Lab 4: We Can Work It Out

One of the hardest skills to learn is how to effectively work in groups. There's always the tough task of trying to please all the cooks in the kitchen when working on something together. Case in point: my group's video for last week's lab, which was postponed due to Snowtorious B.I.G. and was only finished last night. While I can admit that no one between the three of us - Lauren, Opeyemi and myself - is completely satisfied with the end product, it's a good compromise and the first step toward achieving group unity.

This is the first time we had to work in groups and submit one video, so it was admittedly hard to give up some responsibilities and freedoms. Most of us know exactly what we want, so it's hard to get everyone on the same page. Anyway, Lauren had the idea of previewing the then-upcoming Vagina Monologues performances, which occurred this weekend and concluded last night. Lauren collected three excellent interviews with the show's student co-producers, and the director of the Women's Center, Rita Jones. They all spoke on the background of the show, what its intentions were and which organizations would receive this year's proceeds.

During the week Opeyemi shot some stock footage of women walking around campus, interacting with each other and performing various tasks, like working out at the gym and eating lunch at Rathbone. We all acknowledged that it was hard for her to collect such footage, because there weren't exactly many visuals we could use to overlay on top of interviews for a show that didn't let photographers and videographers into its rehearsals or performances. So we made do with what she got. A lot of the Vagina Monologues is about women empowerment, so it made sense to get video of female students doing different things.

When it came time to edit the video last night, we dumped all the footage together on one computer in Coppee Hall, and we individually worked on editing. I was busy a lot of the night editing The Brown and White, but I dedicated time to putting together the video while Opeyemi and Lauren took breaks. It truly was a collaborative effort, which is why the video below seems a bit choppy and not as cohesive as a clip from just one editor. 

It should also be noted that Windows Movie Maker gave us quite a fit throughout the night. Volumes of clips kept mysteriously dropping out, and it took several repeats of copying and pasting clips to amend the problem. While I've gotten a good grip of the program so far and can easily see its benefits for producing short, quality clips for breaking news events, I'm still not sold on it for producing longer videos like this one.

Like I said before, I'm not completely happy with the final product because I didn't have full creative control, but then again, that's part of the real world. We have to work with others during the creative process, and that takes some getting used to. And I'm by no means undermining the work of Lauren and Opeyemi. They did fantastic jobs. I have no doubt that by the end of the semester, we'll have learned each other's strengths and skills and will have produced something amazing together for the final product. Let's count Lab 4 as a good first trial run for what's to come.