As the project progressed one of the roles I took on and was suggested to take on by Callum was more of a directorial role. This actually was quite an interesting position to take, and it worked to an extent because the method we were using for the project was an idea that I had nearer the beginning of the brief and all of my ideas were contained in my head. The ability to go to Callum and Gavin and ask them to change aspects of a scene or do something a different way without feeling like I was being controlling or too forward was quite a good position to have. It also made it so that we could talk more openly about the changes that could or should be made without feeling like we were disrespecting each others work. I think this type of hierarchy when it came to the style of the documentary made our communication as a team stronger and more productive. Numerous times where Gavin, for example was working on a scene he would ask me for my opinion and I would suggest changes to what he was doing. It's always good to get opinions and feedback on work anyway but this made it more of a steady production chain than just having a crit session when it came to gathering feedback. So, across the scenes we all worked on independently we were sharing what we had done at all stages. Being in charge if the visuals also meant that the style throughout the whole production was consistent and clean rather than having three seperate styles coming together. It's taken me a while to realise the benefits of having a person to make decisions rather than coming to a compromise for every action that has to be made. Doing so makes the work produced clash because of the mix of styles and decisions that are made as individuals so this approach I think worked quite well, but perhaps we should have adapted this a little earlier on in the brief. I feel quite heavily responsible for this project and making sure it went smoothly because early on I pushed the idea of producing the animation in paper and use cutouts to comprise scenes, so the pressure to make sure we all benefited from the experience was present with me from start to finish.
An example of this in action is in a scene that Gavin did, the third sequence in the animation. The visuals represent the Earth as a whole before the narration discussed the impacts of logging, fuel wood harvesting and forest fires being big factors in the amount of forest that is removed. Initially we had the scenes switching from one to another, but it didn't seem to flow particularly well and felt clunky. I experimented with overlapping the different scenes using a mixture of blending options and changing the opacity and I think it worked quite well. Earlier on in the project as agreed as a group that something that would contribute a lot to the success of the documentary since there wasn't much movement was imaginative and interesting transitions from scene to scene, so this was an attempt to implement this idea. Using effects such as fades made the scene feel a lot smoother overall and less like it was just a number of straight cuts from scene to scene. The last thought process for me behind this idea is that since we were using paper the objects and shapes are very simple and are essentially silhouettes. By layering objects and changing the layer properties and adjusting the opacity it means that a layered paper effect is achieved, which in turn makes the objects and the scenes feel more complex.
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