Week 5-6: Refocusing

Over the course of the past month or so I noticed a trend of our productivity deteriorating. Starting with only a couple, to the majority in our last meeting, when asked what progress they have to show, members of our team have stated "I have been focusing on my other classes, I haven't done anything". This excuse spiraled to being the majority of group members responses, with some members citing it every single Wednesday meeting we have so far held. This, in my opinion, is a problem. What is the point of holding Wednesday meetings if there is no progress to spark discussion or updates to inform the rest of the group of? My answer, is none, and that needs to change. Last meeting we had 5 of 8 members cite other classes and busyness as an excuse to not do work outside of our Friday studio classes. I addressed the situation to the group in our Wednesday meeting and quite bluntly told the group that this production needs to be prioritized just as much if not more than other classes, and that our other classes are not an excuse for us to not be working on this one. The meeting lasted a brief 30 minutes, (shorter than any other so far), and I spent the night trying to find a new, more accountable method of keeping members productive enough to have semi-weekly meetings like we are. Up until this point, I had been loosely going around asking people what they wanted to work on and when they thought they could have it finished by. This was resulting in it seeming more like volunteer work than a normal responsibility of our team, as well as a calendar of messy and unrealistic deadlines. I had an idea of how we could re-organize our deadlines, and on Thursday jumped into a Zoom Meeting wit h my Professor Howard Cook. We talked for a while and it seemed like my idea would help take us in a more productive direction so I decided to pitch it in class the next day. Friday rolls around and we are missing two group members due to external circumstances, but have a really productive conversation with our Professors and take away that it would be beneficial to us to refocus our efforts less on production goals and more on story revision, storyboarding, camera work and other more story focused pieces. We re-prioritized our individual work that day in class, working on story specific things and working to get all our pieces together four our next Iterative Review. In this time with the group I apologized to the group to those that might think i came off strongly and asked them to pull me aside or DM me if it ever feels like I am overstepping my role. We talked and it seemed like I was just over anxious about the way the last meeting ended. Everyone was in high spirits and looking to get some work done in the class period, and I pitched my idea: I had originally been asking people what they think they can do and when, but instead pitched that we have a set deadline of every Friday. It doesn't matter how big or small the work that a team member assigns themselves is, as long as it is done on Friday and they can talk about progress on Wednesday. I am anticipating that people will continue to miss their own Friday deadlines, and at that point we will talk about the consequences of missing deadlines that we outlined in our contract. Apologies about the lengthiness of that update, last notes, worked on more enviornment modeling and Forest creation with Mash Network.