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[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

My Final Letter

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Personal Video:

LINK TO VIDEO:

https://streamable.com/m5bzg

REFLECTION:

Though I wish I had given myself more time to complete it, I thoroughly enjoyed making another personal video for you again this year! With such freedom, I find that I often have the most difficulty overall with deciding what I would like to do with it.  There are so many different avenues down which my creativity can take me, and it can be very challenging to have to narrow that down into one idea.  Overall, I felt very satisfied with the result! 

I was inspired to create a video which accompanied a piece of writing that I had written expressing how much I miss the spring and summer months when winter comes, and I created it using entirely original videos taken on my cell phone over the past year.  I find that recently, I have begun to fall into a pattern where, as the wind grows colder and the weather becomes harsher, I find myself becoming more and more depressed without the sunshine of the warmer months.  With this sadness comes an increased use of media, as, since I am not able to frolic outside and play in the dirt, I decide that at least I can hide in my bed and entertain myself with mindless social media videos.  My brain feels as if its slowing, my inspiration leaves me, and my increased screen time impacts my well-being and motivation even further. My separation from my family and my own repeated failure to complete assigned tasks for my courses only serves to darken my mood even more, and i spiral down and down until all i want to do is nap all day.  And when the sunshine rolls back around, all of those feelings begin to disappear.  My television is turned off and my phone goes down, only to be used to connect with people and meet up with them to go on adventures, or to relax and wind down with a Popsicle on an especially hot day.  It wasn’t until recently that I truly considered how my media habits can affect larger corporations, and how closely I am being monitored by the world around me.  

Something that i found particularly challenging was acquiring a video editing app that could piece together my videos in the way that I had envisioned.  I wanted something that would provide me with an accessible interface, while also allowing me to overlay text and other media within the video! In my search, I found that many apps took quite a few liberties in altering my video however THEY so chose, by adding crazy transitions or filters where they deemed it necessary.  I was finally able to settle on an app called Movavi Clips Video Editor that allowed me to achieve all of the characteristics aforementioned.  It wasn’t until I had finished the video that I noticed that the app had stamped a company watermark onto my video, and I panicked because I hadn’t read the terms of service to determine whether or not I was legally allowed to share my video as stated by the contract that I accepted to participate in.  I immediately assumed that the website would prevent me from sharing my creation with the class, but I became even more puzzled after reading the Terms of Service than I was beforehand in all honesty.  The writing within the terms was rather ambiguous; though it began by mentioning factors that are to be expected in the Terms of Service for a website (such as the collection and potential distribution of that personal information, and the fact that i could not distribute any work created in the app for commercial use without express written permission by the company), when the contract began referring to the company’s ownership of “content”, I became puzzled.  It was not clearly written in the Terms whether they were referring to the content on the site provided to users, or to the content contributed by users as well, and since I never determined whether or not there was a difference between them, I am saddened that my work could potentially belong to them now.  For this particular piece, it is not quite as upsetting simply because I have no plans in mind to share it on a larger platform, so it doesn’t affect me quite as much in this particular instance, but the degree of ease with which companies are able to dupe creators out of owning their own intellectual property is quite astounding.

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Group Project #2: Saving the City

PROPOSAL

GROUP MEMBERS: Sam Bustamante, Reilly McCann, Devon Robertson, Eike Bruning, Amber Banks

MEDIA CREATION (INFOGRAPHIC)

https://create.piktochart.com/output/28614398-stankaway

REFLECTION:  

