Group Meetings

 On Monday, in my class, we held group meetings to discuss our ideas and listen out for new ideas from our peers. It was quite an interesting experience where I got to adopt a ton of novel concepts and developed my film opening idea further along, we were sat in a table of 5 and I heard each of them talk about their individual plans and research. 

One thing I noticed was that they were all very focused on making something happen in the first two minutes, which I definitely understood the appeal of. Still, I think hearing their film opening plan made me think extra hard about the pacing of my own. 

Something else I appreciated was how critically it made me think about the shooting process. Since everyone has different visions, it's easy to get caught up in your own visualization of a scene, but when you realize that other people aren't quite getting what you're describing, you have to exert more effort into making a clarified scene. One way I took this to heart was changing my entire premise which then transformed my opening scene from more atmospheric to both atmospheric and a set up for the future events of the movie—a more effective hook basically.

While I might have found their push for certain ideas a little off-putting, I think it ultimately made me consider many different perspectives that I otherwise would not have wanted to confront out of stubbornness or a lack of imagination. When I asked the others questions about how they would make action sequences not cheesy or where they'd shoot, I internally asked myself those questions and had to be more meticulous in my arrangement. 

All-in-all, this was a great experience and it's just reminded me of how important feedback from your peers is. More importantly, I'll focus myself on how to translate the lessons learned from the group meeting to the film opening, which is becoming more and more realized every day.