Post 4 - Key Learning Moments

This task was my assessment involving group work of my university career. It provided some ups and downs, but overall I found it a very rewarding and even occasionally enlightening experience.

Personally, two major key learning moments stand out, one positive and another not so positive. Firstly, and perhaps surprisingly considering the sometimes rocky road my group traveled, it is the experience of group work which I found particularly rewarding. Despite a breakdown in communication when attempting to arrange a time to shoot, the group managed to overcome personal issues and work together for the completion of a task. Talk about real world relevance, this is one thing which I’ve experienced time and again in my professional working career, and I’ve often seen projects stall due to personal disagreements. I recall when a disagreement between the head of TV scheduling and the CEO of a major TV station had a disagreement which quickly spiraled and threw many spanners into many works. But I digress... In my view it is fundamental for the success of teamwork that all members rise above issues of not getting along, and that responsibility is shared out to get the job done. This is one area where I think my group came through in spades. Despite a few personal disagreements, these were all put aside and the task was completed on time and to, in my opinion, a very high standard. Personally, I have in the past sat on the sideline during such debates, but I’m actually quite proud of myself for stepping in and at least trying to calm the situation, even with a significant amount of assistance from the lecturer.

Now, for the negative experience, one for which I take more than part of the blame. We did all of the shooting in one go, and while we had spent some tutorial time messing about with camera settings, events have shown that this wasn’t really enough. We failed to do any night shots before the big shoot, and consequently were unaware of the 'ghosting' issue which was very noticeable even on the finished product. Whether this was a setting or not, we really should have done some test shots, then seen how they port into iMovie or Final Cut before proceeding to the main shoot. This is one mistake which I will not be repeating, and a fair number of hours spent on Final Cut trying and failing to remove ghosting from each and every movement have reinforced the need to 'test, test and test again' before shooting.

While I’ve taken many lessons from this task, these two key learning moments are perhaps most pertinent. It's interesting that both have real world significance, in addition to being specific to university study.