Documentary: Critical Evaluation

Documentary: Critical Evaluation

This will be my final evaluation of this unit. I will brake it don in to Pre-production, production, and post production, giveing posatives and neagtives for each. 

For this unit I was tasked with working in a group to create a documentary that was relevant and appropriate for a BBC3 audience.

Pre-Production

In the pre-production stage we went through a series of ideas and groupd developments. Our initial idea was to look at guide dogs and disability animals. However after meetings with Zoe we realised this would need a lot of work to fit a BBC3 audience. So we went through more idea changes, and eventaully settled on weight loss hacks.

We really liked this idea as there was a lot we could do with it, however it was also dificult since  we had to heavilly construct it in order to deliver a clear message and obtain the content we needed. We initially planned for our group member Ethan to be our test subject and presenter, but sadly he dropped out and for a short while we were a group of two. Fortunatly Cailan joined and helped add input in to our idea and we put out an add on casting call pro for a presenter. After interveiwing candidates as a groiup we found the perfect presenter and set about planning our locations and content. 

We worked together on a google docuemnt to put together a rough draft of a script, this helped boost our communication skills but we found it dificult to exactly match teh example Helen provided, getting coonfused over format. Fortunatly we acted on the changes and problems, quickly producing a second draft. 

When it came to organising locations and interviewess I was heavilly involved and took a leadign role. This went rather successfully. I sent out emails and got in contact with: Pole Fitness, a photographer (I originally planned to use soemone from UCA but had to fall back on someone from MidKent  Collage). I also contacted House Of Fraser where we intended to shoot a segmant with a personal shopper. I initially received permission, however they decided to withdraw it the day before shooting over consusion about the aim of our documentary. this was a slight setback but I ivercame it by contacting John Lewis (my backup idea) and getting their permission. 

I also laid the foundatiions for, and helped contact dozens of nutritionists to interveiw. However many turned in to wid goose chaces and I had to get Alex to help me. 

Production

Production went pretty much to plan, all of the locations apart from John Lewis proved to be successful and helpful for our documentary. We had a few issues when it came to poor lighting and available angles in Pole Fitness, however we utalised teh camearas settings to our advantage to overcome this. However fans, music and other noise still cuased issue and we had to ask them to be truned off during filming. 

Cailan was absent for a few shoot days which caused minor annoyance but wasnt a majour set bcak since he eventually came through for us. We found ourselves editing the script and cutting sections completly while filming beacuse they either didnt feel natural, or just didnt work. 

I did a lot of prominant camera work during production, I was also responsible for obtaining concent and negotiating and communicating with various contributors and locations.

Shooting with three different cameras allowed us to pick up a variety of angles and it made editing much easier (apart from colour correction) since we coudl cut to a different angle if we needed. However we occasionally got in each otehrs way so hadn to assess the situation and decide how many cameras were neccissary, but overall multiple cameras was a good thing. We found DSLR mics provied adiqute audio and only used the clip mic in propper sit down interveiws. 

Post Production

We decided to split the editing in to thirds to give everyone equal chance to shine and save time. However this turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. When we recieved feedback from Zoe and Helen we acted on it straight away. We found we didnt quite have enough cut aways or commentary so had to do more shooting, but this only benafited our documentary. However if specific changes needed to be meade to a particular persons section then it made it dificult since they had to edit it, render it, export it, then send it to ther rest of the group which took a lot of time. 

I worked hard on my own section noting down feedback form grouop members as well as Zoe, helen and Sam. 

I also made all the graphics for our documentary. 

Writing a transcript was realativly painless even though we had to miss the tutorial and became increadably useful when cutting down sections in the edit. This was a joint effort between myself and Caialn while Alex helped me edit a rough cut of our sync pull. However we struggled to write a paper edit and preferend to make simple notes then converse as a group before making changes. However we were able to act on  almost all changes that were suggested to us and put togtehr a very successful pice with a clear message (something we were concerend about early on).

 

Overall this unit pushed our communication skills to the limit but I feel we came out stronger and produced an amazing piece of work that I hope will be very successful. I had a huge input to this project which I have hopefully detailed and it ahs been my favourite to work on.