The concept that our group had settled on was Natalie's, about two teens going through social anxiety and struggling with the pressures of college while building their social strength. The script was not our first choice, as we initially decided upon Courtney's script. However, after several scheduling conflicts and going through mass amounts of props and planning, we realized that this concept would be near impossible to complete with decent quality in our amount of time. Natalie's script worked in that it mostly dealt with characters' relationships, and did not need multiple locations or actors.
Pre-production started with assigning each other our roles. Courtney's official role was director, Makenna's role was production designer, Greyson's role was director of photography, Natalie's role was costume and art designer, I was assigned editor, and Wes's role was documentarian. We skipped over drawing storyboards, as we had to film short notice. Courtney then arranged the casting and we came together with a schedule. Due to our very short time frame of less than a week, several of us were not able to show up for filming, including me due to a college visit and night classes at JCCC. Filming went smoothly although regrettably we did not capture fantastic audio due to a lack of equipment. The editing process went by in two days, with Natalie mainly taking over due to her holding the complete vision, and Courtney doing color correction. I regret not having more influence during this portion, and although I did offer multiple times to help Natalie, I should have given more direction over the process.
In terms of project management, I feel that we did a very great job in that even though we were stretched, we still got our project finished on time. Collaboration is something that our whole group could have worked on better, because the distribution of jobs was not equal. I wish I had taken more leadership over the project, as I felt I could really help push it along and give it more life, although it is not bad as it is. Since I did not have a direct hand on things, I didn't really utilize any technical skills. Communication was fine how it was though, as we all knew what everyone was doing, we were all aware of film dates, and everyone overmatched the editing process.
I slightly wish I had another chance to tackle the project so that we weren't pressured and that we could really settle on a concept to invigorated everyone, and that all of us we able to contribute. However, I would rather move forward and begin our work on the feature film. I certainly will contribute more to that project, as we will definitely need a sound guy.