At first, the ideas coming from this group were far more silly in nature, which was quite refreshing for me in this class.  Because at first people don’t know what to expect from this class, I found that my previous groups had been quite serious at times, and so it was a relief to get to laugh and joke with one another while also coming up with valid ideals that could be actualized.  We all came to the agreement that air pollution was a large problem for Guelph, what with all of the traffic and agriculture that both moves through and surrounds it, and so it didn’t take us long at all to come up with an idea! We brainstormed very effectively together and created an infographic and proposal that reflected all of our aspirations, but something that hindered us was the fact that we did not have any background in physics or with machinery to create the device that we imagined could solve all of these problems.  We were able to do some research on different kinds of filters that have been used industrially today, but were not able to create a model that sufficiently showcased our ideas in a mechanical way.  Surely, another way to mitigate air pollution would be to regulate our use of items which produce air pollution as well, such as cars and factories.  Coming out of this experience, i wish that we would have spent more time brainstorming comprehensive mitigation techniques to inform the public of the ways in which they are capable of making an active change without having to spend money on a device such as the Stank-Away Air Filtration System, because at least then there could have been a not for profit way to make a positive change in the Guelph community.  Overall, i found this experience to be both challenging and refreshing, and i valued the work that my group members did very much!

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Group Project #1: Saving the University

Link to Media Created (Facebook Page):

https://www.facebook.com/Guelph-Care-481647865590375/ 

GROUP MEMBERS: 

Matilda Ofori, Carley Farr, Sam Bustamante, Jaime Cooke, Hannah Collinson, Amber Banks

REFLECTION:

With this group, I found that effective collaboration was not nearly as difficult to achieve as it had previously been in the first group! Everyone was extremely open to everyone’s contributions and ideas, and it didn’t take us long at all to choose a problem on campus, and figure out how we would want to solve it. We determined that accessibility was lacking on campus across the board, starting out by talking about physical accessibility, and later deciding on solving mental and physical health accessibility on campus as many other groups were choosing different sectors of accessibility as well.  Executing this project was certainly much easier as everyone was willing and ready to communicate, collaborate, and meet up whenever it was necessary, and our minds really just clicked in such a way that we were able to feed one another’s ideas and produce work that was meaningful and honest.  I was able to make a few good friends out of this group experience, and just through being a member of this course really, so it was wonderful to be able to collaborate in a way that was not forced or false.  We were all just honest folk working together to try to figure out how to solve the problem of accessibility on campus, and we meant it! 

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Eye-Contact Activity

One of the first days of class when I was partnered up with Lily to connect with her for this exercise, it was the last thing that I was expecting to do that day.  And once it began, i was surprised to find that factors that i had assumed would make the experience easier for me (being partnered with someone who presents as female like me, and who was very nice) absolutely didn’t matter once we had locked eyes.  The innate response to flee rather than stay was quite overwhelming, and even though I regarded myself as being someone who makes eye contact regularly with people at the time, I quickly realized that this might not have been the case.  Making eye contact with strangers is not something that I do often, and is not something that I am asked to do often, but it was a very profound experience for me.  I connected with Lily on a level that no one else had been asked to with her in the class, and though it was strange and difficult to push through the awkward smiles and giggles that wanted to arise out of me to break the silence that my brain had been interpreting as tension, we made it through the experience new people to some degree i think.  We were united in overcoming a task, and i felt very proud to have done as well as i did, and i hope that she felt that pride as well!

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Gameography

TIMELINE :

Age 2-3

- my earliest memories are of being a toddler, dancing in my grandmother’s livingroom with my siblings and cousins to the Country Classics Music Station on the satellite. Many of my fondest and earliest memories involve singing, holding my grandmas face as she would sing “My Wild Irish Rose” to me, my Aunt Margi and Aunt Nancy dancing and singing me to so that i would finally tire out and nap, my grandpa singing along with the TV in his growling, big old bear voice and making us laugh, my dad playing his guitar and singing with my mom while we danced around and sang to our baby brother and baby cousin.

Age 5

- I remember playing duck duck goose in preschool.  We also partook in many dramatic activities where we would sing songs about goblins and creep around the preschool gym, laughing as we surprised one another.  Much of the play or schoolwork that we completed contained varying forms of mimesis in a very basic form, as we rhymed along with, copied the facial expressions of, and memorized class songs along with the teacher.  

