Evaluation

How well do you think you have done? Based on feedback from peers
and teachers over the course of the unit do you believe you have
successfully fulfilled the required brief?

When we were told about our final major project we were given the
options of producing a single music video that is a part of a longer
narrative, or to produce tow music videos that show 2 sided of the
narrative, or a factual program. I decided to do a single music video
with a longer narrative as I thought I would be able to show my skills
better by working on sound as well creating a story for the music video
that would suit it. The storyline for the music video had to have a very
strong storyline which had to link to the song lyrics. We were told that
we had to work with a client, or for a professional competition, I
decided to have my competition for the Raindance music festival. I
think I have successfully fulfilled the required brief as followed the rules
we were given. I think I did a good job with creating a story storyline for
my music video, I also think it match the song very well. I think I have
done well on this unit. I have managed to mainly keep up with the work
and stay up to
date with the
production
schedule. I have
been doing the
work at college
as well as outside
to make sure that
I keep up to date
and don’t fall
behind. I think I
could have managed my time a bit better in order to make sure I
didn’t fall behind as at some points of the process there were some
parts I didn’t do but carried on doing other things with means I then
had to do them later on. When I have been gathering feedback
about my idea it was positive feedback. I think this was good feedback
to receive as it meant that my target audience liked my idea and there
was nothing crucial that they wanted to change. I found doing the
focus group very beneficial as it meant I was getting direct feedback
from the target audience. Each week I would receive feedback from
my teacher on how I could improve my work. Most of the time it was
only little things about adding more detail in my written work. I learnt
that I get the work done but sometimes I don’t put enough depth into it
and sometimes I don’t explain as much as I need to. However, I felt
confident with the feedback I was getting as I knew it was nothing
major and I knew I could do it.

Do you believe you followed the guidelines of the competition well?

Due to me choosing to put my production in for a professional

competition it meant that I had to follow certain guideline

Raindance stated that a music video had to be under 6 minutes.

However, because I chose to do a music video with a longer narrative
it meant my overall production would not fit into this criteria. This means
I will have to entre my production into the short film category. I knew if I
was to enter the music video category that I wouldn’t have enough
time to be able to show my storyline as well as I would have liked.
In the rules it also says that the early submission date is from the 26th
April 2019, the regular deadline is Friday the 17th may and the late
deadline is Friday the 31st of May 2019. My interim deadline is the 10th of
May. This means when I enter my production in for the Raindance film
festival I can either enter it for the 17th of May or the 31st of May. They
also review and select with the criteria that you have a quality of
narrative and production values and the independent nature of the
production. I believe that I have followed the guidelines for the
competition well as I think that my narrative is unique and it follows the
production values. Raindance don’t have any critical rules, this meant
my production could be made with ease. The only issue was whether I
could fit my production into 6 minutes. After editing my first draft I knew
that I would not be able to fit it into that amount of time without cutting
any crucial out. I believe that my production filmed the conventions of
my genre well.
How well do you believe your production followed the conventions of
your genre / style?
When researching my
codes and
conventions I sent out
a survey to my target
audience asking
them what genre
they thought my
production should be.
I research what
makes a
romance/drama film.
I found that in a drama film it focuses on very realistic character that
are either in conflict with themselves, others or forces of nature. It also
shows the characters as their best, their worst and everything that is
involved in-between. I think I followed this very well as in my production
I am focusing on my main boy characters feelings. I show my character
when he is happy and when he is sad. I also feel that the story of my
production is a very realistic story that happened a lot with people. I
know this from when I send out a survey to my target audience asking if
they liked my idea or not. The majority of my responses mentioned that
it was a very realistic story and that the cheating is a very common
thing that happened. When researching romance film I found out that
the main pot usually centres around 2 people falling in love or
struggling to make the relationship work. They can also be in any tone
and style, be set in any place or time. I think I have also followed this my
production is revolved around a couple who ae together, then they
struggle to stay together then they find other people. When I was
researching different productions I picked up on different codes and
conventions. I learnt about how
much different lighting can
change how the audience feels.
High-key lighting with warm
yellow tones are used for when
the characters are happy, this is
because it makes the audience
feel warm inside. Whereas, low-
key lighting with cold blue/grey
colours are used to make
the audience sad. I think this
was a big part of my
production as I really
wanted to express how my
main character felt and
how being cheated on
really played with his
feelings, I also think it made
my production more effective as it made it clearer to the audience
how he felt as I used high-key and low-key lighting to do this. When
researching more codes and convention technique one of the
productions really focused on having cinematic camera work. This
element is when the camera is constantly recording and it doesn’t
keep cutting to different angles. For this the camera will be moving
around moving to different objects without cutting. This will make it look
nicer when the audience are watching. I think this will be very effective
as it will help the audience understand what is happening more instead
of just cutting. This technique makes it more interesting to watch as well.
I have also picked up on an element of another production where they
show the characters at first wearing casual clothes and then when they
get bad news the husband starts to not care about this appearance.
This helps the audience understand that the news of finding out that his
wife is dead has hit him very badly. It shows the audience that he has
lost everything and he has no energy to make an effort anymore. This
element is very effective as it emphasis how much the characters have
been effective and that they are upset. I thought that this was a good
technique to use in my production as I have shown my main boy
character being sad and isolating himself. So I had him starting off
wearing jeans as an everyday thing when he was with his girlfriend and
then wearing tracksuit bottoms after he finds out she been cheating in
him this will give the audience the idea that he is very upset and he has
lost all energy to care anymore. In another production I analysed they
use different chapters to show the different stages of feelings he goes
through. he first is in denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
acceptance. Through the stages of denial to depression it shows him
running to the crime scene. I think this technique is very effective as it
makes it clearer for the audience to know why he is acting this certain
way. I used this technique in my production as I thought it would make
it clear to the audience what stages of his feelings he is going through.

