Group Meeting

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Today, Monday 3/4/24, we did a special activity in our class. We did group meetings! So, I will be dedicating this blog to the explanation of how my group meeting went with my groupmates and what I have learned or plan to change in my own project.

Background:

        Group meetings during the duration of projects are vital for several reasons. The main purpose is for the members of the group to share their ideas, progress, challenges, and future plans that they have encountered or plan on executing. Group meetings can also provide opportunities for other group members to offer their support, feedback, and advice that can help improve the outcome of the projects and allow the creator to see distinct ideas from different perspectives. Overall, group meetings are a great way to enlarge the ideas and minimize the problems that appear throughout the production of the project.

Overview:

        The first thing I noticed was how many people picked documentaries. There was only one person in my group that wasn't doing a documentary, instead was doing a short film. The fact that there were so many people making documentaries helped me gain a better idea of knowledge about my topic. 

        To be honest, I learned something that I didn't know before that could have made my project a 0. Before the meeting, I honestly did not know that our documentaries were not able to use archived footage at all. This meant that all of my footage had to be from the time we started creating the project until the end of the project, not including any time before. Although my teacher probably mentioned this, I think I either forgot it or lost it in my notes, but I won't forget it again. Overall, the documentaries could help me understand more about my project on the same level instead of my groupmates talking about a genre/type of project they did not fully understand.

        Listening to other people's project ideas, specifically the other documentaries, helped me see and understand other perspectives. This also helped me see different topics that held distinct methods in the different necessities of documentaries. For example, depending on the topic or the subjects they were focused on, the interviews, b-roll, and content changed throughout the different topics. 

        After I expressed my idea, how I planned to execute it, and what I have done so far in my process, I told my groupmates the main challenge that I think I will face. Although truly I believe it will be my interviews, I wasn't really right to talk about them too much since I just recently sent out some emails to companies and haven't gotten too far into the process. Instead of that, I focused on my second biggest challenge (in my opinion): B-roll. I was nervous about B-roll filming as I recently decided to focus all of my content and documentary on dogs and I don't have many friends with dogs. After mentioning my concern, my teammates helped me through some ideas listed below.

        Although it seems like a very straight-up and easy-to-think-of idea, I only actually thought of the idea of a dog park once they suggested it. My teammates helped me decide that it would be easiest to film B-roll (apart from any at the interviewing locations) by going to a dog park or going on a walk around my neighborhood and waiting for anyone who may have a dog that I could ask for consent to film for a couple of seconds. This could also cause a very natural sense of playfulness in the animal instead of anything too staged. Even though I don't want my B-roll to be too staged, I do plan on asking my friends to film certain sections of B-roll where I ask their pets to do tricks or do something specific that I want to show. 

        My teammates also mainly said that if I'm ever stuck on B-roll, I should try my best to film some depending on what the questions or interviewees are saying at the same time. This could help me further match the visual and auditory features even more that could connect my piece and make the filming, usage, and execution of the B-roll process far easier for me.

Lastly, my teammates provided me with one more idea that I could ask to film for the B-roll. Even though it is highly likely that I will not be able to film this at all, it will be very cool if I ask and they allow me: the inside of a k9 training car. One of my groupmates suggested this idea to show the equipment and training supplies used on the animals that could also relate to how the dogs are applied in the actual field. I've never seen anything like this; however, there's never any harm in trying.

-Dana