This was my first group assignment in my graduate studies. Difficulties and challenges kept arising during the process, and the group members worked together again and again to solve them successfully, and the final work was presented to everyone’s satisfaction. This group work has benefited me a lot, not only making us pay attention to integrating various resources, exchanging our ideas and organizing group members to share the work together, but also making me realize that hands-on practice, multidisciplinary exploration and cooperative communication are one of the important ways to learn, create and promote each other. In the following, I will share and elaborate my thoughts and reflection on this group work from my personal perspective.
My Role
This topic comes from my personal experience and I am happy to be able to resonate with you and make it happen together. In the invisible strings teamwork, I was mainly responsible for the video creation and editing of part1 and part3 of the performance, the installation design of part2, and the final video design of the performance. Since this is a large volume interactive performance, and we divided it into three parts to interpret it step by step, this requires the three parts to be visually unified as a whole. Because of the different materials, media and forms of visual presentation, and I have never taken over a project of such a large volume, it was difficult to unify the three parts visually. After a lot of case studies and expansion of ideas, we finally decided to use black and white as the main color, with red as the accent color, and also particles as one of our elements throughout the show.
In the shooting of the part1 and part3 videos, our group members again served as actors, directors, scenarists and action directors, which was a new challenge and experience for each of us. In the creation and editing of the video, since the design of the video affects the rhythm and mood of the whole performance, and also affects the subsequent design of the sound part, in this part of the creation process, I edited out the general mood of the video and provided it to my teammate Lerong, who composed the music according to the atmosphere and mood of the video, and then I continued to modify the details of the video according to the tune. It was an unforgettable and interesting experience for me to work on the same piece of work as two majors with the same goal in mind, from scattered footage to a complete video that could convey the concept of the project.
In part 2 of the installation, as the video footage shows, we encountered a lot of difficulties – there were so many ‘strings’ and bells that the installation was easily tied up in knots, even though we had spent a lot of time working on the installation. When it got so knotted that we couldn’t set up, we had to be ruthless and start from scratch, which was not only a test of physical strength but also of patience, but after the difficult ordeal, the moment when the installation was built was more than happy. Due to a temporary change in the construction method, the number of lines presented in the performance was half of what was originally planned, and in order to show the effect of the “daughter” being trapped in a cage of lines, more lines were needed to surround and submerge the actor, but the final presentation was much thinner and it was difficult to convey the feeling of the daughter struggling under high pressure, which was the most regrettable This is the most unfortunate aspect of the production.
For the final video edit, after discussion with my teammate Xiaozhuang Gao, I decided to narrate our entire project in the form of a group presentation, with documented images of the process throughout, and finally showing the full performance and audience feedback, so that the logic of the video would show both our thinking and inspiration and the creative project. As the process was very fragmented, it took a lot of time to select usable video footage, which made editing tricky, but in the end, through editing and tweaking, a complete video of the performance project emerged.
Conclusion
Overall, I am satisfied with the completion of the work, but what is more valuable is the process of continuous polishing over the semester, which will be a valuable asset for future creation and learning.
Finally, I would like to thank my three teammates for working together to produce this piece of work.
part1: https://youtu.be/6fKzaTzt7N0
part3: https://youtu.be/ltNtx1xkXow
Final video：https://youtu.be/5wdCRBJSlR4
