised the questions for the seminar once we had collated them together and structured how they would run, I helped host the event itself, and I did not miss a single class.

Proactive learning

I put A LOT of effort into extending my own learning beyond what was happening in class. This was motivated by a number of factors: because I wanted to know more about the industry so that I could help write intelligible questions and talk to our guests at our seminar; because I wanted to research the same area for my PNR report; and because it’s an area that I am extremely interested in working in in the future. I have a notebook that I kept most of my notes in from day 1, and here is where, after we started brainstorming ideas on the first day, I went home and spent hours brainstorming some more, and researching online real life examples of festivals that fit under the categories we’d brainstormed. I’m a very goal-driven person, and so when I went home after the first couple classes  I also wrote a list titled ‘goals for this course’, which included a number of specific goals for the seminar project. I set up a Facebook group just with myself where I started researching different areas of the event production industry online. I looked at everything from the different music festivals in Australia, and the world, to the major players in the industry, to the different companies that would be recruited to do staging or catering for events, to different issues that had faced the industry over the years (ranging from deaths in mosh pits to the ever-increasing bidding wars  for talent) and every time I would find something of note, I’d post the link in this facebook group and comment on it with any thoughts I had about it. In doing this I came across a number of different online music industry publications, and I picked about 5 I thought were worthwhile keeping track of and subscribed to their updates and newsletters so that I could keep up with what was happening in the biz. I also started an internship working in the marketing department at the Big Day Out, which helped put a lot of what I was learning into real life context.

Participation

I attended every single class and group meeting, and met every deadline we had online for approving decisions to contributing to research and ideas. I was also very active in all these instances, often taking a leadership role in directing te meeting, being the scribe or prompting and nudging others into fulfilling their roles. I came to the meetings very prepared, often having done extra research since our last meeting so that I had fresh new ideas to present, and always walked away with a new ‘To Do’ list to tackle. For the actual day itself I made honey joys the night before, met early with everyone to make sure everything was on track, printed of the list of questions and went through it with Jenny my co-host, meted and greeted the guests, co-hosted the actual seminar, thanked the guests, and then helped pack up afterwards.

Connections and intersections

I think that the seminar series was really, really useful, in a lot of different ways. First of all, it allowed me the opportunity to produce an event for the first time ever, and get my hands dirty in all the different processes involved in that. It allowed me to experience the collaboration that is involved in that and to realise how much of it is team work. It allowed me to network within the event production industry, and to gain some wisdom from our great guests who shared some very useful insight with us on the day. It also allowed me to learn a lot from all the other seminars I sat in on, from radio to documentary filmmaking. I found that I work well in a leadership position within a group, but also that I don’t like being the only leader. I learnt that I get frustrated when working with people who are unmotivated, but because I’m invested in the project I’ll end up putting extra work in because I know I’ll get more out of it in the end anyway. And I also learned that I would definitely like to keep pursuing a career in the music events industry!

Grade: HD 10/10