Week one
This week I began reading through the brief and collecting some general ideas for my project by creating different mind maps with my initial ideas. From seeing the brief I initially thought of making a short film where I would show my local area through photography, but as i read the brief more i realized that the original idea wouldn’t fit the brief I had been given. Towards the end of the week, I began thinking about the 3 different ideas that i could carry forwards to the week after where I would complete a SWOT analysis for each idea. The strengths for this week would include generating 3 ideas which I did quickly and had 3 ideas that were different but fell under the documentary category. when i first saw the brief i knew i wanted to make a documentary as from my past experiences i thought the documentary would’ve been the most appropriate. A weakness that i encountered this week was making sure the ideas i created hit the main brief goal: to link to the community. i found the hardest bit of this week was finding ideas that linked back to the brief and the community aspect of it.
Week two
This week I found three of my best ideas that I could take forward into production and did a SWOT analysis for each of the three projects to decide which to take forward. I struggled to create three good ideas, which led to this part of the project taking longer than expected. To help generate ideas I asked my peers in my class for some help. Also this week i had to pitch my idea to my peers. I created a short but effective PowerPoint where i explained the original idea of my project. overall the pitch was a success and my prior experience with pitching ideas in front of an audience from past projects that i have completed. i believe that i was clear with my pitch and got across what i wanted to do and why. the peer feedback that i received from my pitch backed up this as they all knew what my project was and why i wanted to do it. After my pitch, i began working on 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.
Week three
This week I began creating mood boards and mind maps from the idea I chose. For my mood board, I had to conduct my first part of research though looking at what I would use for my inspiration. I then looked at what other mood board creators had made so I could use them as guidance and inspiration. this week I also began conducting my secondary research. for my research, I wanted to collect a variety of facts for the four places that I would be looking at. I also began looking at creative practitioners that I could use as inspiration. This week I didn’t really encounter any problems as all the work I was completing was quite simple just making mood boards and finding facts for the 4 areas that I would showcase. Even though it was time-consuming I did not encounter problems.
Week four
This week my main focus was beginning to reach out to local MPs that I wanted to interview. I had to conduct some more research into looking at who the MPs were for the areas I wanted to showcase. I set this whole week to organize my interviews and book out the equipment that I need to film these 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. this was quite a hard part of the week as two of the areas are drastically different so getting questions that were similar to ask all the MPs was difficult. 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 we began planning an interview as can be seen on the pre-production page.
Week five
This week didn’t exactly go to plan as I had to change my idea from showcasing 4 different areas in Bradford to just showing 2. I had to do this because I only received one reply from the emails I sent out in week 4 this led to me having to change my idea so then I would go ahead with the interview that I planned the week before. so I changed my idea to have an interview with an MP for one of the deprived areas and collect footage of a privileged area for the voiceover. I chose to have my documentary this way as I thought I could still tell a story by doing this and for the audience it would all make sense and have a nice flow to it.
Week six
This week I completed all my pre-production so then next week I am ready to begin making my documentary. To begin with this week I created a risk assessment for my production week next week and made an equipment list to which I would request for it to be booked out. when these two were complete I printed out the questions that I was going to ask as I knew I was going to record the audio on my phone so having the questions on hand would be a lot easier and more professional. After all my preparation was done for the interview next week I then began creating a script that I would voiceover to go with footage of the privileged area that I am going to film in the next two weeks. I didn’t really run into any problems this week as it was just preparation for my interview next week and writing a script for voiceover.
Week seven
This week I began production and encountered a few problems. 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. When my interview was finished I began preparing for the next week when I am going to film the privileged area so part of my preparation was to go onto google maps and look at the best places to film to show the wealth of the area. apart from the problem with the equipment I didn’t encounter any other problems and thankfully this week went very smoothly and it was very productive.
Week eight
This week my main goal was to get all the footage I need so then I could begin editing next week. So I went to the privileged area that I am going to showcase. This all went perfectly as I wanted a nice sunny day to go and film this area and on the day of filming, the weather was perfect. I wanted a sunny day as it would make the area look more aesthetically pleasing for the audience. the research I did last week helped me out a lot when it came to actually filming footage as I knew exactly where I wanted to go and where to film. By the end of this week, I had gathered all the footage that I needed to get so the next week I was ready to begin editing my documentary. I didn’t encounter any problems this week as everything I did was very well planned the week before.
Week nine
My main focus this week was to get the interview that I had filmed two weeks prior all edited so then by the end of next week I would hopefully have a finished documentary. I had a few problems this week and one of them was trying to get the audio synced up as I had forgotten to clap before filming my interview to use that as a way to ease this process. This took an awful lot longer than I wanted it to as it was a very time-consuming and annoying issue that I had to fix before I could move on. A second problem that I had was that I couldn’t get the color editing window to work to change the saturation of the interview to make it look darker and not as pleasing so then the change to the privileged area would be more dramatic and noticeable. To fix this problem I had to restart the software a few times and restart my PC before it would work.
Week ten
This week my main focus was to finish my documentary by the end of the week. to begin with, I had to edit all the footage that I had filmed from the privileged area that I went to and film the voiceover to go over the footage. some problems that I encountered when doing my voiceover included I kept on stuttering when talking so this process took a lot longer than expected which meant I had less time towards the end of the week to finish editing my project to keep up with my schedule. This week I also decided to add the questions I asked as text before the answer. I chose to do this as it meant it would be clear to the audience what was being asked. I also managed to finish my documentary this week which I was very happy with as it has left me with two weeks to write my evaluation and finish any work that is missing.
Week Eleven
This week was the second to last week of the whole project so I decided to spend the whole week doing my evaluation. there were no problems this week as I was just writing about what I did for the last twelve weeks. the whole process went very smoothly which I was thrilled by as it can be a very time-consuming thing.
Week Twelve
This being the final week for the project I wanted to make sure that everything was completed to the level that I wanted it to be at and that all my tasks were completed from my schedule. I also showcased some of my work to my peers so then I could include peer feedback in my evaluation. This week was very similar to last week as there wasn’t any production to do or planning to complete so it was just sitting and completing any work that needed to be done and gathering peer feedback. I didn’t encounter any problems this week as there weren’t many to really come across so it was a problem-free week.
To do list from 21st April
