In the beginning of the year our team was not very driven. We weren’t able to get a lot of work done, and I feel partially responsible for that. The problem being that we didn’t have a clear idea of where we were or where we needed to go.
It seemed like a cloud over our potential progress. However, our team realized that we needed to be more self directed, so we started knocking down challenges one by one, going from interview to interview and clearing out the ideas that were slowing us down.
We grew by understanding that, while these ideas about what our film could be about and its potential in all the directions were helpful to start up, now was the time settle in and decide on where we wanted to end up.
Now we have a destination, and everyone on our team knows exactly what they have to do and when they should do it to carry there. A few months ago, we didn’t even know who exactly we should showcase in our film, but in time spanning a little over a month we have knocked down 3 important interviews and collected lots of b-roll.
These next few weeks are poised to be just as successful, if not more. We have more b-roll to film, events to go to, and papers to sign to make our project more valid and thought provoking.
Before our next retreat, I plan on thinking more in the way of an audience and how we can cater to them inside our film. I will also be interested in how to keep a viewers attention, and so I plan on watching as many documentaries in as much as a wide variety of styles as I can, and then seeing how interesting they were to me and why. maybe this way i can attribute different factors of interest to different crowds. for instance I would watch a documentary, think abut what audience that attracts, and see if our audiences line up, or if that same audience they attract would be drawn to our film for the same reasons.

Our team has always had pretty good communication with each other, and it has only improved. With the scrum board acting as our navigation, our eyes are ll on the same prize and were on a fine path to getting this done. there was one situation when we didn’t know who was making contact with interviewees and that went unsettled for a while, but besides that our communication has been pretty smooth I would say.

as far as involved citizenship goes, we actually went to the voting polls this past weekend and took videos of the town hall. we interviewed(without a camera) a man running for a position on the select board and we discussed with him how we can get our town to net 0 and what our priorities should be regarding infrastructure. he had some interesting views about expenses to add as he was put in charge of some building for a long time. all in all it was a good talk and I think we were able to come to a good understanding by the end.