Writing “College Football Fans as an In-Group”

As a group we faced many challenges coming into this project; time always seems to be the biggest constraint on our lives and it was a large factor in this project. This was the first major group project most of us have done in college. We have all done major papers and research assignments before and during our college experiences, but this was our first experience with video. There are major steps that come before something can even be put on screen. Unlike a paper, a video has to have a storyboard, script, footage and editing. This type of editing is very different from a paper because it involves a lot of working parts, such as audio, sound, video and text. Video editing is way more complex and intricate than editing a normal college essay. For the distribution of the work in this project Jeffrey worked on editing, animating and drawing; Jeffrey was the main contributor of this project. Kirby wrote and narrated the script, as well as did many of the drawings. Frank helped Jeffrey with coming up with a storyboard and also did some of the video’s drawings. While Autumn diligently worked on the reference page. Our group faced many challenges in this project, but we were able to learn from our experiences in ways that will better us for the future.

The first major challenge was figuring out what kind of video we were going to do. Live action, or animation? None of us had ever done animation before, but at the same time, we couldn’t think of many ways to represent Kirby’s paper in live action. So we chose to do a very simple animation, more like a PowerPoint presentation than actual moving graphics, but it got the job done. Also, we felt like the animation had a more casual and comical tone, so it would be more friendly to a popular audience. Once we figured out what the format would be, the next hurdle was how to represent Kirby’s paper in drawn form in a creative way that would keep the audience entertained. This was a recurring problem for the entirety of the project, but it was solved by meeting up and sort of freewriting our ideas for drawings on a chalkboard or on paper; this process could last for hours. Another problem was when after the narration was done, we realized that our script was not only too long, but also had unnecessary parts in it. This problem came up later in the editing process, which was probably the most difficult and time consuming part of the whole project.

There wasn’t really a steep learning curve to the editing process, but the sheer amount of it did make it difficult to handle. Jeffrey took on the role of editor, and he spent many hours and late nights working on the video, editing out parts of the audio that were no good for the purpose of this assignment and making sure the new drawings came up at the exact moment they were supposed to, all while dealing with the frustrations of Windows Movie Maker. But it all worked out in the end, and even though some parts near the end are a bit sloppy because of energy constraints, it was the entire script, edited and animated, from start to finish.

Coming into this project, we did not think any of us really knew just how difficult working in a group for this video project would be. We started out very indecisive and never really established a concrete plan (i.e.- choosing whose paper to make into a video and what video style to go with). It wasn’t until the last possible day before Thanksgiving that we finally met up in the library and came up with a “divide and conquer” plan to implement over the holiday. Communication then became vital. We learned that in order to get the job done we had to find ways to stay in touch. Our main form of communication was with an app called GroupMe; this app allowed our ideas and comments to all be together in one place, even the the four of us were in separate locations. This showed us another significant aspect of group work: how to handle feedback both positive and negative.

We do believe that in the end taking into account each other’s’ opinion provided us with the opportunity to make our project the best it could possibly be. This was even more relevant during our in-class workshops; on two separate occasions our video drafts were shown to several other members of our class. Fortunately for us, a very popular response we got from the other students regarded our idea of using animations and how effective they believed it was. We were told that the animations were found appealing at times because they were comical and entertaining to watch, therefore our video was never really considered “boring” and ultimately fun to watch (the last thing anyone wants is to be called boring). However, we were also given some criticism, such as the need to clarify our thesis and suggestions on how to make our citations more popular, but this criticism was found to be extremely helpful for now we knew what parts of our video to really focus on. It was also a relief to hear the benefits of animations. Animations took commitment, everything had to be hand drawn and crafted into video manually. This was time consuming, so to hear that people were enjoying our animations encouraged us to continue with the idea and provided us all with confidence.

At the end of our first major experience in group work we learned many things that will help us further our college experiences as well as our future career paths. This will also help all of us in our future endeavors that involve working with others. We have learned how to handle and offer constructive criticism and the importance of communication with others. We all learned to respect each other’s opinions. From animation ideas and drawings to storyboard and script ideas everyone contributed their voice. There was no dominant voice that we should do this or that. We worked very well together in most aspects as a group and by doing so this project experience will better our group work in the future.

Jeffrey Embler, Thomas Kirby, Autumn Jackson, and Frank Ahearn