- my grandmother and Aunt Nancy rapidly collect Disney movies for ‘the kids’ (my two siblings and i, as well as my two younger cousins), and my grandfather has to build a large cabinet to be able to fit them all.  Even now, 15 years later, it is bursting at the seams, but it was especially helpful for my cousin James, who has Asperger’s syndrome and found relief in the familiarity and creativity of Disney movies.  He is now an expert on them, and none of us can win a game of Disney trivia with him.  

- At home, we bond with my dad over learning to play Donkey Kong Country, Super Bonk, and Mortal Kombat on my father’s SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System).  We practiced patience in taking turns and waiting for our turns, as there were only 2 controllers for 3 children to use. 

Age 6 

- We receive a “Hit-Clip” for the first time, a small toy with interchangeable clips that played 20 seconds or so of disney songs. We also received singing “Princess and the Pauper” Barbie Dolls after watching the movie a thousand times, and lmy sister and I oved to dance and sing along with them

- We learn to play Candyland, Sorry!, and Uno in boardgame/cardgame form, and later learn to play the CD Rom versions of Lego games on our home computer.

- I ask my father to buy me a pink violin for my birthday “from the Pink Violin Store, duh, Dad” but to no avail 

- my aunts and grandmother purchase a pool for us to play in for the summer months, and some of our fondest memories are of playing in my grandmothers yard, surrounded by wildflowers and becoming one with nature

- though we had been fishing with my fourth-generation fisherman grandfather on his charter boat since we were just wee babes, these are the earliest memories i have of walking around on the boat.  We learn to play games with the fish as we wiggle our lines to entice them, beckoning them to snatch our hooks, and on the way back home to shore, my grandfather puts a few of the minnows we had used as bait into a bucket so that we can chase them and see whos reflexes are fast enough to capture one. 

- We are shown various movies at this age: Spiderman, The Hulk, the entireties of the Indiana Jones and Starwars series, snippets of the Lord of the Rings every once in a while.  Looking back, i realize that these were not movies that should have been shown to children as young as we were.  I remember that my brother had very vivid dreams of Golum and would wake in the night sweating and fearful, which made my mother angry and sad.  My father was coming from a good place in wanting to share with us the films he loved the most, and he was never really taught what an accurate idea of child appropriate content was on his own.  It was the result of a few arguments between my parents, as we just wanted to be involved in something that, from our perspective, had been very elusive, while my mother worked hard to keep it that way.

Age 8

- we are taught how to play the game ‘octopus’ in gym class, and it is one of the few physical activity exercises that i enjoy because of how silly we were allowed to be.  I had a strong distaste for competitive classmates who would harm one another over foolish games, so this was welcome fun for me!

- we also get to play with the multicoloured ‘parachute’ when our teacher brings us out in the sunshine to play around this time, and we all laugh and giggle as we practice teamwork and constructive criticism by ensuring that everyone is placed appropriately on the parachute so as not to let all of the air escape.  We become connected uniquely as we sit in wonder at something we are all proud of accomplishing, stuck in a small little world of our own that no one else can understand, even if only for a moment.  It is likely an event that provided me with a strong sense of connection to my classmates, and something which prevented me from hitting a few of them in later years when they lost all of their manners and kindness.  There were some reaaaal morons in my class.  

Age 9 

- my father teaches me to play guitar.  My siblings watch on as i practice again and again, wondering why i continued to keep playing if the sounds that i was creating didnt sound even slightly as pretty as dad’s playing, but it teaches me true patience.  You cannot simply sit down and know how to play, you have to teach your hands where to go when you want them to go there, and the only way to do that is to practice, put it down when you get frustrated, and come back with determination after you’ve cooled off.  I believe that it is part of the reason that I am able to practice such patience. 

Age 10 

- my father buys a PlayStation that we play when we visit his house.  I love a game called Sly Cooper about a pick-pocketing raccoon, that one day, i play it until it makes me so motion sick that i have to run to the bathroom and throw up.  I learn how to pay attention to my body when i am using technology and not to ignore my limits. 