Do you believe you did your topic justice?

When doing my topic research I decided to research 7 different topics.

I researched
 How cheating can effect a relationship
 Why do people cheat
 How to tell if someone is cheating
 How being cheated on can affect you mentally
 How people get over a break-up/being cheated on
 How being cheated on can change the way you act
 How being cheated on can change you long term
When researching I found a lot of use things out that I found beneficial
to add into my production. I found out that seeing with your
boyfriends/girlfriend friend is a lot worse than it is with a person that the
other person doesn’t know. This is because that person would have
trusted that friend and then they would feel betrayed when they find
out who they have been cheated on. I found out that when women
cheat they go on the side of the emotional connection, whereas men
go for a onetime thing. I found this information very useful for my
production as it helped me improve my production by making more it
realistic as I used this in my production as by having the girl cheat in her
boyfriend with his best friend would make the boyfriend reaction even
worst and it would make the boyfriend feel even more betrayed and
hurt, this helped me to express how he felt better. I also learnt that
when people get cheated on they usually isolate themselves and I
think this was important to add into my production as it helped improve
my production by knowing this so I could make this act that say. After
being cheated on it can trigger grief which can cause a person to get
away from everyone around them, they often feel ashamed or
embarrassed. The feeling of loneliness can make a person think about
returning to the relationship. However it can actually cause you
confidence to hit the bottom. Usually you feel sad after being cheated
on and this can get in the way with your family life. It can often
escalate to depression which will seem impossible to overcome. I will
use this information that I found in my production as it will make it more
effective to show my boy character isolating himself to everyone as he
is feeling ashamed and embarrassed that he has been betrayed by his
girlfriend and his friends. I will also show him not being able to sleep as
he can’t stop thinking about it. By showing the pain he goes through
can maybe make people aware of the pain that people actually go
through if they have been cheated on, as usually people hide their
feelings to not look weak. I think by adding this research into my
production really helped with making my story realistic and generally
better. I believe this research did give my topic justice as I got a lot of
useful information about it and I learnt a lot of information that I did not
know before.

Do you think you’re developed your characters to suit your story

When developing my characters I do believe that I did develop my

character to suit my story better. When creative my character I already
sort of knew what I wanted them to be like. I wanted my main girl
character, Amber (the girl that cheats) to have a stuck up personality
and for my main boy character, Max to be a kind and caring person.
The reason I wanted this was to make the audience feel bad for my
character max. By doing this I felt like it would help the audience
understand what type of person she is by cheating and to make the
audience not like her. When creative my character Peter, Ambers new
boyfriend I wanted to make him an overall better version of Max. By
making him better looking than him too but make him an aggressive
person. By doing this it will show the audience that Amber only cares
about looks and not the person’s personality. I also thought by making
him aggressive towards her it would make her miss max and regret ever
leaving him. I think by creating my characters like this it will make my
production better flowing and make the characters feel a certain way
towards each character and have their own opinion on them. I got this
from when I send out a survey to my target audience. One of the
responses said I should have the typical pretty girl and that the
boyfriend should be less attractive and I think this helped me a lot as
from this is made me think that by having the girl cheat on him and go
for a better looking guy it will make the audience feel bad for the ex-
boyfriend.

