Why I chose this role:
My main role for this project was as director. I volunteered for this role because I love organising and leading a team. I love seeing how other people work and the amazing things they produce. It’s always a challenge to lead a team too as everyone works differently, but as a director, it’s your job to encourage a group to all come together and work well as a team.
In the future, I would love to work as a director in film or as a Production Designer. These roles are very difficult to achieve because they’re extremely competitive and involve a lot of hard work. Personally, I enjoy the stress of work especially when the hard work and stress pays off in the end. I have always been a competitive person, and a perfectionist, so it definitely helps with motivation.
My plan as Director:
As director of this project, my aim is to organise the group in a way that everyone will always have work to do and that everyone will be happy and know what they’re meant to be doing and when. The way I plan to do this is to give the team specific dates for their work to be completed by, so the group can stay on track and so everyone has time to catch up on their own personal projects and to spend time on their personal blogs.
THE FINAL PITCH PRESENTATION
My main role as director was to collect everyones work and put it into a group pitch presentation. This was so we were able to present our work clear and effectively and so we could see our work altogether as a collaboration piece. Every week I would ask the group to upload their work onto our shared drive. I would then organise the work in an order that made sense when presenting, and so it flowed nicely. I would also add any annotations onto the pitch as prompts during the presentation, but also so the pitch can be understood without us talking through it.
Our group rehearsed our presentation the day before the pitch, and an hour before. This was to ensure everyone was confident in what they were going to say, and to make note of any last minute changes. Laura and I had to talk through the first half of the pitch as it covered the VR plan, storyline, concept storyboards and environments which we did the work for. We had to try to speed through our section quite a lot, so Costume had a chance to talk through their part! To help us with this, as we went through our first rehearsal, I typed up a presentation script for me and Laura, outlining what we were going to said and who had what page. I then sent this to Laura and she edited it to suit how she wanted to say it.
The Presentation was in the format of a Pitch Bible. I found these are seen mostly in animation, particularly cartoons, as a way to present to potential producers an idea for a new show or film. It tends to include a run down of the plot, characters, locations and episode/sequel ideas for its franchise potential. Luckily I already had a template of a pitch bible I made last year for PAFS1 Stop-Motion Animation Project, where I had the same roles as this project. Again, due to covid, we were unable to actually make our Stop-Motion film so we had to present it as a Pitch Bible. I took the InDesign document for the old pitch, and reformatted it to fit all of our work for The Song Lyrics Project.
The Final Pitch Presentation
PAFS1 UNIT 4: Stop Motion Animation Pitch Bible Reference
Documents Handed out to the Group over the Project:
I tried to utilise making word documents to help the group stay on track with the project. These documents would usually be sent out to the group after they had been updated, or put onto the groups shared drive.
Documents and their descriptions:
Schedule:
The schedule showed a breakdown of what would happen/had happened for each week of the project. As a week was completed, I would update the document and mark it as being “Completed”, so it was easy for the group to keep track with what they had done and what need to be done for the upcoming weeks. This Schedule was organised with a key. Departments were written in italics, and the due date was written in bold, to make it easier and faster to read.
Department Checklist:
I tried to get the Department checklist handed out in Week 1 when we all knew what roles we had and what work was required. I updated the list over the weeks, but I stopped updating it after Week 3, this way the group knew well in advance what work needed to be completed by the end of the project. The group had access to this document (like all other documents) and were able to colour code what work they had completed and what work they were on track to completing. The Department checklist also has a note of who had which role.
Meeting Schedule:
This was one of the most useful documents for me as it was easy to look back and see what we had covered in previous meetings, and what we needed to cover in future meetings.
Roles and Requirements:
I completed this document before we decided our roles. During our first group meeting we discussed what each role entails and how many people we could have per role. I then made a sign up spreadsheet where everyone could write their name under what roles they were interested in, based on the role descriptions. The list of roles were as follows…
– Director
– Storyboard Artist
– Assistant Storyboard Artist
– Set Designer
– Prop Designer
– Head of Costume
– Costume Designer
Final Group Story Ideas:
I made this document during our group meeting where everyone shared their pitch ideas. I thought it would be useful to make notes of it as everyone had wonderful ideas and it would be nice to look back once the project was completed to check we got everyone’s ideas in somehow. This document was particularly helpful to Laura and I when we were writing the Storyline, but also for me when I was making the Final Pitch.
Previous Story Drafts:
Laura and I ended up writing 4 other drafts of our story before reaching out final one. This was because every time we finished a version, we would send it to the group for feedback to check they were happy and to see if they had any other ideas they wanted to include. I made a document with all of our previous drafts so we could see our progress and also in case we wanted to revisit any previous ideas.
Project Proposal:
The Project was a requirement for the brief and the same one I sent to Kevin in Week One. Our Project Proposal didn’t change at we stuck to it pretty well. The only thing we didn’t confirm on our project proposal was our final storyline, however, we had this written up by the following week. Upon sending the Project Proposal the first time, my email didn’t send and so I had to re-send it at the start of week 2. Regardless, this document was also accessible to the group in case they needed to refer back to any information on what we aimed to produce.
