Mission 3; Blog 3

Reflection

If I were to speak completely honestly about this third mission I'd have to say that it really didn't seem worth it. I guess I can only really blame myself for not doing the video correctly but it is just so heart rending to have put such a massive amount of time, effort and stress into something and still come out with the most disappointing grade. Due to the obscurity of the mission the other members in my group struggled to come up with ideas for the mission so I took it upon myself to research the mission as deeply as I could to try and figure something out and on top of that there was the added difficulty of coming up with an idea that I could divide among the members of the group. I don't really mind doing extra work if other people are struggling but it was still quite a complicated task. I then had to think up a presentation for the mission as I, along with my group members, didn't want our video to drown in the monotony of video presentations thus I wanted to make it creative, I wanted our video to at least stand out.

At least during this mission I learned a bit of photo editing on Gimp during the extremely time consuming and difficult process of manipulating and overlaying over fifty images and trying to get them aligned. Although this process involved hours of mind-numbing editing I did end up with a final image that I was extremely proud of, which is unfortunately the only thing I was proud of by the end of this mission.

The process of drafting the actually video wasn't too difficult but actually compiling the aspects of the video that I had planned proved to be quite difficult. Luckily, my group members had their images completed on time and had sent them to me which lifted a little weight off my shoulders but that ease did not linger for long as I quickly ran into problems with recording or collecting audio from my group members which I had to just compensate for as I had no other choice.

The process of having to create impromptu panels or record extra audio was extremely stressful but I compensated as best as I could and had to make due with what I had or what I could muster together.

Due to the nature of our presentation and the time frame that we had to work, our group came to the realisation/agreement that only one member of the group could really edit the video to keep a cohesive project and to keep the process as seamless and uncomplicated as possible. Due to the circumstances of the group members I had to take up this position. I had already edited something before for my second mission but I was still very inexperienced with editing and extremely inexperienced in Premiere Pro but I undertook the task on behalf of my group members.

It was the editing process of the video that really makes the mission feel like it wasn't worth it for me as the editing process was extremely stressful, time consuming and overall unhealthy for me in complete honesty. Due to my lack of software I could not edit the video at home so my only choice was to use the computers in the college and due to our time management I had to spend almost the entirety of Monday editing the video just to get it done in time for the submission the next day. I started Monday morning determined to get the video done during the day so after my almost 2 hour journey into college immediately began editing the video. Due to the immense time pressure I was under, as I only really had Monday to edit the entire video, I fell into an intense time-crunch and I spent over 8 hours straight on Monday just editing, I didn't eat and barely even moved from the CDM lab. This left me completely exhausted and regrettably I can't even say that I even came out of it with much improved editing skills as due to my inexperience with the software and the pressure I was under I had to employ a lot of trial and error and wasn't really absorbing anything I was doing, I was just kind of frantically trying anything and everything until something worked for hours on end. The entire process was extremely stressful and draining and I was left completely and utterly exhausted physically and mentally after it all and even after all of it I wasn't even satisfied with the final product. Even though I personally wasn't completely satisfied with it, my group members were which only really made the extremely disappointing grade even worse because it granted me a sliver of hope.

This project left me on the verge of tears and more exhausted than I have ever been and it was all for nought. I didn't learn much about myself during this project because I was already aware that I'm prone to overexertion but this project did heavily impact me for sure. This mission affected me both physically and mentally and I can't with full honesty say that I have improved much in any way because of it.