Blitz Proj. Zaniness

Today was the day that we did a blitz. Blitzing, meaning we were going to put together a short commercial (parody), write, shoot, edit, and complete a project in a little under three hours. I'm familiar with the concept from working on the 48 hour film project and WiscKino, but never before had I seen shorts made in three hours.

If anything, it was just good to see the students coming together and making a film project. I was curious to see whether or not the students would actually be able to pull it off. Not because I did not think they were capable of it, but because the task is extremely difficult for professionals, let alone students with little experience doing a task such as this one.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of the students really get into the project. Not all of the students were overly excited to jump in, but a lot of this could do with the fact that the weather was not great, this was first thing in the morning, and such a demanding format as a blitz could turn off students who are either afraid or not used to failure, because unfortunately in such a high stakes concept, failure is actually rather common.

The group I worked with put together a parody video on Madison, tongue in cheek commenting on the construction and various holes in the Earth around campus as being a part of the "new and vibrant" city. Since I'm not very familiar with the students, it was hard to determine which students were more suitable for tasks (filming, writing, editing, etc.) than others. Although I feel that some of them were put into positions they were not comfortable with, they came together in the end to complete a project, which if they don't realize now, is an excellent skill to obtain, the ability to produce on time. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if they'll be willing to do a project like this in the future, although I did see some editing skills in the students that were impressive to say the least. It would be great to see some of these students at the WiscKino events, hopefully this experience will turn a few on to the idea.