From the pitch, I was never very confident about what direction my film would go in and to be honest I never really thought I'd get chosen to actually make my project. However the experience has taught me a lot and being a first time director, as I tend to lean more towards editing, made me learn a lot of new skills. I adapted a lot better than I thought to the role, as I'm not a very outspoken person generally. I think I would definitely consider going down a directing path in future.

Key skills that I learnt from being director:

• Listen to others ideas and not just focus on how you want the film to look
• Be understanding to the others in the group
• Be more assertive to ensure everyone is doing their jobs properly
• Remain positive and keep the other member's spirits high - an unhappy crew could ruin the final outcome
• How to work with interviewees and get my ideas across to them so as they understand the project

I really enjoyed working with Shahid, Lydia and Josh and together we had a lot of fun during the whole process. Of course as always, there were stressful times and moments where we got a bit confused about where to take the film, but we worked through this together.  I feel we worked very well as a group, Josh and Shahid present at all times when asked and Lydia being there when she could understandably to us all and I feel we bonded very well. I learnt to appreciate any hard work done by my group and seeing them help to bring my project to life, whenever it was not their own, made me recognise and value their effort and skills that they brought. Special acknowledgement to the extras that helped us, such as Thomas Doukinitsas, Rosie Coutier-Dutton, Harry Clarke and Rob Campion, who stayed around even when they didn't have to, and this taught me even more about team work. My favourite part of being in the team was seeing them light up when Anne and Leah said positive things about the rough edit, as we were all very nervous, and seeing them become more confident made me happy. 

The Film

The final version didn't really come out anything like I originally imagined when pitching, however I do think we created an interesting piece. I intended it to be a little more experimental, particularly with sound as it was meant to be remixed into more of a musical piece. In the end we chose a different route as we felt it worked better with the footage we got. I feel the strongest part visually of the film are the moments when the photos are held to the camera, as you can view the emotions in the people before their memories appear and this kind of sets a tone for what is to come. The sound was a little grainy in the interviews and little could be done to improve it as much as we tried, but I am looking at this as a learning curve to improve on this for future reference. Being present with Josh the entire way through the edit, I saw the amount of effort he put in to get it the way we wanted and this made me appreciate the editing a lot more throughout it, as I understand how hard it was to get it finalised as there were so many ways we could go and it wasn't always a clear end. Overall I am happy with what we produced, even though there are definitely areas to improve and ways to move forward with our skills. If I had to do the film again I would make sure everything was a little more organised and that I was more strict about what had to be done for when. I thoroughly enjoyed working on the project however and it has been a lot of fun.