Age 11 

- We learn to play Skip-Bo with my Aunts at Christmas time, continuing their tradition of card playing, shrimp eating, and toasting to the New Year.  Being invited to ‘The Big Kid Table” makes us feel proud and mature, as though we have earned our place there, and it boosts our confidence, allowing us to feel sneaky and serious like professional card players. 

Age 13 

- We get a Wii game station, and learn to play different games more actively.  Again, we are taught to share actively among ourselves, and to work together to accomplish the tasks assigned by the robot that is plugged into our TV.  We love the creativity of creating our own ‘Mii’ characters, and would sometimes just sit and create the goofiest ones we could think of instead of play any games. 

- We are also introduced to Facebook and Tumblr around this time.  Until this time, our only digital play was through online Lego games, and through chatting with our school friends over Windows Live Messenger, so with this new freedom, we are thrilled to find entertainment that suits our own personalities, whilst also learning how to avoid predators and untrustworthy people online

Age 15 

- I receive my first Ukulele for Christmas and begin to form an interest in learning other interests. I find one day that i am still slightly saddened that i havent yet learned to play the violin, and i become curious about learning to play a type of handheld flute called an Ocarina

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Words That I’ve Taken from the Journal of Communication

“Patriotism

is a nations growing attitudes toward national pride. 

Contextual society was conducted

for television, 

a capitalist luxury, 

a war to counteract Independence. 

Bodies issue regulation 

and oversight, 

their tender regulators under pressure 

from constraints 

that work within this quantitative dimension.  

A unique language 

that lacks strong ties

As these constraints demand delivery. 

Several channels 

run by commercial Radios. 

Explicitly paradoxical political motives 

serve their self-interests, 

the welfare of their state 

relative to the new media.  

Voters confine themselves to the abuse of power, 

Political outcry not taken seriously enough, 

transactions deemed necessary to protect

the concept 

of the American. 

This may well be what you prisoners will commit culpability to. 

Racism 

is not a concern 

in the current news.” 

-Amber Banks

REFLECTION:

I hadn’t pondered either society or the world so deeply in quite some time until i discovered this poem, Mark Lipton.  Some of these sentences were at times almost accidental, but as I sit here re-reading them the next day, the words are becoming increasingly profound to me, and are ringing far more true than I had regarded them to be when I was selecting them.  The more that I ponder them, emerging are even more ways to pull them apart, to dissect them, interpret them, and find ways to make them relevant. You could relate them to current events taking place in the USA, to the imbalance in North American voting systems, to the mistreatment of people of colour, to gun reform conversations, to media capitalization, the list could just go on and on and on.  I want to say that somehow in this poem, everything spawned from nothing all at once, but it must have had some kind of substance from the very beginning in order to become anything at all.  I was not on top of my game at all that day.  I hadn’t slept well, I was barely hanging on throughout my other classes that day, and I wasn’t feeling as though my brain could produce anything meaningful or coherent in that moment.  So while i was composing it, though these weren’t the connections I was intending to make at all, i was greatful to have words that i could rearrange rather than produce, remix rather than create; I was simply connecting whichever ideas from the 4 pieces of paper I’d selected that I could, all while I listened to you speak of metonymy and synecdoche in the back of my mind.  And so the product has transformed into something profoundly meaningful for me.  I will absolutely be doing this again, not in order to defile books of course, but to find more of this hidden meaning that lies in the world around us!! Perhaps one day, once I’ve figured out all of the places to look for them, the secrets of the world might be cracked wide open, all by an overtired, redheaded girl. 

