organizationalability

In CA2 I described myself as organized and hadn't run into any unexpected problems in my projects. While I was working on CA2 I was also working on the 'Analog Love' project, which is why I didn't include it. Despite of that my teachers pointed out that I did manage to deal with unexpected problems: corona, because I had to adapt to continue this project at home.
Now in CA3 I want to reflect on what it was like to do that. Besides that, I have further improved in my ability to plan and organize. Planning has never been so important to me, as it has been during the past months to keep myself motivated and have a healthy structure.

When I was working on 'Analog Love', corona happened. The project was already hard to do, because I had made it way too big and this wasn't making it any easier. My original idea was to hire a studio in school, put all the car scenes in one long row and film it in one shot. But then the school closed down and I had to completely rethink how I was going to realize this project. Luckily I could lasercut the props, a couple of days before the school would completely close down.

I planned in 2 weeks to paint and glue all the props together, but working at home took a toll on my motivation. I didn't do as much as I wanted to everyday. I think the biggest reason for this was, because I was doing it by myself. Making all these props with a one-man-team is simply too much. It ended up taking longer than 2 weeks.

At some point I had 4 days left to record the scenes and edit them. I couldn't build up all the scenes and put them in a row as I had planned, because my room was simply too small. So I had to build one scene at a time, record it and build it down again. This was very time consuming, but it worked.
Unfortunetly I couldn't take the one shot I had in mind, but I edited all the scenes behind eachother with cuts.

Despite the drastic change of plans, I was still happy about this project. It's one of the most complicated projects I have done and I think I still managed to do it justice. This project taught me so much about planning, management, what I am capable of and what not. I'm sure the next time I'll work on something like this I'll be prepared. I would make a realistic planning and not make it so hard for myself.

The first half of this schoolyear has been very different to what I was used to. I've had class in school maybe 3 times. I was aware that if I wanted to make the best out of this time, I should do the best to keep myself motivated, make good plannings and not isolate myself.

For 1,5 month I took on a very large amount of assignments, that was almost too much. I did this, because I got to know myself better over the years and realized I work best if I am under pressure. I figured this would be a good way not too slumber and keep myself going. Besides this I worked at school whenever I could. It felt good to go out of the house and 'go to work'.

I had to do the major project, the practice, an essay for theory, a commission, the open call of IFFR for a poster, a commission for a book and find an internship (eventhough I decided to take a half gap-year, I still tried to look for an internship during this time). It was important to me to do the assignments from outside of school, because I wanted to get more recognition. It may be no surprise that I was incredibly stressed during this time.

I never really kept an agenda, but this was the time I realized I really needed one. It has been a life-changer. I planned everything in and it gave me so much peace. I could see that everything was going to be alright if I stuck to my agenda. I've always struggled with giving myself a break and not work on something. I'd always feel like I have to be working on something. It was easier to give myself a break, when I was done with something and there wasn't anything on the agenda anymore for that day.

Eventhough people told me I should drop one of the things, because I was taking on too much work, I managed to do everything. I was aware that it was too much, but I knew that if I managed my time I could do it. It didn't feel impossible or unrealistic to me. I'm glad I stuck to what I thought was best, because I have made a lot of work that I'm really happy about in this time. Besides that, I'm going to keep an agenda forever.