Commissions - Project Evaluation

Evaluation

Overall i think the project turned it self around after the post-production process was finished. We had a few hiccups during this entire unit but it all turned our great in the end. We began with our pitching ideas and overall i think when we came to a conclusion of doing it about young drivers Zoe + Helen were very happy with that idea, it pitches to young audiences and even older audiences. At the beginning i was very worried about starting this unit because i had never watched a proper documentary before and i did not really know what it was about, but starting my research and watching a lot of documentaries on BBC3 really expanded my knowledge about them. I was also worried about writing the transcripts and the overall final script but when Alex and Katie started to do them it did not look to hard.

I think we all worked so hard on this project and tried our best to make sure the visuals, effects and most importantly SOUND is done perfectly.I think we all were a little bit skeptical at the beginning since Zoe wanted for us to add extra bits that might have made the project overall better but we simply did not have time to reshoot, so that is one think that really needed improving! We could have added a police officer talking about young drivers and how many deaths have been caused by them.

When we were looking for people to include in this documentary it was difficult. We really wanted to have a driving instructor talk about the difficulties for young drivers and how long it takes for them to pass, but since all of these instructors were busy and never had time to meet with us almost every instructor fell through. We though next time we should offer maybe £20-30 for 1 hour since driving instructors make that every hour, it would have been a waste for them to do it for free. This is one of the things Zoe told us to do, but we did not do it quick enough. On the other hand we still got to interview a professional Insurance Broker who gave us valid facts and figures to prove our theory which was fantastic, without Samantha Joslin we would not be able to back up any of our theories. Without statistics in a documentary your audience will not believe you and what you are saying. Alex was fantastic at presenting and i feel like he really connected with the audience and got the answers for us in the end. I feel like our entire team worked very well together and we all pulled our weight. 

All of ours locations were easy to access since they were either our own homes or offices that we had access to so it was not difficult for us to get any location, which was fantastic and took some pressure off us. We were not so good at timing and planning our filming days, since all of us live in different town's and Jason does not drive it was a challenge for us to meet up on the same filming shoots. Even though we made it work where one days it would be Me, Alex and Jason and on other days it would have been Katie, Alex, Jason we did try and manage it as well as we could but it could have been improved a lot. 

By using clip mic it was the best idea we had ever had! They worked like magic, we did not have to worry about cables on the floor or any kind of hazards that would interrupt us while shooting. It was also great since Alex was presenting and we can hear his voice loud and clear even when he is driving/moving, this means that he shots some scenes himself EVEN without a crew and that was al possible because of the clip mic's and Go-Pros. This made our documentary even better since we could do multiple things in one day, the kit gave us many opportunities. There is always a lot of room for improvement, but in contrast to my last project we had used many shots and GV's we had so many to look through and implement into our projects which was fantastic. Every shot that we had we made sure to put in the correct place so it would make sense, we wanted to make sure that we have establishing shots for every location that Alex was in since we wanted to make sure that the audience is aware of where Alex is going or what he is about to do. 

We had issues where the grading was really bad in some clips, this is where Gavin came in and used a program that made the grain go away. This was fantastic but even with that the clip itself was just too dark; so i took it under my wing and tried to really colour correct it the best way i could so that we could see Alex and also the fantastic background behind him. When colour correcting i had learnt to put 'Adjustment Layers' above my timeline so i didn't have to edit separate clips one by one. This really saved time and made the project look even better. Overall the post-production process took a long time and was very difficult and took some patience. We all decided to split clips and interviews to each edit so it could be done quicker and easier, this really worked well and we got the editing done even quicker. One difficult thing we found was that our project was a little boring and went on for too long, so we decided to cut out the boring parts from the interviews and implement funny clips and funky music so that our audience is not bored and doesn't stop watching! 

The lighting looked great in almost every shot except some of the beginning where the undertones are yellow and green, this wasn't very pleasing to the eye so i also tried to colour grade that and make it look more pleasing. We had also included a time-lapse which look FANTASTIC it really made the documentary stand out and made it look fun and interesting which is what Zoe said we should do. It gave it that funky urban feeling that we wanted, with also adding the music in the background we started to really enjoy it. 

With including the time-lapses it really stood out, i myself love looking at things that are fast paced. Since we were doing a documentary about driving and mostly about YOUNG drivers they are know to drive fast and speedy, the time-lapses really reflect that and make you want to carry on watching. We had also filmed one at night and the other during the day. As i mentioned before we had many shots filmed.

Overall i feel like we really disliked the project that we made the beginning, but when we started to receive feedback and really worked hard at adding establishing shots and expanding the variety of colours the project really came together. We didn't think that this project would be good enough but after meeting up together many times and talking about changes or additions to the project we just made it better and better every time and we are so proud of that. We all split up and helped each-other do a lot of things at once and this is a great example of teamwork. It was a shock to us at first to work in a team since this was our ever first team group effort in a project, we thought it would be difficult to agree to each-others ideas but it was so easy and brilliant. We took each-others ideas and criticism and made the best of it. We could have worked better on the filming days together where we helped each-other out more than just doing shots by ourselves but as i said that is what we will improve on for our next project that is to come.

Final Cut