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

I value kindness.  I value how the compassion and empathy of others allows them to become your family, even if for just a moment, as they keep you grounded through your internal chaos. How the soft, kind words of another can be emotional and powerful enough to completely change your day. Like warm, gentle hands reshaping your face to remind you to smile, telling you how loved you can be, even by a complete stranger, kindness…is immense. I value wonderment.  I value how small the world can make us feel in the grand scheme of things, and how it is the only being capable of reminding us of our place in this life without putting us down.  I value the wonder of learning about new words, things, or people that have been a part of your life for years, without you knowing.  How looking at the pictures of the places that you’ve been and the things that you’ve done from the perspective of your 7-year-old self can make you feel surprised, nostalgic, and satisfied.  Wonderment keeps us present, it humbles us, and reminds us that we belong here, even if just for the sake of learning one more new thing tomorrow. I value honesty.  I value the conscientious use of honesty within relationships, and I have a great respect for the fact that it can both help and hurt people.  I believe that honesty is paramount within relationships; without honesty you cannot have a truly pure connection with another person, and I value those people in my life who are able to be honest with me, and who expect me to be just as honest with them in return. I value education. I value how education can give you such power in sharing knowledge, and I am appreciative for the fact that it has made me the educated person that I am today, who is able to express herself and communicate with others clearly and powerfully with her words.  I value how I am able to use my own judgement to deduce whether things are honest or false, and I respect how lucky I am to have had educated people teach me how to do those things. I am passionate about being an advocate. In a world where, even now, there are still people and beings wrongly left without a voice, I feel passionate about lifting up their voices, about making them feel listened to, and about being able to protect them. Every moment that I am capable of championing another being on this earth, I feel passionate, and proud to have tried my best, and I feel thankful for those who shout from the rooftops for me in those moments when my voice is smothered as well. I am passionate about my family.  I am so grateful to have been provided with such loving, intelligent, and gentle beings in my life, and for their collective ability to have taught me everything that has made me the woman that I am today.  I credit them with my character, my ability to love so fully, my empathy, and my critical thinking skills, and I am passionate about taking care of them, sharing the positive and wonderful moments that I always have with them, and loving them just as fully as they have loved me in return.   I am passionate about laughing.  It never fails to amaze me how even the lamest of jokes can change a person’s entire attitude, even if only for a while. I am passionate about surrounding myself with people who love to laugh with me, and who can make me laugh even in one of my sourest moods. And i love to make other people laugh. I consider making other people laugh or smile to be one of my strengths, because it is something that I work hard to achieve in my everyday life.   I absolutely adore when my words have the power to bring such happiness and joy to someone’s face and voice and body in that moment.  I love that laughter is such a pure expression of love and life. I am good at being optimistic. Though some days it is more difficult than others, I pride myself in my ability to remain positive in the face of negative circumstances.  I would never claim to be someone who is optimistic every minute of every day – this is very much not the case.  But I do claim to be someone who has worked very hard to remain positive throughout the negative experiences in her life, and who has been able to do so, as well as to help others in doing so, more easily over the years.  The results of this unrelenting optimism have been very fulfilling in my life.   I am good at overcoming difficult things. Though I never would have dreamed of considering this to be a strength of mine beforehand, now, when I look back at all of the things that I have accomplished and overcome in my lifetime, it has simply become a fact of my life.  Most of us get a lot of practice with overcoming difficult things over the years, and because of this, I have learned how to stay brave and stay strong in the face of hardship.  As life continues to challenge me, I will work towards becoming better at this everyday. Lastly, I am good at helping other people.  I feel very strongly about helping other people in any way that I can because I have been lucky enough to have had quite a few positive people lift me up throughout my life.  It never fails to baffle me that there are still people who are perplexed by those who help others, people who say “but why? Why would you help someone that you’ve never met, someone that you don’t owe anything?”, to which my response is “Why not?  What does lending this person a helping hand do to harm me?”  I believe that we all owe each other kindness first and foremost. Though there are some that take advantage of this in other people and lose that inherent respect, I believe that despite this, all people surrounding us deserve our kindness and respect, and that some people, after receiving such kindness, may even be moved to spreading more kindness themselves in return.

