Evaluation
Evaluation from 21/3/22 to 21/4/22, from the start of the project till now I have been confident with my work and my documentary idea. The main reason I have been confident is because I feel like my blog/written work has got significantly better over my time doing my media course. I believe that my work so far in this project is good. However, I am starting to struggle in the pre-production and production section. This is because I believe I may not get all the interviews that I want to get. With some contacts I have, I will be able to get some interviews with primary school teachers. Also, getting my college teacher interviews will be easy, this is because my lecturers could possibly help me get in contact with some teachers around the campus. Overall, through the first month I believe, I have made some good progress with the start for the FMP for the first year of media level 3. 21/4/22 to 3/5/22, from this short time frame I have had lots of things to do from blog analysis to working on getting interviews planed and ready to record. I have found this past week hard to manage, however I have enjoyed the work. Planning the interviews, getting the interviews was easier than I thought. While I did not get all the interviews, I wanted I still managed to get some good interviews lined up and ready to shoot. Blog work, there has been a large work load over this short time, while I have enjoyed it, I did find it very hard to manage. This is because to complete all the work at a high level I have to sacrifice some of my time at home to make sure I am getting all the detail I need in my blog work. Overall, I have enjoyed the work because it has been challenging to manage the blog work and preparing to film. As I go into my filming stage of this project I am going in confident as I believe I have got 3 good interviews lined up for my documentary. Along with this I plan on getting up early to film establishing shots around the outside of the college building, for safety reasons I will not be getting establishing shot outside Kelly's (interviewee) home and I believe I will not be about to film around Kelly's work place. 3/5/22 to 17/5/22, within this time frame I have managed to complete all my blog work and get all my filming done. This time frame has mainly been getting ready to edit while looking for stock footage to go alone side my voice over at the start, I have managed to create the short voice over and get ready to record the audio for the voice over. 17/5/22 to 24/5/22, Within this timeframe I managed to create a first and second draft for my documentary. With the feedback I got I managed to improve the video with each edit. Overall, I am very happy with the edit so far and that footage I captured. When I capture the extra footage of Nick and Sam helping students this will make my documentary significantly better and complete my final version.
Filming my first interview, while filming my first interview I was excited to see the outcome of my documentary. To set up I had some help from my lecturer, this made the setting up process very quick. While my lecturer was setting up audio equipment, I was adjusting the cameras to get the angles I want for my final product. I did not get my first interviewee (Nick) to do anything extra like hand movement's for cut aways, I may regret on not getting that extra footage if my edit doesn't go the way I think it's going to go. However, I did get a mid-shot that captured Nicks hand movements. It will be hard to edit the video because I don't have much footage to play round with. To sum up the first interview it went very well the interview was done quickly and the interviewee has very good responses to my questions. The set-up process was quick and smooth and overall couldn't have gone better. One thing that I do not like about the footage is it looks a little bit grainy however the footage is usable.
Filming my second interview, during the second interview the interviewee (Sam) stumbled on his words a couple of times but I like that because it made his responses seem real. To set up in the studio room was quick and easy. This is because the room is very small and it did not take too long to set up the camera angles. There was one mistake though and that was the height of the camera. This was a problem because the tripod would be too high or too low. The interviewee helped me adjust the tripod to his eye level which really helped during the filming process. To sum up the second interview did not go as well because there was a little delay and we started it a later than planned. However, the interview did go very well there was some retakes on questions but the final result was very good and perfect for my final video.
Editing my first draft, while doing my first edit I thought it was very easy to piece together. This because both the interviews that I have in the documentary have very little mistakes in them, all I needed to do was link up the audio to the video which was not too hard to do. 19/5/22, my first edit was put on hold because I need to record my voice over and my interview questions. When this is done, I will be able to complete my first edit and get feedback on it to improve the final result.
Editing my second draft, while I was editing my second draft, I made all the changes that my lecturer suggested to me. I change the intro footage and add the extra camera angles from the second camera. This made the documentary much better. From this second version I have learnt that having verity in footage makes a documentary much better. From the second version I will be creating another version that will be the final version with some extra footage of Nick and Sam helping students and I will be creating a outro with a short scrip, this will be the final touches to my edit.
Filming with the gimbal, during the filming I would ask everyone that was in frame if there were ok with being filmed and everyone said they didn't mind getting filmed. This helps me a lot because it means i don't need to do a permission to film for everyone that was in the frame. Also when you join the college you sign a form asking if you accept to being filmed. Filming with the gimbal was very fun there, some times the camera would go at a angle and I don't know how to sort that out manually. I turned it off and back on and that would centre it perfectly.
Creating my final draft, for my 3rd version I shot some more footage that really helps make the documentary better. I believe the extra footage improves the documentary because it adds more variety in the footage. Showing Nick and Sam talking to students really improves the result of the 3rd version. However, I did run into some problems. For example, When I recorded my outro voice over, I added the file into my google drive and when I went to edit the audio at home I was unable. This set me back a little bit as I could not add the final piece to my documentary which would have complete my final draft. However, this is easy to work around and I will be able to add it before the final date.
