Oral History Project Frustrations in The Daily (2014)

I am feeling really frustrated today.

I am frustrated with my group member for my oral history project. I did three interviews, each an hour in length, and I produced thorough summary transcripts for each (min 6 pages). She did 2 interviews, one was only 30 minutes, and she wrote about a page for each. She has been continually unavailable. She volunteers doing orientation stuff on campus, but it seems to me that if it is getting in the way of meeting a group member for a project for an upper division practicum, and it is getting in the way of completing your work, you need to fucking prioritize. She has continuously tried to push me out of the editing process. She messaged me the other day saying that she was just going to "render the video now" before I had had /any/ say in the final version. I had to chew her out to get her to meet me in a google document, where it turned out that her work had been complete and total shit. I had to write all of the voice-overs because her writing is terrible. I suggested the order for the entire documentary. We then met up the next day, on my insistence, and went through every clip and I suggested a solid order for the entire documentary. It had been left so so late that there was no way that I could go with her to do the final edits, and I would have slowed the process down anyways because I am not experienced editing video (which is why I had originally tried to insist on doing a /podcast/. Like the rest of the class). So, I poured over it with her, I suggested locations to put things and things to cut out. She told me it would take her no time to "polish it off".

Today we presented in class and it was the first opportunity I had to see the "completed" video. It was /rough/. I wouldn't say she "polished" anything. The transitions between clips were abrupt, the music started and stopped abruptly, the sound was uneven and hard to hear it parts and deafeningly loud in others. AND she cut out parts that I wanted and put other parts in awkward places that we hadn't agreed on. It was an embarrassing mess. So, she has been reassuring me all semester about how "easy" a video project would be, she insists repeatedly that it would be "easier" for her to edit on her own because she has experience, refuses to find time for us to work on it together, and then produces complete unpolished garbage? I am /beyond/ frustrated at this point.

It wasn't all bad I /guess/. The voiceovers I wrote were great and I did a good job of fielding questions about the project. My professor for my Gendering Environment class was there because she works with a non-profit that another group worked with and she was one of the narrators for their project. Her and the other woman from that organization were very active in asking questions and Tiffany (my other professor) asked what else we planned to do with the work. I explained that we were going to be polishing off the longer documentary as well as producing a few shorter videos for the societies to use for event promotion and volunteer recruitment after the end of the semester. During the break, Tiffany approached me and really enthusiastically started talking to me about the burgeoning literature around queer suburban identity and seemed really excited about our project. She has done some related oral history work with regards to Lethbridge, Alberta, where she used to live. She said she would talk to me about it on Monday (when I have class with her), but she seems like she wants to work with me to expand the project in some way, possible working on something together. Which would be awesome.