In my second year, I did the Collaborative Practice module which involved working together with students from the Schools of Visual Communication, Media, and English.
Nikhara Korpal
BA (Hons) Media and Communication student
For the module we had to link our project to the Hidden City - Birmingham. Using the city as a subject and resource. We decided to do a Mockumentary so that we could combine our key skills together and be imaginative as a group. The mockumentary is called ‘Clive Investigates’ which is about mythical creatures in Birmingham.
For the assignment brief, there was a group task which involved selecting one of the six keywords provided. We chose the word Echo and linked our Mockumentary to this showing how society has reacted to these emerging myths and stories. Also, as a group we had to document our project development in the form of a PDF and write an individual evaluation.
We had full control over our own projects from start to finish which enabled us to be creative and imaginative. Once a week, we would have a group meeting with our lecturer to show the progression of our project. In our group, we worked collaboratively and regularly discussed our ideas on Microsoft Teams. The app helped us work together on documents, upload work and have group calls.
For the project I took on the role of Producer. This involved creating a call sheet that included an equipment list, risk assessment, shot list and a schedule for our two days of shooting. We wanted to use The Old Crown Pub for one of our locations, so I rang them up a week before we planned to film, and they were really kind about us using the pub before it opened.
It was exciting to see all our hard work come together. The script worked really well and our actor Angus fitted the character and tone that we were going for. The logo and film posters graphics looked really good as well as the final mockumentary. We faced a few problems with the lighting and wind, but with these mistakes we will take them into consideration when filming in the future.
I really enjoyed being the Producer for this project, it was challenging and something that I had not done before. I’ll be going into my third year soon and it’s definitely a role I would consider pursuing after I have finished university.
It has been fantastic doing this module and working with people from different courses across the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media. We worked really well together and I’m planning to work with my group again in the future on more projects.
