For the project I really wanted to get into the fact that Bristol is a dock city "Bristol owes its status to the sea", therefore it is used to many people travelling to and from here for various reasons. It is vital to its rich history and mixed background. I was thinking that perhaps we could have had interviews with ourselves mixed in with people of the past that could have been in Bristol such as perhaps pirates (Bartholomew Roberts), fishermen, slave traders, butchers, wives, children, romans etc. (as well of course the large range of people who must have traveled here from other countries) Eventually everyone blurring into one, everyone being so different but with Bristol in common. I would have also heavily focused on media based persons and history. I feel like the format for each interview would have been the same, as in a head-and-shoulders shot from the front of each person individually, everyone asked the same questions. (everyone being us in costume, which would have been fun too) If there was enough time, it would also have been interesting to have brought in other transportation in Bristol such as the hot air balloons.
Unfortunately I didn't get to tell my group my full idea because another had already been decided, as well as anything to do with docs being "cliché" apparently. Group work is about flexibility though, so I had to deal with that.
Research
Visiting M-Shed showed me how versatile and rich the background of Bristol really is, before moving here I did not know much about Bristol (as UWE was my second choice, I did little research into the city) M shed definitely made me proud to be here, the section on Wallace and Gromit I particularly enjoyed (besides the point) I noticed the museams particular attention to people's lives as a whole picture. Rather than the object from their life being the history, the people themselves were made to be the history, this made it all the more interesting, and inspired me to think of the project in this way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqt5XVtJVSc <--- I take a lot of inspiration from this, I would hope that our final piece would have ended up a little like this, but more historical and less angry.
(So many interesting resources!)
Concequences
This project made me learn a lot about how I handle conflict. Not very well is the answer to that, I tried to avoid it so much that I ended up not knowing about some vital work. The communication between the group members was not great, which didn't help either.
However after receiving a shot list I filmed some "filler" shots for our project of the sun setting over Bristol, using my own camera and tripod. Later, I sped up some of the shots hopefully to show Bristol's fast paced exuberance. I hoped that these would come in handy and some of my work would actually be included in the final piece. Giving the shots to the group the next day, asking if they needed any help, to which they responded no. It is also very unfortunate that our contact was unavailable I was looking forward to finding out their thoughts and feelings on the media nature of Bristol, as well as hearing about their own experiences.
In hindsight I should not have been scared by the "stubborn" and "strong mindedness" of some of the other members of the group. It prevented me from putting as much into the production as I would have wished to have done, and consequentially I missed out both on the experience and contributing to the final product nearly as much as I would have liked to have done. I am rather disappointed in my own fear and therefore inactivity.
