Evaluation

I can genuinely say that this project was something special. This was a positive and collaborative achievement that each member of the team should be proud of, and I am proud of each of them too. I believe on a more personal note that after the disastrous and controversial self-reflection I gave the last project, I have grown up a lot when it comes to acceptance of team collaboration and building up friendly foundations. Am I perfect yet? No, and I never will be, but I genuinely think that this time around there has been some really positive team collaboration, and this time I was incorporated into that, rather than trying to be beyond that at any point. This is a mindset that I am proud of change and something I want to continue to adapt to and become the better version of myself that I planned to be when moving down here.

Contrary to what I expected approaching this project, I really enjoyed the quick turnaround that we had, which sure was stressful in the element, however, the outcome on the other side has been immensely strong. Having Adam complete phone calls to contributors constantly due to my personal lack of phone confidence was a real moral boost for the whole team, and whilst in the end, none of these phone calls, unfortunately, amounted to any successful contributors, it was still appreciated across the board. In fact, morale was immensely high throughout the group when it came to making this project, we all wanted to get the work done and we were heading in the same direction. Whenever a minor hiccup inconvenienced our work, there was always somebody there to lift your shoulders and help you out or push you in the right direction. From my perspective at least, there was just an end goal and we all wanted to reach it together.

As the producer of this project, I felt quite an overbearing weight with the responsibility I knew I had to work with, not because of any particular person, but because of the leadership status. But in all honestly, that is the stuff I thrive off. Being responsible to get everything completed in an efficient time frame, whilst also ensuring the team is happy and feeling ok, is very important to me and it is a role I have dealt with well. For future reference however I would like to not get as stressed, it is becoming apparent to me that it is something that I often push off onto other people quite easily and I don't want to allow that emotion to overcome me as easily in the future. 

Also having to look after an industry veteran like Bhasker due to my role and my correspondence with him did cause my heart to be racing at a rapid pace all day. The pressure of ensuring the man was well looked after, happy and comfortable with each of the actions we got him doing as well as covering his expenses, all of which being conducted to a highly professional standard for the whole group. For me personally, it felt almost like a ride-or-die situation in terms of prospects of the path I want to go down in the industry. If I messed it up, it would give me a precedent to do better, if I did it well, it would boost my confidence to reach out further and keep moving my way up the ladder. Thankfully the latter happened, with an offer from Bhasker to which, if we ever wanted him for a future project, he would be 100% down to collaborate again. But I also have to thank the team for being so collaborative and getting the filming done efficiently, to the point where we had everything we needed from Bhasker within three hours.

Something I wish we had done differently though was a plan for more b-roll footage within our package. It often makes the footage drag out for a long time within the editing timeline with little to no action happening on screen. However this is minor, we were focused on trying to secure people to even be in our project in the end and this was very much put on the back burner. On top of that, due to our subject matter of bitcoin and cryptocurrency being a very digital space, it meant that it was hard to come up with ideas of physical things to film for this production to fill the gaps, so the better outcome in the group's opinion was to not to be too quirky and experimental and stick to the BBC News style that we wanted to go for.

Overall I would say that this was a success! I want to thank the team for being so amazing throughout with every skill in their arsenal being used to its highest potential. I also am extremely grateful to all the people who were willing to voluntarily take time out of their day and join our project to bring it to the place it is now. I am looking back now with very positive memories of what we made and I hope everyone continues to make magic in the next project.

- Josh Sears