Problems you faced

During the final major project I was faced with a lot of different
problems. A big problem was that my MacBook screen is broken which
means I can only see half of my screen. This gave me problems
throughout. When researching it meant I had to make each tab smaller
to be able to see what was written. When editing it was an even bigger
problem as I could not see the tabs at the top of the left screen which
includes saving my project and adding a title. To overcome this I had
been typing in the help tab the item that I have been needing to be
able to access it. Another issue was that I could not open up and edit
on another computer as once you have started editing on a certain
type of premier pro u cannot open it up on either an older version or a
new version of it. This meant that was no way I could actually edit on
anything else other than my MacBook, this made my editing process a
lot longer. When researching I struggled with being able to find enough
information about my topic research to try and get enough I carried on
going through lots of different websites and I started to get information
from peoples real life experience. In the end this helped me to then get
enough information. Another big problem I was faced with was being
able to manage my time well. When doing my pre-production I felt like
I was spending too much time on certain things like storyboarding,
because of this I decided to carry on with my storyboard at home and
focus on different things that were less time consuming. Another
problem was trying to get enough people to do my survey. At first I sent
my survey to everyone in my year that does creative media. However,
no one responded to it. To get responses I had to send the link of my
survey to people individually on snapchat as well as posting it onto my
story. I also posted the link on Instagram, Facebook and twitter. After I
did this I managed to get enough responses. Another problem I faced
was that my camera was starting to run out of battery. This meant I had
to stop filming and I had to charge my camera battery for a little bit.
This meant it delayed my filming a little bit. I then decided to stop
filming and carry it on the next day with a fully charged camera.
Another problem I faced what that my SD card ran out of storage. This
was a big issue however to overcome his I deleted old footage that I
did not need anymore and it meant I could carry on filming on that
day. Due to my MacBook’s hard drive running out of space it meant
that when I would start to
edit on premier pro it would
shut down as it takes up a
lot of space to use. To fix
this I got myself another
hard drive that I would plug
into my computer and
moved the adobe files
onto the hard drive. After I
did this premier pro worked
perfectly. Another problem
I faced was that when I
was looking back at my
footage there was a lot of
background sound from
the camera. This made it
hard to hear my characters
talking so to change this I
opened up the audio on
abode audition. I had to
take the noise out by
capturing the noise print and then changing the noise reduction
settings. This was a long process as I had to do it with all of the clips that
I needed the sound for.
Based on your discipline (editing / camera etc...) Do you feel you have
developed your skills? How?

By discipline was art direction. I feel like I have developed my skills well
as I have learnt a lot more about it. I have developed my skills by
thinking more about what I wanted my characters to wear, certain
clothes can indicate different feelings. I used this in my production by
having my main boy character to wear casual clothes and then when
he finds out his girlfriend has been cheating on him he starts to wear
tracksuit bottoms and she stops to wear about his appearance. I have
also developed my skill by using different lighting by having low-key
lighting and high-key lighting to match the characters feelings as it
helps emphasis the feelings and it helps to set the mood for the
audience. I have also learnt how important different props are and
how they can indicate certain things about a person. In my production
I show my character resulting to smoking and drinking alcohol. This
shows the audience that this is his way of coping through the break up
as he doesn’t know what to do with himself. I think this makes it more
effective as its obvious indications that he is sad. I have also learnt how
to edit sound on audition by taking away any unwanted background
sound. I think this is useful for me, as I will be going to university and I am
going to do live sound technology with will include recording music
and editing it.

Compare your production to the ones you looked at in your research

When I was analysing videos for my my

codes and conventions sections I came
across a music video that used chapters
throughout the production. I really liked
that idea and I wanted to put it into my

production as I thought it
would work really well as it
can help the audience
understand what the main
character is feelings and
why he is acting a certain way. I think this really helped my production
as in a music video there is not enough time to fully develop a story in 3
minutes but this way it helps me to explain. When I was also analysing
another music video they used a lot of camera movement that I found
it looked very nice and smooth. It also made the production look more
pleasing to watch. I wanted to put this into my production which makes
mine similar to this one as I thought it would benefit me a lot as I
wanted my production to be almost continuous and by doing camera
movement this allowed me to be filming but also focusing on different
objects that are in the shot as well.

What would you do differently next time / if you did it again?

If I had the chance to do this again I think I would defiantly try and
manage my time a lot better. I would make sure to be strict on
following the production schedule to make sure that by the end I am
not rushing and worrying about whether I have missed anything out or
not. I would also make sure that I would do a lot more extra work at
home to allow myself extra time at college to improve my work and do
the feedback that I would be given. I would also try and put more
detail into my work so that I could develop my idea more and make it
better.