When planning we had a certain, specific style we wanted it to look; we wanted it to have a similar editing and filming style to the tv show 'Dance Moms'.

One of the key things we liked about that stylistic view point, was the audio over the interviews underscoring the dancing.

This also allowed the group to explore lighting and camera angles for the pieces of choreography.

Additionally when planning, we didn't want the background to distract from the subjects of the interviews, the animation and expressions of the interviewees and the movement of the dancers.

Therefore, we kept the background as minimalistic and plain as possible. This also allowed me as role of editor, to explore some interesting techniques of editing.

Critically, I believe we should have had a few more sub-inspirations to clarify precisely how we wanted it to look instead of one main vague inspiration. At times this caused confusion and made the task more challenging, than it needed to be.

When working collabratively physically as a group is personally easy for me yet when it comes to working academically (a weaker area of mine) i've struggled in previous situations as at times I can be quite shy and conserved.

But with this project although I still struggled working in a group as it is hard I felt I contributed well and was an attribute to the group.

I do find working collabratively hard as you never know how the group will form, mix and work together as different people want different outcomes, but I believe our group collaborated well and effectively to produce our project.

I believe as a group, our work ethic and time management skills are strong; this showed through, particularly in the beginning, as in the early days of thye project, we held frequent zoom meetings on the weekends, to get our plans and ideas solidified moving forwards; we even created and agreed our 8 interview questions by the end of the 2nd meeting.

Perfectionism as a group-: Perfectionism is not always a positive thing, as it can cause you to overthink and over reflect, but I feel a little bit paid off for our group, as we weren't happy with subpar or the minimum. The group kept pursuing and adapting until we were allo happy with it, whether that be the initial idea, filming or editing to produce a good quality of work that we were all happy with.

Time Management- despite our challenges and setbacks not only did the group get everything done before our allotted submission time. We structured our sessions well, were very focused on getting the most effective use of our time, to the point I believe as a group we were not having to rush the completion.

Due to our group's subject matter 'relationships between siblings' which led us to choosing to interview our family members, it meant we couldn't film our interviews before the Christmas break.

So we had to be really disciplined, with time management after the break, as it meant for the weeks leading up to Christmas we could only draft, plan and trial what we wanted it to look like and sound. This was definitely a challenge, as we were unsure what problems we may encounter.

This also meant we couldn't film the choreography because the style & energy for each routine was determined by the reactions to the questions in the interview. As a result, we needed to know our interviewees answers to determine which style, dynamics and movement to create and attempt to convey the message efficiently and effectively.

Again sue to our subject matter and not being able to film until later, due to our creative ideas, managing our timing after Christmas was crucial, not falling behind. It was hard just planning the project and not hitting the ground running.

When filming in a certain studio, the lighting on the camera was very flickery, meaning non-intentionally the video had a mini strobe effect. The cinematographer asked me to fix that in the editing stage.

But I was aware I would not fully be able to get rid of it, voicing that to the group, so that they were not surprised at the final cut.

However, I strategically used the less flickery clips for short intervals of time so not to draw too much attention to it.

Due to when we started filming, we were limited on the studios we could book, as third years got priority on bookings. This meant we had to re-adapt our filming space, look and idea too. This reduced the time we were able to spend filming, therefore, we worked time efficiently with the studio time we had.

Obviously editing the project is probably the last thing to happen, so throughout the other stages I spent time playing with editing apps and software to see which I preffered- My favorites were; Cutecut, imovie, capcut.

Having time to experiment also meant I could explore with different effects such as overlays and transparency

But also having the time to hone and improve my editing skills meant that when i was editing the real video, I was able to work efficiently and precisely and due to knowing our inspirations,.

I had a good understanding of the look we were going for, so it made it easier to reach the end goal- editing and cutting a final version of the project.

When the deadline started looming (about 2 weeks out) I was concered that due to the music, our video may get copyrighted and muted. Therefore, I used software and researching crediting, to do everything in my power to makesure it had a minimal chance of being copy righted. But I also went to the tutor to discuss back up options to have all the bases covered.

A personal challenge I faced, was trying to edit a selection of videos where the non-intentional strobe effect was evident. I tried mutliple things to try and reduce the noticeability, from shadowing to filitering, to adding a translucent overlay; it was a really difficult challenge, as I could only do so much , but I tried everything in my power to make it less obvious.

I also found it hard to make decisions on what I thought the group might like. Reflectively, I know i need more clarification in the future, if I am ever in that role of editor again, as obviously everyone had different views of what they wanted it to look like.

So critically, I feel as a group we should have had that conversation sooner to make things run more smoothly. That is my learning point to take forward to further group collaboration work.

Being critical about our project, as a team I wished we had picked a further off date for submission as we could have perhaps sorted the flickery clips by refilming. The flickering made it really challenging to put the piece together, having to work out which bits were most useable, without it looking bitty and overly shorter than the other pieces. This took a lot of my time, over and above what I had already spent on the project.

Also being further critical about the way we worked as a group, I feel reflectively that we all have great work ethic individually, which helped us get the project completed, but it is rare academically that we need to work with others, so I feel if we acknowledged and blended our strengths more as a cohesive group at times, the project may have been less challenging and come together quicker.