Group Five #5

This week, our team really got to see our vision come alive through Krystof’s editing and through the collection of our remaining footage. One of the most unique parts of this process was seeing how each of us individually experience and relate to belonging in such vastly different ways. As it naturally turned out, our group discussion (the audio component of our film) mostly centered on our shared experience of feeling belonging and excluded in different locations. However, the footage revealed that, despite these overarching similarities, our personal emotions related to belonging are different and expressed in different visual ways. Ultimately, this has been one of the most exciting and surprising parts of the film: the way our creative processes revealed how individual and nuanced belonging is. It is not a concept that can be described in its entirety on a broad scale, but rather manifests in unique ways on a case-by-case basis. In terms of next steps on the project, our team is polishing the audio elements and preparing the final cut for the screening in class. Through the intercultural exchange, our team has learned not just elements of Czech/American culture, but also how to collaborate on a technical front. This has been especially apparent as we finalized the editing process. Splitting the post-production responsibilities across three different people, we navigated the tricky process of sending footage remotely, communicating in an asynchronous environment, and coordinating a timeline across different timezones. In the end, we’ve been able to come together as a team and create a coherent work. Ultimately, this showcases how developing communication technologies no longer make geographic distance a barrier to collaborative storytelling.