Issues of Communication – Why Online Production Meetings Might Be A Bad Idea

This week was filled with necessary (and unnecessary) production meetings for the Teacher Central project. Unnecessary in the regard that we initially also made use of online production meetings that seemed to promise more flexibility and accessibility for pre-production and planning in general but turned out to do just the opposite of that. But I will come to that issue in a bit, so bear with me.

At first, I want to start with the necessary aspects. Since I had suggested in our first real life production meeting last Friday, that the script should be finished and locked down by our online production meeting on Monday 18th, and the storyboard done by today’s production meeting, I followed up on Tuesday in person when I hadn’t yet heard anything back regarding either/or.

The Fallacy of an Online Production Meeting: Tuesday, 19th

In our improvised online production meeting that took place later that day instead, I was sent the third draft of the current script for comments in my function as an editor and had a read-through of the script, entering digital comments and questions into the word document as I went along. The same evening, I then sent the annotated document back to him in order to give Craig as scriptwriter, producer, and director a general map throughout his script.

Within this document, I reminded director of his pending decision on the editing style in general and in particular with certain scenes to get a feeling of how he envisioned the piece to be edited and to see what I could bring to the table to make it work.

My Prospected Editing Work

Since he wanted to use a graph to visualise the three-act-story-structure, I was curious about his envisioned implementation on it and offered that we could digitally insert it in post and make it either look realistic, or appear like a hologram, or visually ‘push it in’ like an insert or title card.

In regard to the ‘brief intermission’ title cards that he wanted to use as a prompt for pause for the teachers, I asked him for the style he imagined and suggested either early silent film era, a modern style or even video game style to go along with it.

Along with the mentioning of location changes in the script, I then double-checked the option of possibly using another green screen within the area to make the shot work. Finally, as there were currently no other effects planned for or (in)directly suggested in the script, I furthermore flagged up the simplicity of the editing style for the project.

Taking Up Our Online Production Meeting: Wednesday, 20th

I then received his replies a day later in digital form, answering my questions in regard to the editing style. To summarise, he wanted to adapt the ‘jumpy’ editing style by replacing the jump – or reload lag – with a snap of the fingers, which I considered a nice adaptation since he did not want to take the video game idea completely.

However, with the rest of the editing questions, there were issues that needed addressing. With the graph, he settled on a digital insertion, but could not yet settle on the style. In regard to the title cards, he wanted a non-descript ‘modern’ style, as he did not want anything ‘too fancy’, but did not give an example of how he imagined the title cards to look like.

Looking at the use of another green screen, he admitted to wanting to bin the idea entirely and shoot everything on location. With my personal issue of the project edit being too simple for our level and experience, he dismissed a more complex edit as non-compliant with his idea.

Communication Issues

Since I did not share his opinion especially on the last bit and felt that we could definitely come up with a more creative adaptation of his script in regard to editing effects without watering down his idea, I asked to have this taken up as a matter for our real life production meeting on Friday 22ndto discuss more options and finally settle on the exact editing elements and research matters that reflect our collective brief.

I felt that the aspect of editing was hitherto taken up as a mere afterthought and not really considered in pre-production, albeit my flagging up regularly. Since I was not sure of the reason behind the halted communication, I was wondering, whether my attempts of communicating that issue were not efficient or persistent enough, or whether I was being too ambiguous in expressing what I meant.

Whilst I am usually an adherer of keeping production meetings short and simple – in my professional career so far, I’ve sat in too many meetings that could have been an email – I then had the idea that the reason why my concerns were not really taken up could lie in our use of ‘online production meetings’.

While they do seem like a flexible option to discuss matters of production, I felt that they do not really serve us well, as it makes it easier for people to misread or not pick up on urgent matters. Furthermore, the fact that online production meetings are purely in the realm of social media and thus somewhat intangible, it makes it easy for them to be mentally reframed as an inconsequential piece of information that can lead to it being completely forgotten.

Hence, my request to take it up as a matter for Friday.

A Real Life Production Meeting: Friday, 22nd

Today, our second real life production meeting ended up being called in by our cinematographer, as it sadly had been forgotten by our producer. And here another issue of pure online communication became apparent: As it turned out, neither the script nor the storyboard had been done. Although I was sent a third draft of the script with the request to make comments on it, and had commented on it, the final items had sadly not yet been implemented. Because of that, the storyboard was also not done yet.

Thus, we collectively put up the urgency of getting the script and the storyboard done. In order to achieve this, our cinematographer offered to help sketch the storyboard as part of his job role, but was denied by the director. Both the cinematographer and I then asked for access to the storyboard as soon as it was done in order to plan for shots, as well as for camera and editing techniques to go along with, to which our director agreed.

Since most parts of the comments I made seem to have gone unnoticed in the other medium, I again flagged up the fact that the script still seemed to account for a long take. With this, I pronounced the possible issue of this rendering the edit too basic for educational purposes. However, the director thought that this was less of an issue.

Since I disagreed with him on that point, I again flagged up on the simplicity of the editing style in other aspects, and offered to apply additional editing techniques, such as a digital trombone shot or morph edits for costumes and objects, that could enhance the story in other regards and which would not threaten or clash with his initial idea.

However, opinions tend to do differ, as he dismissed my ideas as unbefitting his idea. Lastly, we settled on the agreement that the script would finally be locked down on Monday, which would again be an online production meeting, due to multiple conflicting appointments across the crew.

Considerations

In the end, I feel that I am still lacking efficient communication skills. I am not sure whether I don’t manage to bring my points across verbally, whether it would have helped to bring some visuals along to illustrate what I was aiming for, or whether it is an issue of intonation that does make me sound either less urgent or almost hysterical, than I want to be, rendering my objections inauthentic.

Either way, I need to find out as quickly as possible.

References:

Anonymous (2018) How to solve communication issues when dealing with virtual teams [online] Image taken from: https://www.centurical.com/2017/07/05/how-to-solve-communication-issues-when-dealing-with-virtual-teams/ [Accessed on 22 February 2019]

HR Asia (2019) Communication [online] Image taken from: https://hrasiamedia.com/top-news/2015/new-gen-employees-expect-new-gen-workplace-communications/attachment/communication/ [Accessed on 22 February 2019]