Group Plan – First Meeting:
Our group Plan was our first document for our group. I made this document from any notes I made in our first meeting, which contained our initial idea of what we wanted to produce for the project, a task for everyone to create an idea for a story, and a list of the roles so we could each decide what role we wanted by the following day.
Roles in the Group
As there were only five of us, a lot of us had more than one role. Initially Oldile and Yuxin had the Role of Costume Designers and Assistant Storyboard Artists. As the project went on, we realised we didn’t need as many storyboards as we thought and the two main Storyboard Artists were able to cover it. Odile and Yuxin also ended up having more work than originally planned as they had to design costumes as well as characters, making their role in the end Costume and Character Designers.
Hannah had the role of being Head of Costume and Assistant Director. She volunteered to be Head of Costume as she’s had previous experience leading a design team before so she had a good idea of how to manage her department. It was very helpful having a Head of Costume as it was easier to check the progress of the work from a costume students perspective. As I haven’t had any experience in costume work, Hannah would advise me on the best way to present the Costume designers work, and would feed back any information or last minute updates to the costume department. Hannah would also set up separate meetings with costume, as they had a big load of work to manage amongst themselves. Overall it was extremely helpful having a Head of Department, especially because there was so much Costume work and was the biggest department.
Communicating with the Group
Group communication was done mostly over Facebook messenger to organise meetings, to discuss some work and to send any updates on availability or changes to any documents. Any meetings were done via teams. We also had a shared Drive that I set up, so everyone could upload their work, but also see what work the rest of the group was doing.
Group Meetings:
Before or after every tutorial with Kevin, we had a Group meeting. This was to check everyone was clear and happy with what work they needed to do, and any new ideas they might have.
I found that on occasions where we were unable to meet before a tutorial, we did not feel as prepared than the times we did meet before. However, every group member attended every meeting, and everyone was extremely productive with replying and communicating what days they had other lectures or whether time zones were an issue.
Our group meetings would also be held before 4pm, this is because Yuxin is in China at the moment, so 4pm here is 12pm in China. Yuxin was always so understanding if we ever had to push meetings back due to other lectures filling up the day, and always sent work on time despite the time difference.
Odile and Hannah also had a lot of other lectures which meant we had to schedule our meetings around those times too. The group was always great with that, and would always be very happy to adapt.
Overall I was so happy with how the group dealt with meetings, everyone was always on time and would always say well in advance if they couldn’t make it.
Facebook Messenger:
We set up our first conversation via facebook messenger as it was easy to put a name to a face, as some of us had seen eachother around uni before. When it came to making our group chat, we ran into the issue where we added the wrong Yuxin Lin. We didn’t realise that Yuxins Facebook name was Jennifer Lin, so I accidentally added a third year student with the same name. Luckily Odile had a friend that knew Yuxin and had her on Facebook, so we added the right person in the end! Despite that, Facebook has been very useful in communicating with the group.
Shared One Drive Folder:
I set up this folder for a few different reasons.
Firstly, it was a quick way for all group members to upload their work over the 5 weeks of the project. It would also allow them to have extra storage space should they need it.
Secondly, having everyone’s work together in a shared drive meant that I could download work easily when I needed it for the Final Pitch. Over the weeks I would ask everyone to try to have their work uploaded by then end of each week, so I can add it to the final pitch presentation through the project. I organised each folder into departments, and made a folder for each person, they could then organise their folders in a way that would be helpful to them.
Thirdly, having a shared folder allowed everyone to look at eachothers work. This was to check consistency of our style and concept. As this was a collaboration project, we felt it was important to maintain a sense of concept, and checking everyone was on board and were working to the same style was very important. Also, it was nice to look at eachothers work so we felt closer as a team!
Reflection
Reflecting on this project from the perspective of a Directors role, I think the project went very well. I found everyone was great to work with and I really enjoyed seeing the amazing work they produced. All members of the group were brilliant with communicating their availability and were not afraid to voice their opinions on their ideas or any concerns. I tried to be very positive throughout the project, and kept reminding everyone to take it easy, as times are very tough at the moment and everyone has their own things going on. Despite this, everyone still managed to produce a huge amount of work and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the project.
Regarding any issues over the project, they were very few on my end.
I was told a few times there was some conflicting ideas in the costume department, but everyone was great in resolving them. Hannah and Odile had to create designs for the “Freaks”, but as a slightly different variation. Both of them had different ideas on how this should look, so Hannah thought it was best for Laura and I to sit in on one of the Costume Department Meetings, to check everyone was on following the same concept and that the designs fit in with the Environments we had created. I ensured during the meeting that Hannah and Odile were happy with the decisions made, and the both of them managed to achieve a style they were both happy with.
Another unfortunate event that happened was when Laura tested positive for Covid. Laura and I knew eachother from first year PAFS, but were never that close. During this project I know Laura was going through a lot so I tried to be there for her as much as I could and to take on any work load she felt she couldn’t manage. It was a bit overwhelming at times but I was more concerned about how she was feeling. Despite all she had going on she did so well and it was great working with her.