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Marijuana Debate Yesterday

I worry that even as you read this title, Mark Lipton, that you will want to roll your eyes at me. I did not mean to seem as though I was trying to dominate the conversation, or seem so relentlessly obsessed with continuing the conversation in class yesterday, but now, because I feel as though I didnt explain myself well enough yesterday, I have had a difficult time shutting my brain off, as I often do after debates. Thoughts run around and around in circles, chasing each other and spitting out words that I should have said, all the while cursing me for having said something different. "You shouldve said this...if you had said this, you could've made an impact on someone." It only yells louder when it is something that hits so close to home, and I can only seem to shut off that voice when I write it down somewhere.

As soon as the debate topic had the word "marijuana" in it, my heart began to beat very fast, and it didnt slow down until I went to sleep that night. I had a very emotional reaction to that word, as I often do, because of all of the associations that it comes with for me. I don't take the recreational use of marijuana as lightly as I'm sure many of my peers do. It is something that I have become very familiar with over quite a few years of my life, and is something that I wish had never had been a part of my life at all sometimes. And since I got so emotional yesterday, I feel now as though I said the wrong things and didn't say what I truly wanted to, and have subsequently worried that my peers have formed a botched perception of who I am as a person.

So what I wish I had been able to express (though in fewer words) when I was reflecting in class on how difficult it had been for me to argue the Pros of Pot is this:

"It was very difficult for me to argue the pros of marijuana while being someone who does not condone the recreational use of it, not only because of the many reasons that I have found while researching it, but first and foremost because of how I have seen it affect the people in my life.

l am someone who has had multiple adults in her life who have smoked 2-3 times a day, 7 days a week, since they were 14 years old, and who are over 50 years old as of this year.

They have smoked habitually and relentlessly, continually prioritizing their use of it over the negative way that it has affected their family members, and I strongly believe that they are addicted to the emotional reactions of the drug because of how it lets them forget the responsibilities and the problems that they no longer have the capacity to cope with effectively.

Their coping abilities have dramatically differed from those of the non-smoking adults in my life. They have had immense difficulty with controlling their emotional reactions, IMMEDIATELY lashing out and saying extremely hurtful things when they feel threatened, rather than taking a deep breath and reflecting on how they feel before they speak to avoid hurting anyone. This has subsequently caused them much difficulty in navigating their interpersonal relationships because of how their choices have damaged those relationships. It has affected their problem solving, their decision making, and their emotional maturity, and so I have often had to act as the adult in many of these relationships despite my being a child at the time.

I have also watched more of my close friends than I can count on one hand start smoking pot habitually to self medicate for depression and anxiety, and how they have become increasingly unable to recognize how it makes their symptoms worse overall and not better. And it has hurt me immensely to see them start to fall into the same patterns as my family members at such a young age. It saddens me that that is the life they are choosing to live, and that they cant see how difficult it will be.

And it makes me angry that I can't have them in my life as much as I want them to be. I have made the decision to keep pot out of my life; I cannot have pot in my life anymore because I have allowed it to control so many aspects of my life for too long, and because of that, I can't often have those people in my life and its been devastating. These are not inherently bad people; they are wonderful and silly and amazing and ridiculously kind and understanding people, but their various inabilities to cope, combined with their inability to spend longer than 2 hours with me without asking if they can light a joint in front of me, especially after my explicit communication to them that it is not ok with me, has damaged our friendships and relationships.

So.

You may be able to see why I have a very hard time when someone tries to tell me that pot is harmless and natural and beneficial. The struggles my family members face daily in their lives are enough for me to see that it isn't beneficial...but when someone is smoking once a day, let alone three times per day for thirty-six years of their life, and is absolutely and dramatically altering their brain chemistry every one of those times, you cannot convince me that that does not change their brain as a whole. One of the brains most important functions is through chemical reactions, and when you are interfering with that so invasively and so frequently, it will absolutely change your brain, and subsequently, the way that you act and function. Marijuana is not an innocuous substance."

