1st production post.

Today I was in charge of managing my own project, i had to assign roles to my peers so they could help me with my stop motion animation using skittles.

Ellen was my assistant helping me move the skittles into place and Antony was the camera assistant taking the pictures of the animation.

First of all the camera was not charged so this was not a good start, once the camera had charged i was able to start production, the pace of the production began to pick up as the process went along, I was in charge so I decided when and what was happening for the whole day.

I decided that I would try an easy going approach to my peers so they did not feel under pressure or stressed. I made sure i asked how they was feeling and that they was getting regular breaks as Antony had to stand up for the majority of the animation because he was taking the pictures, also Ellen and I were sat on the floor for a long length of time.

I made sure I asked for any opinions or extra ideas to be added to the animation, I think this is a good process to go through as it gives the assistants a chance to be an influence on the animation making them feel part of a team and that their opinion matters.

Some problems that occurred were that the settings on the camera had been changed before we used it, meaning my images were slightly out and of less quality. They were also in the wrong format when I tried to upload them to the computer they would not open in Photoshop properly for them to be batch processed, this meant I had to change them which became a long process leaving me less time to edit and process them to a higher standard.

Being in charge of the group while I was in production was good for me, I think having to communicate with them and having to put myself in a different mind frame but also remember how it feels to be on the receiving end helped me to realise that being strict and nasty would only make my peers feel uncomfortable and under pressure with bad responses.
I tried to be a good leader for the day and I hope that I was.

Overall, the production went really good with minor issues, my peers worked well and effectively and the animation was finished within the first day meaning that the other peers could bring their animations a week forward, saving everybody a little more time for post production of their animations.