To Team or Not to Team

With all the resources I’ve come to acquire, the experience in both editing platforms, group and partner activities, and personal preference, I’ve come to the final decision of working individually on the short film for the portfolio project this year. After trying out different combinations of my options, I am confident that this is the best way that I can produce the most quality project possible. 

This is evident for several reasons. The first being that I don’t have the best personality for working in groups on specific occasions. I enjoy working in groups for casual, daily activities, but I tend to get carried away or lose track of time while around peers, causing our overall productivity to go down. This is a psychological effect called social loafing; “Social loafing is the likelihood of individuals contributing less when working on a task as part of a group than when working on a task alone” (Pettijohn & Ahmed, 2010) I find that this dilemma becomes an obstacle for my team and I whenever we must collaborate, so I’d rather not risk a piece as valuable as this project on the psychological effects of being social with peers. As stated by (Pettijohn & Ahmed, 2010), “Social loafing generally increases with group size and decreases with task importance, potential for evaluation, uniqueness of individual contributions, and complexity of task.” In turn, if I were to work alone, I would have a better chance of more productivity and better-quality work. 

I’ve always been an advocate and pursuer of the arts, so working individually on something as artistic as film will be a task I am quite familiar and experienced with. Many styles and forms of art that are particularly eye catching and extravagant are from the era of surrealism. Surrealism isn’t much of a style or specific artform though, it was an entire cultural and artistic movement that developed in Europe in the early 20th century and have inspired following artists for years. With its irregular form and culturally moving aspects, “Surrealism is presented in its fullest sense, an aspirational movement of dreams and visions, grounded in the collective unease of societal taboos and the horrors of global conflict.” (Coburn, 2016) Many new concepts, styles, and artistic ideas were born from this movement and they will inspire and influence my following decisions as I form my portfolio for this class. 

To further solidify my decision, we did a few in class activities to see how we handled working with others and in groups to complete a task or come to decisions. The first was an evaluation of the social media of a peer, made to explore my fellow classmates and see how our personalities might interact. I chose my peer Kelly and her Instagram, which was full of beautiful pictures of her life, friends, family, and favorite activities. This activity taught me a lot about Kelly’s favorite aspects of her life, and that she enjoys sharing these on her social media with her peers. Although me and Kelly get along great and she is a great student, we both tend to be a bit overpowering, which may cause some conflict between making decisions about different part of our projects and overall wouldn’t be the best option. Another activity we did in class was the “Lost at Sea” team-building activity in which we had to order a list of 15 items from most to least importance to us if we were to be stranded out at sea. The first time around, you are to put the items in order yourself, the second time with a group, and finally the results of the most to least useful items are provided, and students compare both sets of answers they got to the “captain’s”. I received a much better score the first time around when I worked by myself than when I worked in the group. I think with a clearer head when I work individually, working with a group caused me to second guess myself and go with decisions the majority of group agreed on over my own.  

Overall, the combination of my personality in groups, the effects of social loafing, and artistic aspirations have led me to conclude that I will work on this portfolio individually. It is the best fit to help me achieve what I wish to in this project. With growth and experience, I will learn how to become more productive and efficient in groups, but for now, I am going to have an amazing time creating my own piece of media using persuasion, artistic value, and storytelling.