So, If any of you hadn’t read my recent blog posts then I’ll catch you up on what’s going on. Over the last month or so, my class has been studying the genre of horror and what it says about society. The end project of this unit was for the class to work together to create a horror movie from start to finish.
When the project was first presented, I thought it was kinda cool and looked forward to it. We were each assigned a job in the production of the movie. There was a structure created for creating a production plan that let everyone one what they would be in charge of in creating the movie. However, I don’t believe that this structure and accompanying production plan was defined as much as it needed to be to set us up for success. That’s not to say we did not have defined jobs. I feel like everyone was clear on what their roles were, the part that I think we were not so clear on was knowing how these jobs where supposed to work together and how they would need to evolve to meet the ever changing needs of the project.
My jobs were first assigned to me as Assistant Director, Editing Assistant, VFX, and Music however, most of these were eventually removed from me and I only held the roles of VFX and Acting. I found that the role of Assistant Director seemed almost irrelevant due to the size of our production. While on-site filming, it was more efficient for the director to just tell people what he/she wanted rather then relaying it through an assistant. The jobs listed above that were removed, were actually needed but were removed from my responsibility before I had a chance to act in them. I think that might have been a bit hasty. Aside from Acting, I felt like I didn’t really have much to do, at least not that was officially assigned to me, nor like I was an important member of the team though I kept trying to find things to do that would contribute to the project.
Unfortunately, production was slowed down due to a number of challenges we were having so most of my learning from this project wasn’t actually around what horror says about society, but rather, how to create a more efficient work setting and that led me to think about what I will look for in future employment settings. I came to realize that two, specific activities would have been helpful for this project and all future projects I’m a part of.
First, Roles.
Before the project begins there needs to be not just a definition of roles but also of how roles interact with each other. This will help everyone understand not just what they are responsible for but also who they are supposed to report to and who reports to them. This will cut down on time wasted because of conflict created by unclear and ever changing direction provided by several different individuals, in an uncoordinated way.
Second, Rules Of Engagement.
One of the other challenges that we experienced that contributed to time not being used efficiently was a lack of respectful communication and actions conducted due to the high stress environment that was created . My main point here is that a high stress environment causes people to become irritable and this irritability can result in behaviours that demotivate, rather than motivate, people’s work. To counteract this, the DRI (Directly Responsible Individual, A.K.A. Management) would need to focus as much on motivation as getting the work done and do more to discourage disrespectful practices. By disrespectful practices I more refer to rumours that divide the team and conflicts rather then swearing.
Finally, through this project I discovered what kind of work environment I want to be apart of in future employment. As previously mentioned, there were a few problems with respect that arose during this project. Mostly around disputes regarding authority. I found these disputes to be harmful to the project as well as causing harm to communication. This showed me that I, myself, require a work environment in which channels of communication and authority structures are created to discourage disruptive behaviours.
Even though we had some troubles with the production of this project, I think it was a really worthwhile and important to do. Though I may not have left as much as I could have around horror, I leant a lot about work place environments and how to run an efficient team which I believe is an incredibly important skill.