My group created the short film “Roach Resilience” through major teamwork. Initially when brainstorming ideas we each provided concepts and we spent time developing each idea further for each other. We pitched all three concepts to our supervising teachers and one option was chosen to move forward with. Then began a lot of writing. Daina worked on storyboarding while I researched images and created a moodboard. Emily T created a shared google doc and we started writing our treatment description, shot list, and organized our plans. Daina took screenshots from previous Survivor trailers to guide our storytelling and help us develop a feel for common reality tv tropes. I looked into challenges participants of Survivor have faced in the past and came up with ideas to adapt them for the setting and context of our film. Emily helped synthesize our ideas into our planning document.
At our next meeting we spent half of our day writing a script, finalizing our shot list, training AI on Owen Wilson’s voice, crafting tiny set and prop pieces, and shooting a few scenes. Together we brought in materials we thought would be helpful – Emily T providing the very important plastic cockroaches. We all worked together on writing and editing the script and finalizing the shot list. While Emily and Daina started working on crafting I worked on training AI. We all listened to the sound clips to approve of the clips we would end up using. Finally we all crafted various pieces and worked together to manipulate and puppeteer the cockroaches for filming our first few scenes.
Our third meeting was a filming day. We all worked together to set up each scene. Puppeteer, decorate, and suggest any changes to our filming techniques.
From there we split up the remaining computer work. Daina worked on after effects to create animated visuals and text we would need throughout the video. Emily T worked on editing the film footage, and I worked on recording and editing the sound.
On our final Friday together we worked on adding the elements together and finalizing everything that was due. We problem solved together when we couldn’t figure out how to combine our audio footage with sound tracks.
All in all, the whole project was a major group effort. What worked well was clearly defining each person’s roles and responsibilities, working with each of our strengths and skills.