Conclusion
Writing this conclusion feels like it has been a long time coming. Initially when first planning this project, I aimed to have finished it by the end of March - but, here I am in early June writing it - and with so much more to say than I ever expected or anticipated. The first thing i would like to do is to thanks Joshua Bennett, who has been key to helping me turn this idea into a reality. His patience and generosity over the past year has helped my project to blossom into something that has touched many people and become an enriching experience for both of us.
When first planning the project, my aims we to explore what creative collaboration was like during Covid-19, and to hopefully have a finished film by the end of it. I've come to realise, through observing the way i work in comparison to Josh, and my interviews with Vicky Storey and Potaito, that to generalise people's experiences of creativity and collaboration during this time would be unfair, s each experience is so personal and unique that to sum it up wouldn't do justice to individual efforts. The have, however, been noticeable trends and themes across my research and other people's experiences:
Common Challenges
Technical challenges and adjusting to working online.
Lack of motivation when working remotely - not having colleagues to spur you on, especially when working from home.
Working remotely resulting in it being harder to share ideas and give feedback - Zoom is a lot harder than a normal conversation.
Loneliness and asking for help is harder - waiting for emails or the other person to respond is a lot more emotionally draining, and makes it harder to help which often increases levels of stress.
Increased fatigue during the lockdown: despite a growing confidence in abilities abilities in working online, the distance away from colleagues and peers is becoming increasingly draining.
Trial and error being a common method when finding out what works best for the collaboration, despite at times it being heavily time consuming and frustrating at times.
It took Josh and I a while to figure out the best ways for us to both work online and share ideas: to really help harness and cultivate the working relationship that we needed to create the film together. We found that, as much as video calls were useful, especially at the beginning o the project, it was hard to say everything you wanted to say, and, although the mindfulness exercise helped - it was probably through our shared Miro Board and texting that we were most most comfortable using and sharing our ideas. We've both found that so much of remote collaboration is about adjusting to create a space when you're both open to feel creative and inspired, but it's a lot hard, and more time consuming than anticipated when you cannot Support each other in person.
Both Josh and I were challenged in ways that neither of us were expecting: we both agreed that rendering and exporting the file was the hardest and most frustrating bit of the project, despite neither of us worrying about it when begin working on the film together. It took Josh's computer least five hours to export the film, and then he had to upload it to Google Drive so as I could access the full file and check the audio. However, the first three times we tried to export it the sound was in mono, and neither of us knew how to fix it. As I'm not used to Adobe Premier, and do not have access to it, and Josh wasn't used to exporting sound in a surround film, I re-exported the original sound track into a stereo file, in order to export the film as a whole successfully. It was a really difficult and frustrating moment in the project, as it became really time consuming on Josh's end, and if working in the same space together, there probably wouldn't have been an issue, as we could have combined our skills to fix it in the moment. Instead, the exporting process took over a week, with days consumed by researching and sending screenshots of audio settings and creating new bounces. Despite this, we finished the project to a standard we are both really proud of, and since sharing it online last week, we've had over 130 views in YouTube and a great deal of positive feedback. As Lockdown has affected us all, the response has mainly been of it conjuring nostalgic feelings from the first Lockdown especially, offering perspectives some people had not heard or seen, and brought back feelings and memories reminding them of what it was like back in March of last year.
The Main surprise that I've had during this project is how consuming it has been, working remotely has meant that I've had to become a lot more confident in how I present my ideas. This has, however, resulted in me unconsciously changing my attitudes and how I approach what I do. My patience and confidence have grown as a result, and I'm looking forward to taking these new skills with me in future collaborations: be it in person or remotely. This doesn't mean that working creatively and collaboratively remotely has been easy or not without struggle - but it has been a learning curve and I'm glad for sticking with this project. This has positively impacted the project and the overall finished film, in having to be more independent and confident in my ideas I spent a lot more time thinking and working on them, and, along with Josh's help, created a film that captures special memories of such a difficult and confusing time in a caring and positive way.
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