As of February 28th, the filming / editing / everything isn’t nearly completed for the MacBeth WW2 video. We have worked so many hours after school and in school but we still have so much more to go. This project has taught me a lot. I have learned that the biggest of messes of situations can lead to good times and great project creating. I have never done anything like this, a 30 person project is the same as a train that has no breaks or windows, it is going to crash and burn. This project has really expanded my mind as well, I have learned how to deal with not being in control and letting someone else take control and leadership. Stanfield and his militaristic leadership of this group is wild, he’s taking control like I haven’t seen from another student. I normally want to take control of everything and lead my group forward to a certain degree. This change in leadership involves a lot of trust and teamwork that has built my team working and cooperation skills up greatly that were haven’t been tested toughly in a while. This project is also teaching me about how everyones role is very critical, if one person is slaking everyone feels it and progress is halted and it really sucks. This makes me take my work even more serious and want to work even harder and more efficiently. This project group is like a poorly oiled machine that is some how still rolling along. But if one cog in the greater scheme of things shuts down it is a total backup of work. I have also learned about how enjoying your work really makes school less miserable. I really love filmmaking and being the head camera guy or in fancy words ‘Director of Photography’ has made me not dread going to film and actually kind of looking forward to it. I get giddy and excited when I hold the camera rig up and know that I will be able to improve my skills in film making. when it comes to what the group has to work on its efficiency, we need to be more efficient with our time and materials. This mean better communication and better understanding across the class. I have no clue why we take 4 hours to film 2 scenes. Its honestly brutal how slow we can be. Its not like we have any fun or find enjoyment wasting our weekends away in the bush… or do we.

The days we worked on the project went like this.

1. Set a time and location where everyone was supposed to show up to work.
2. 90% of people then show up half of or an hour late.
3. Commence makeup applying and tent building until everyone was cold and tied of waiting.
4. A whole lot of people then would walk into the forest and find this new tent.
5. Script memorization and such would be reviewed /  learned on the spot.
6. I would film the actors and scenes slowly one by one until hours and hours had passed.
7. We would get fed up and tired and decide we needed to call it quits.
8. Walk home in the rain.

Video Editing was handled by Zak, alone, and He did a very good job with what he had. The latest version I saw before the break was clean and quite beautiful up until about the 9 minute mark where the quality dropped off. This task was huge and Zak accepted it without complains or quarrels.

This mini behind the scenes video was compiled by Matthew Dandar.

My personal opinion. I believe that this project was a very fun and valuable experience. The time I spent working was not totally awful, and for a big project this was one of the better ones I have participated in. There were soooooo many things wrong with the execution and how the work was handled that ultimately lead to our doom. The way that the responsibilities were distributed created jobs for people that required no effort or time and the people doing those jobs were resultantly useless and wasted talent.