[yearnin-for-some-learnin]

Written Reflection on the Terms of Service Video Group Project

LINK TO VIDEO  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-y2oezwSA17FUpJ_1X9ptENEwQFpofYN/view

GROUP MEMBERS:  

 Amber Banks, Tori Drobot, Zoey Ross, Trent Fleming, Mei Lein Harrison

REFLECTION: 

Overall, I have found the experience of working with my first video group to be a positive experience! Everyone in my group was very interested in our storyline, driven to create an awesome video, and was very invested in making the props and scenes seem as realistic as possible.  I found that we worked very well when we were together; everyone was more than willing to hear out every member’s ideas, problem solve effectively with the input of any/every member present, as well as suggest new ideas or additions to the plan along the way so that would could make the best video possible in the amount of time given! I would definitely say that we faced challenges along the way though, particularly with the actual designation of time to shoot scenes and get together, as well as with efficient communication between group members.  

Though we communicated very effectively through the Facebook group chat that we created on MOST matters presented, there were definitely moments throughout the process where this was not so. The incidences that I found particularly frustrating were the (multiple) occasions where the group would plan to meet up and then leave other group members hanging (for over an hour in my case) at the original designated meeting spot, after they had decided to change locations without notifying the remaining members through social media. Though I am cognizant of the fact that it is very easy to forget to check your phone, I became frustrated after this started to become a pattern in the group’s behaviour because, in my opinion, it is common courtesy to inform and communicate with those that you are working with.  It was particularly frustrating for me since I felt that I had been working very hard to be considerate in this aspect, and I was displeased to find that this courtesy was not reciprocated as often as I felt that it should have been.  Most group member’s schedules were very complicated as well, so in these situations, time was certainly of the essence, and because it was not treated very conscientiously, some members were not able to contribute as much as they would have liked, despite having made time in their day to be available to do so collaboratively.

As the designated scriptwriter and timeline creator, I was also not notified of many of the major changes that the group made in the spur of the moment, so my final script (which we had initially all sat down and planned together) was very different than the final product.  There were many scenes that were either completely cut from the script or altered drastically without my knowledge, which did not upset me in and of itself; I am very supportive of changing plans and altering things in the spur of the moment/the midst of a creative process as that is when some of the best and most creative ideas can arise!  I simply would have appreciated if one of the members had let me know what changes were made before it was being shown in class, since it wouldn’t have taken very much of anyone’s time to have done so.  

I also found that there wasn’t as much fine tuning applied to the actual storyline as I would have preferred either. Everything was shot and achieved very quickly, so by the time we got to the end of shooting, what I worried about most was having the audience understand our concept without ever having us explain it to them.  Looking back now, I feel as though because we were so driven to complete the video and capture the major scenes, that we may have forgotten to really take a closer look at our concept from a newcomer’s perspective in order to ensure that the most effective messages possible were being sent to the audience in our video.  Some of the content of our storyline was really quite obscure, so I would have liked to go over the video from beginning to end more thoroughly in order to locate moments where we could have been more explanatory, or where we might have had the opportunity to make things more apparent to the audience.  

That being said, by the last day of our shooting of the video, I was still feeling very confident in the ability of my group to create a great final product.  We were all very excited about conveying to our audience that same sense of intrigue and suspense that we had felt while creating the story in the first place, and I never once doubted the capability of my group members to complete the tasks that they were helping with, or to work together actively to create a great final product that we were all looking forward to.  I also greatly appreciated the explanations of the technological aspects of video making from my group members, as this is not currently my strong suit, and is something that I want to work at in order to improve!  

Please understand that I never meant for this reflection to become a “bitch-fest,” if you will! I am 100% accountable for my own actions and words, and there were certainly times that, when waiting for others to reciprocate courteous behaviour without asking, I should have clearly asked for what I needed, since it was not already being given to me. It simply became more frustrating to me once I had actively recognized that my communication was not effective, and was consistently still not being responded to despite having asked clearly what I was needing.  Overall though, this truly was a positive experience for me, and I found my group members to be hard-working, creative, positive, and invested! I am very curious to see how different or similar my subsequent group projects will be to this initial one!