Creative Collaboration-

Weeks 8 - 9

Collaboration Report

During Creative Collaboration, we are tasked to collaborate with people of different professions and interests to help create our project, therefore allowing as many segments of production as possible to have a professional in that field overlooking it/helping out.

Due to his experience and confidence with contacting people/organisations, Josh handled gathering most of the external help for out project, but me and Chloe assisted in any what that we could. Below is a list of all the names we have gathered so far for our project, and how they've helped us produce an outcome.

Charlotte Long - All About the Dogs

I have already talked about Charlotte and the impact she and her company had on our project, so I'll keep this short. Having an interview with Charlotte gave an outlook into the issue we are facing which comes from a much more personal place, therefore as the 'Creative Conscience' brief suggests, having a highly researched and ethical outlook on the topic.

Kate Stevens - Foley

Kate helped us provide all of the sounds that we planned to be utilised in our final piece through Foley in a studio. I unfortunately wasn't able to make it to this studio, but Josh and Chloe went with the knowledge of every sound that was supposedly needed to capture. All of them were captured in unique and interesting video, allowing Josh to later compile all the assets they gathered with Kate's help into a new animatic. After later consideration however, we felt that because of the way in which we plan to edit the project and the fact that we felt that the music should really be the focus in terms of audio, we stripped down the Foley to the bare minimum, resulting in only the page turns remaining. It was disappointing that the large catalog of sound bites that were gather we'rent utilised, however I truly feel that it was for the best, as the emotional soundtrack adds more to the piece than the Foley would have.

Tom Hinkley - Voice Over

As a TV and radio student from Salford uni, Tom Hinkley is no stranger to having his voice recorded. We didn't want his uni course to be the only factor that made us select him to provide the voice over however, as we felt it was essential to find someone who could provide the right voice for the context. Thankfully, Tom could pull off a clear, warm yet serious voice, which was exactly the kind of voice that was needed for the outro of our piece, as we needed people to take it seriously as we are dealing with a serious topic, yet still sound light enough that it doesn't detract from the sweet ending we included. Due to his access of professional equipment, it was also recorded at a professional and industry standard, which compliments the piece well. This collaboration was effective and fun, but I wish we had more voice over throughout, as reinforcing the message more would have been beneficial for getting our point across, as well as potentially giving more life to the characters via dialogue, although realistically that wouldn't work with the way in which we edited our piece.

Benjamin Wait & Luke Nutt - Story Consultants 

Both of these students are studying some form of English writing at their respective universities, Salford and Manchester. The reason as to why we felt in was necessary to invite two separate English students to join us in the writing stages, is because like most stages of pre-production, anyone can suggest their own ideas and insights, and they often successfully mix with other peoples visions, therefore the more people, the better selection of ideas we have to choose the best from. Although me, Josh and Chloe were highly active with these two as we were coming up with ideas, these two truly helped shape what little story we had at the time. Due to their knowledge of creative writing, they suggested many techniques and strategies that would make for a more effective narrative, which was worked into our project perfectly, the most notable of which, was the 'Hero's Journey'.

Joseph Ullman - Music

Unfortunately, none of us had as much in-person contact with Joseph as we would have liked, as he was contacted entirely over Facebook. This made it feel as though we were simply asking someone else to work for us, as appose to exchanging ideas and skills as we did with the rest. This couldn't have been helped due to mismatch of schedules. Despite this, what we gained from contacting this source is arguably the most effective in terms of outcome, as by simply sending him the animatic and an explanation of what we were aiming for, he worked out a perfect soundtrack, which complimented each emotional beat of the piece flawlessly. He was contacted after expressing interest of scoring movies over Facebook. I can definitely see the value in getting a professional musician to score my animated pieces in the future, I will just try harder to work around allowing myself to be present in the production of such, therefore potentially helping get my vision across to the musician even more so.

Overall, I have enjoyed reaching to outside sources to help create a better outcome, and is definitely something that I will look to incorporate into future ambitious projects. I just hope to act upon the issues that I raised under each separate category above to make for a more meaningful and worthwhile experience.