Pre-production evaluation, during the pre-production stage of my project I was not sure where I wanted to film making some of the pre-production hard to complete. However, when I had a specific location to film in the pre-production paper work was easy to fill out and complete to put in my blog. Some pre-production like research tracker were hard to complete as I did not know how to complete the paper work. When I knew how to complete the paper work I complete the research quite quickly. Overall, there was not much pre-production paper work that was challenging as I have completed it multiple times in different projects that I have done in media level 2.
Creating my title, when I created my title, I wasn't sure what my documentary would be called. I used one of my lecturer's tutorials to create the animation for my title. A student in my class helped me with the name of my documentary. While doing the animation for my title I ran into some problems, one problem was the text was not going to the centre of the screen. To solve this problem the text was manually moved to the centre with the help of my lecture. Overall, I am very happy with the end result of my title animation. My lecturer's tutorial was around 12 minuets, so creating my title animation did not take long to do.
Recording my voice over, doing my voice over was quite easy as I did not have much to say for my narration. The studio was already set up because of my lecturer. The recording was very good quality but needed some editing. This is because I stumbled with my word a couple times. Overall, this was easy to fix as it was easy to put together the good parts of my voice over. I am very happy with the end result as I believe the way I edited the audio made it significantly better. recording within. The studio helped improve the end result along with the editing that was done.
Feedback
Feedback on my first and second draft, with the first set of feedback I got from my lecturer I made some changes to the things that were outlined (feedback is in screenshot below). The main thing that was outlined was the introduction to my documentary. Some of the footage was very pixelated so I changed it to the footage that I captured form the outside of the college, other changes involve adding the extra camera angles I captured while filming. These were big changes that helped the documentary a lot and made it significantly better. From the second set of feedback I got there was a small amount of thing I need to add. For example, a voice over to conclude my documentary and footage for the teachers I interviewed helping a student. When I get this footage my documentary will be finished and ready to mark.
For this final set of feedback before the resubmission my lecturer suggested that I change the footage I have for my outro. I made some changes to my outro that was not too hard to do, as I could load up the previous file that was my intro animation that all I need to do was change the footage. When this was done I added the animation to documentary completing the final version of my documentary.
Equipment used to film the shots around the college I used a gimbal. The setup was very complicated and my lecturer helped me get the equipment set up. The end result was significantly better with this equipment, if I was to shoot without the equipment the shots would be very shaky and unprofessional. Overall, I am very happy I used this equipment to shoot the extra footage. This will make my monolog better with this extra footage, this would also add more variety with my footage during the mid sections of my video. For example, when Nick or Sam is talking about what teaching is like for them I can intercut the classroom footage to make the footage more eye-catching.
Pros, the gimbal is very good for getting shots while moving. Very good for all types of panning shots. Easy to use when set up.
Cons, complex set up, sometimes the gimbal would tilt creating a dutch angle and I don't know how to change it back, however turning it off and back on make the camera go back to the centre.
FMP Pitch Evaluation
PowerPoint design, I think my overall design was ok. The design could have been better but it got my point across by having a background picture of the school/colleges that I plan on getting my interviews at. I liked my design but ran into some problems while creating it. There was a specific function that I could not due to the titles/heading so I had to come up with a backup plan, it was good and did look nice but could have been better. I think my font and text size was big and readable. To make it more appealing I could have changed the font. However, I think it was fine. One thing I could have changed was the colours, I used two colours and there was very minimal orange making the primary colour white. The white did stand out from the darker background picture.
PowerPoint content, I believe my PowerPoint had all the points I wanted to cover on it. I think I was lacking on the first page; this is because I don't have the title of my documentary yet. Therefore I think it looked professional and would have given an unprofessional look for just the front page, the page that is meant to pull in and get the person you are pitching to more interested in your idea.
Length of pitch, from an out perspective I think the pitch would appear to be a good length. The pitch overall was not too long and I gave all the information on my idea to my lecturer, answering all the questions in a timely manner. Maybe my pitch could have been shorter in length because the start of my pitch felt a bit long and drawn out compared to the other parts of my pitch.
Clarity & confidence of voice, during the pitch I think my voice was not confident or shy but a mix of both. This is because the start of my pitch was not as good and well delivered as I would have wanted it to be compared to my later slides of my pitch when I became more confident.
Body language, like the other sections of my pitch I believe the start of my pitch could have been better body language wise. This is because I started to become more confident the further I went into my pitch. While describing or try to explain things I tend to be more expressive with my arms and hand moving them around while explaining this is shown in the pitch video.
Eye contact, throughout the whole pitch I maintained eye contact with my lecturer. There were a couple of times where I did get side tracked and looked away and at the camera. Overall, I think I presented myself and my ideas well. When I was talking about a main point on my pitch, I looked at the slide moving my attention to the slide to give a strong delivery of that point.
Questioning, from all the questions that I got asked by my tutor I believe I did a good job at answering all the questions. From the start till the end, I was asked a wide range of questions about my documentary idea. When I reached the final slide which had any final questions, my lecturer had no more questions. I believe I did a good job of answering the questions that were given to me by my lecturer because there were no more questions for me at the end of the pitch.
To sum up, I think I did a good job with my pitch. My pitch design was basic but got the right message across to my lecturer and the way I presented myself was rocky at the start but then got better as I went on in my pitch. The overall length was short but it could have been condensed a little bit more. Throughout the pitch I started to build more confidence as I went through it. This is because I realised there was no reason to be nervous as the pitch would help me build up to my final product.