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Low Res - Collaborative Film

Jo Boddy

Updated: May 14, 2023

This was our first task. Coming straight after the interim show I was already feeling rather awed by my course mates abilities having seen their work in the flesh, then Jonathan asked us to make a film. DOH!!! Something I have absolutely no technical ability in and no experience of (unless you count Instagram reels or Apple movie maker which I wasn't!). Ah well, I thought, no pressure then!


We were put into groups; I was with Karen, Trisha, Delphina and Lauryna (a second year who I hadn't met before). Trisha and I have been in a couple of zoom groups recently and had a great chat when we were setting up for the interim show. Karen and I have been together rather a lot recently on zoom, Delphina I think I've only had via zoom a couple of times. I was pleased with the group, I knew everyone was nice, and I thought that Trish and I in particular might have some crossover in our ideas and methods, it was just a shame that I didn't get to work with some people who I've never been with before (I really wanted to work with everyone!)


We started well, chattering and coming up with ideas, and ended up each writing down a word, then deciding to collect words which we'd feed into AI and get a story generated from. I thought our five words were fascinating: physical, soup, experiment, colour, adaptation. We made several sentences by rearranging them which were fascinating and I would have liked to explore this further somehow.

I have mixed feelings about AI, I wish that it had played a slightly smaller part in our film, I really wanted the film to reflect the fact that we were there, at CSM, able to collaborate in person, I wish we had written our own story with the words we collected maybe alongside a shorter AI story. Trish seemed to be thinking along similar lines of reflecting our presence, she collected items from the swap shop for us to use and we all made a collage together using things from the swap shop. Trish had collected us a postcard each and we each placed ours on it in different ways, taking turns to individually use something made collectively which was a really interesting idea. We each took home a piece with a sketch and writing on it from the swap shop to do something creative with in our own way.


It was fascinating to work alongside everyone like this, Karyn said she'd felt really uncomfortable doing the collage together which I thought was interesting as I know she does beautiful doodles regularly (and did on the collage!), Delphina seemed very keen to participate, taking everything in her stride. She was very confident throughout and seemed very adaptable. I'm not sure whether Lauryna felt able to express herself properly in the project, she works in a way that didn't easily mould into the AI that Karyn is comfortable with or the collage that Trish, Delphina and I were happy doing. Her 'homework' piece I thought was stunning and really inventive. I hope that she felt included and listened to, I do wonder whether she had some film making skills up her sleeve that we missed...?!


Listening to stories from other groups was fascinating, one group each took the task they were skilled in, seemed to work separately and came up with a wonderful film. Another group were all so polite they almost insisted that every decision be completely joint. I think our group fell somewhere in the middle, which I think meant that not everyone's voices were heard all the time as some people naturally pushed ideas more forcefully and others didn't.


I don't think I can offer an objective opinion on our film at all, but having watched the other two I do think that we had a lot more room for some technical learning as far as the filmmaking aspect went. The sound and image effects that the two other groups managed to achieve far outweighed ours. I don't know what programme we used but it seemed very familiar and similar to movie maker which I've used before - you simply drop in clips & stills, set the transitions and add the sound. Looking at what the others achieved I think we may have missed a trick with an area for learning - we could experimented with some of the programmes and technology available at CSM which would have been a learning experience; maybe having a go with some software that was new to all of us could have been fun. I really think we could have pushed ourselves further, but it's so hard to know what everyone's skill levels are as I think some people really under played their skills, me included - I said I didn't have any film making skills but as it turned out I have actually used a programme very similar to the one we used and could easily have used that one. I had simply assumed that it must be much more complicated than it actually was!


I'm pleased that we managed to get a mixture of 'making' in to our film, but I don't think that everyone's making capabilities, styles or ideas were represented. I think it must have been particularly hard for Lauryna who was with four people she had never spoken to before and who didn't understand her style, work, process etc. to make herself understood quickly.


It would be a really interesting exercise to repeat but instead of having the media outcome prescribed to have a concept or title or something to present in any media. I wonder if by removing the requirement for it to be a film the different creativities within the groups might be better explored and expressed as a whole. I think our group might have made something more cohesive if we hadn't spent a day editing the video which was the part that I think we gelled over the least.


There was one aspect that I thought was a shame - the fact we were put into groups and didn't get to choose who to work with meant that there were a couple of people that I would really have liked to spend more time getting to know and didn't get the opportunity to for those two days as the groups were so separate. I wish there had been more space for wider collaboration across the groups. It was a very interesting task, and I really did like that we had to work collaboratively, I wonder whether the entire group could work collaboratively, maybe by moving around groups and taking something with you each time - that would be an amazing way to get to know everyone!

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