Introduction
For my final project, I was asked to create a project with the theme of community thought. When I was given the brief Immediately thought of making a documentary. I wanted to make a documentary because my past experience in making them would help me through the project as I know what I need to do for each stage of the project. For this project, I will have to plan out my entire idea and present a pitch to my peers of what I would like to create. After my pitch, I will have to go then and create my project and keep asking for peer feedback on what I can improve on my task. My project can be any type of creative media for example a game or a short film. I will have to conduct research into the different ways to be successful with whatever I choose to make.
Pre-production
To begin pre-production I created a mind map for my initial ideas on what I wanted my project to be on. I had two sides of my mindmap where my creative interests and my interests. I chose to do it this way as I could combine my interests with my creative interests to make a project that would keep my interest high throughout it. After I looked through my mind map I used it to create three SWAT analyses for the three ideas that I wanted to take forward into production. After I had generated my three ideas I had to narrow them down to one idea, the idea I chose initially was to create a documentary about the privileged and deprived areas of Bradford. After I had my idea to take forward to production I began creating a mood board on which I would show my thoughts on this topic through images. When I was making my mood board one of my lectures gave me the idea of interviewing the MPs for the areas that I wanted to showcase. The next task on the brief was to present a pitch to my peers where I would show my peers what my idea was and how I wanted to present it. Overall my pitch was a great success as I used my experience from completing this task in previous years, I felt very comfortable when presenting, and the feedback I received was a great help towards the rest of my pitch and moving forward to the next step which was doing my proposal. I found the proposal challenging due to having to include references that were relevant to my project, I found this difficult as I knew what I wanted to say but had to back it up with relevant research. to get over this problem I had to conduct a lot of research where I went onto different websites and looked through them to see if there was anything relevant on them. this process took longer than expected due to the problems I kept encountering. After my proposal, I began conducting research into the four areas that I was going to showcase, firstly I had to choose which areas I wanted to show I chose to showcase Ilkley (privileged) Bingley, and Saltaire (privileged) Girlington (deprived) Little Horton (deprived). After I had chosen the areas I wanted to show in my documentary I then began to look into some facts for each area that I could use throughout my documentary. I also began looking into the different MPs for each area that I would showcase, when I found the MPs for each area I began drafting up questions that I could ask in the interviews, I had to create different but similar questions for each MP so then my plan for the documentary that at this point I had in my head would have a nice story and flow to it. After I finished writing my questions I then drafted up an email with the help of my peers which I would then send to MPs. Within 20 minutes of sending the email, I got a response from one of the people I reached out to and began planning the interview. After my interview was arranged I then booked equipment that I would use to shoot my interview. Just before I was going to begin production I had to change my idea to showcase two areas instead of four. I chose to do this as I only received one reply from an MP that I emailed. I also chose to do this as it would make the whole project less time-consuming as I was worried that I wouldn’t finish before the deadline. So I chose to showcase Girlington (which would include an interview with the MP for that area) and Ilkley (which would have footage of the area and voiceover to go over what was filmed).
Production
To begin production I immediately ran into a problem When I booked out the equipment it was equipment I had never used before so I had to conduct research into how to use the camera that I had booked out. However, on the day of my interview, I had not conducted enough research and didn’t feel comfortable using the camera that I originally requested so I had to change equipment to what I had used before and something that I am comfortable with. However, what I am comfortable with is a lot lower quality than what I had booked out, to begin with. Overall my interview was a great success as I used skills that I collected from my end-of-year project last year to help me with this last year I did an interview so the skills are transferable. the whole interview went as planned and thankfully no footage was corrupted or anything so the whole process was a great success. After I had finished my interview my attention turned to gathering footage of Ilkley which I would have a voiceover to go over the footage. This process went very smoothly as I had pre-planned where I was going to go in Ilkley so I wasn’t just wandering around the area. I also picked the perfect day for filming as I wanted it to be sunny so then it would be more aesthetically pleasing for the audience. However when I originally on the day when I wanted to film it was very overcast so I decided to push that filming day back a couple of days until the weather got better. I did this knowing that it would mean I would have less time if I needed to go back and re-film certain bits but it was a risk I wanted to take to make the documentary more appealing to the audience. Overall the whole production process was a huge success as apart from the equipment issue I didn’t encounter any other problems. If I was to do this again I would make sure that I conduct enough research into how to use all the equipment before the day of production so then I didn’t have to switch cameras for worse quality.
Post-production
To begin post-production I wanted to edit my whole interview before doing anything else. I chose to do this as it was the longest part of my whole documentary so getting that edited first was my priority. When I began editing I immediately came across a problem that was the audio and video weren’t synched up this is fully my fault as I forgot to clap so then I could use that to synch up the audio, this problem was very time-consuming as it meant I had to stop editing my interview for a few hours and fix this problem. When I had fixed this problem I made the decision to add text to the question I asked before the MP answered it, I chose to do this as it would give the audience a clear idea of what I was asking so then they knew the answer. I also believe this gave my documentary a professional look and made it flow better with the text. After I finished editing my interview I moved on to doing my voiceover to go over the footage that I had filmed of Ilkley. I chose to show Ilkley in this way as I thought it would be the best way for the audience to be engaged and see how different the areas were. One problem I ran into was my footage for Ilkley was significantly less than the interview with the MP for Girlinton, this was a problem as originally I wanted it to be even so then both areas were shown at similar times for the audience to see. If I was to do this project again I would have some more footage of Ilkley so the documentary wasn’t as one-sided towards Girlington.
Conclusion
To conclude, my project was a great success as I encountered little problems throughout the whole thing, this led to everything running smoothly and I completed the project in the time frame that I was given. Highlights of the project would include interviewing an MP, as this is something that while in pre-production I never thought would happen. I am also very happy with how the finished documentary came out as it looked exactly how I wanted it to and the message that I was trying to show throughout it was clear for the audience to view. Some of the problems I encountered can be very quickly resolved if I was to do this again for example, making sure the equipment I have booked out is something that I am familiar with so then what I am filming could be captured in the best quality. Overall this project was a massive success and it has given me new skills which I can take forward to future projects I will do.
I confirm that the attached assessment is all my own work and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself and sources have been appropriately referenced.