Below is the slides me and my partner created to prepare for our stop motion animation shooting. It includes our partner agreement, reflection, rationale, inspiration and storyboards.

This is our final stop motion animation video. Check it out!

Reflection on Collaboration

• To what extent did you honor your original partner agreement? Looking back now, what is one thing you should have added to that agreement and how could that help future collaborations?

Overall, me and my partner had both followed our agreements pretty well. We had divided our work and were both very responsible on finishing our own work. Additionally, we would also help each other to improve the work when any of us was feeling challenging or confused. In the partner agreement, we both thought that “putting ideas on the table” is a very important collaborative norm, so when we were working, we always shared our opinions and discussed them together. Even when our ideas were different, we would respect each other and evaluate them objectively, which made our work more effective. If we could work as a pair again next time, I would share all the pictures I took with my partner, because I took them on my computer this time, so we made the whole video on my computer. Although we worked together to make the video, it was mostly done on my computer, so Rhea didn’t have much chance to improve it after school on her own. Next time I should share all the resources with my partner, so that she will also be able to work on it after school, and our project will hopefully be better.

• What did you bring to this collaboration? How well was your partner able to rely on you? What can you do to be more reliable in future projects?

We divided our jobs clearly according to our strengths and weaknesses. Rhea was in charge of the rationale and most of the writing parts, since she is in English A is very good at creative writing. I was in charge of the video editing and storyboards because I want to practice my iMovie skills. We developed the idea of the story and expanded it together. Therefore, the project couldn’t be done without any of us. Although we had different jobs to do, we would always tell each other what we had done and discuss them together to improve our work, so that we always kept on track with each other’s work. We were actually quite reliable people, because we always finished our parts on time, and didn’t need to remind each other to do work.However, I didn’t communicate thoroughly with my partner before I left, so that she wasn’t able to post the video and couldn’t contact me through social media. I’m really sorry about that. Therefore, next time if there are similar situations, I will talk with my partner earlier and discuss the solutions with him/her. After everything is clear and shared, I can then leave and do my personal things. I shouldn’t affect or disturb the others by any personal excuses. From this experience, I learnt to be more responsible and thoughtful.

Reflection on Rationale

In the rationale, we mentioned that we wanted the audiences to feel a sense of comfort from our video, and I think this has been achieved. We used happy and light background music to create a “feel good” mood, which hopefully the audience would be inspired by the music and even sway freely within the beat and the sound of the drum. Also, we chose the iMovie filter “cartoon”, which is a warm-coloured filter that will bring up a happier mood for the video. These match with our three-words description in the rationale. However, what we didn’t show that well in our video is the deep meaning we wanted the audience to explore. We were thinking to let the hoodie be a symbol of the precious things and the ones you cherish, but since the atmosphere of our video is too light and lively, the audience will rarely explore deeper into the theme. Based on my current skills of video editing, I don’t have much ability to create two different (and even conflicting) core ideas at the same time. It would be a mess if I want to show too much information in such a short video. Therefore, next time when I need to make similar videos, I will create a simple but clearer core idea for the whole video: do I want to just entertain the audience or make them reflect on their lives through my video? Currently, my goal is to successfully communicate my ideas to the audience in my video, and I’ll try to achieve it by setting a clearer core idea in my rationale, so that I can focus on this certain idea and expand it to make it more creative and detailed.

*Background music resource: UKULELE by Benjamin Tissot