As the final post-production meeting wraps up, it's hard not to look back on what has been a fruitful and productive content producer assignment. Not only were we given the freedom to decide our project, we were given the chance to show our skills through different media platforms.
With our assignment asking us 'to develop and produce a conceptually and technically sophisticated creative media production project exploring the theme of 'my tribe', with reference to convergence culture theory', the group of me, Stevie Day and Michelle Wong brainstormed on the media platform that we wanted to showcase our project on. We discovered that each of us was skilled in a certain area: Stevie was good with the camera, Michelle knew how to operate audio well and I liked photography. We then decided to combine the 3 together into some sort of a 'tri-media' platform that would fully utilize all 3 of these.
The next issue was agreeing on a 'tribe' that was unique. This was an extremely tough decision to make as we listed down a whole lot of tribes that were all equally appealing. In the end, we decided to focus on the tribe of car enthusiasts/street racers. The main reason was because of how topic had an 'illegal' and 'dangerous' and 'exciting' feel to it; something that people would love to see without hesitation. Furthermore, street racing cars was a hot topic that was much discussed on online forums.
Now was the hard part: finding willing participants to be part of the project.
Stevie initially had contacts, but we were to find out that these contacts were not the ones we were looking for. We were behind schedule. However, we managed to get things back on track when Stevie successfully got people from an online car forum to participate in our project.
Production day came. As we kind of expected, some people pulled out at the last minute but we still managed to get 2 participants through Stevie's contacts. Despite facing a setback halfway through filming, we had still managed to get a good range of camera shots and photos and audio recorded interviews. At the end of the production, we felt that we had enough quality work to produce our showpiece.
Post production was split between the 3 of us. Stevie would capture and edit the video, Michelle was to refine the audio recordings and I was to beautify the photos that I shot. We also set up a tumblr website to host everything that we had done. Over the final few weeks of the semester, we re-edited and re-tuned to the best of our ability.
Our final product: http://pp1.tumblr.com
Reflecting on the project as a whole, there were definitely some positives and negatives.
The positives: The group was efficient and co-operative throughout the project, helping out one another and making sure that everything we did was of substantial work. We contributed evenly and we attended every meeting. Production day went really well with no major hiccups and technical faults.
The negatives: Perharps we should been have more pro-active and not procrastinated much and leave things to the last minute. We should have started contacting participants the moment we decided on the 'tribe' that we wanted to focus on. Instead, we nearly gave ourselves a huge scare and were fortunate to escape with it. We could and should have pushed each other a little bit more to keep things on track.
What I can take from this project: I can take this project as a way of looking back on how my photography skills can be improved. There were certain shots that I had wanted to achieve during the production shoot but I was unable to attain it.
But the most important lesson I can take away from this is the 'tribe' that we focused on. Initially, I had thought that these people lived their lives dangerously and aimlessly, spending huge amounts of money on a car that would inevitably wear and tear. But I was glad that I was proven wrong. I learnt from their passion that everyone is different. To truely accept people is to see from their point of view and understand they live in and come from. Through this 'my tribe' theme of the project, I have come to learn that all tribes are unique and special in their own way.
If I were to grade the project, I would give it a D.
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