Evaluation
Research:
To begin our process of creating our documentary we began researching several topics which landed in between Business, Social Media, or Technology. However, once we went in to pitch our idea to Helen, she explained to us that we had too many ideas, and not a solid story, so, she advised to us to refine our ideas into one solid idea that we can base into a compelling story. So, after taking this advice on board, we narrowed our idea into 'How social media is affecting our social environment', this meant that we would explore how/if social media is affecting our everyday lives through several off-branches such as behavior online compared to reality, mental health and several topics. We initially decided to focus on all sub-topics into our main one, but, we soon realised we wouldn't be able to fit all of those subtopics in to ten minutes, so, we narrowed it down to the social environment and mental health and if social media had a negative impact on our own mental health and if there were any positives or enough positives to outweigh the negatives on social media.
To begin our process of creating our documentary we began researching several topics which landed in between Business, Social Media, or Technology. However, once we went in to pitch our idea to Helen, she explained to us that we had too many ideas, and not a solid story, so, she advised to us to refine our ideas into one solid idea that we can base into a compelling story. So, after taking this advice on board, we narrowed our idea into 'How social media is affecting our social environment', this meant that we would explore how/if social media is affecting our everyday lives through several off-branches such as behavior online compared to reality, mental health and several topics. We initially decided to focus on all sub-topics into our main one, but, we soon realised we wouldn't be able to fit all of those subtopics in to ten minutes, so, we narrowed it down to the social environment and mental health and if social media had a negative impact on our own mental health and if there were any positives or enough positives to outweigh the negatives on social media.
Here is some of the research I did for our initially revised idea before we changed it to just mental health:
We decided midway through that we wanted to focus on a general perspective of how social media and mental health are linked instead of going for a more personal approach as we wanted our audience to understand how bad the situation of the correlation between mental health and social media really is to those who use social media on a regular basis, or to those who are 'addicted' in ways to social media. This would also enable us to weigh the pros and cons of social media's impact in a general perspective.
Pre-production
The process of pre-production took a lot longer than anticipated as we lost one of our group very early on, and, due to a lack of communication with each other, we didn't fully get everything planned until late April (a month after our project) whereas other groups had it all done before Easter.
Our first section of planning after revising our ideas several times as to figure out who to interview, which really wasn't until two weeks ago, where we found both Richard and Jazz's mum (Jackie - a child therapist). We interviewed Richard two Friday's ago and interviewed Jackie last Friday.
One of our biggest issues when it came to interviewing both Richard and Jackie was that we didn't have a fully planned script or fleshed out questions, so we had up questions right before the interviews and luckily got some very insightful answers into them.
The process of pre-production took a lot longer than anticipated as we lost one of our group very early on, and, due to a lack of communication with each other, we didn't fully get everything planned until late April (a month after our project) whereas other groups had it all done before Easter.
Our first section of planning after revising our ideas several times as to figure out who to interview, which really wasn't until two weeks ago, where we found both Richard and Jazz's mum (Jackie - a child therapist). We interviewed Richard two Friday's ago and interviewed Jackie last Friday.
One of our biggest issues when it came to interviewing both Richard and Jackie was that we didn't have a fully planned script or fleshed out questions, so we had up questions right before the interviews and luckily got some very insightful answers into them.
Production
Richard Grannon - for our interview with Richard he was away in Ibitha, Spain at the time of our interview, luckily for us, he was free in the late morning (early afternoon for him) for a twenty minute interview via Facetime, this made things easier for our side as we only had to come down to the studios in Maidstone to screen record the interview for our documentary.
For interviewing Jackie, this interview was done very last minute (Wednesday I believe), we set up a couch in the large lecture room (Room 2) , set up a lighting rig and filmed a 15 minute interview. We had help from Ferg, who advised s to set up the coach at an angle, as well as filming the angle, not from straight on, but from a slightly right-angle in order to give the appearance of depth. He also aimed a cardboard cutout and a light at the wall behind Jackie, which provided a shadow pattern, which also provided depth to the shot and made Jackie stand out in the shot.
We also went to Rochester campus and filmed some extra footage for intercutting with our interview, as well as filming our intro. Our intro involved filming Aodhan in two separate environments to how we had planned it in our script. These two environments were just behind Rochester campus halls (about twenty minutes from campus) and in the high street. We did our interview with Jackie right after as she gave us a lift back to the studios after we had finished our filming in Rochester.
Richard Grannon - for our interview with Richard he was away in Ibitha, Spain at the time of our interview, luckily for us, he was free in the late morning (early afternoon for him) for a twenty minute interview via Facetime, this made things easier for our side as we only had to come down to the studios in Maidstone to screen record the interview for our documentary.
For interviewing Jackie, this interview was done very last minute (Wednesday I believe), we set up a couch in the large lecture room (Room 2) , set up a lighting rig and filmed a 15 minute interview. We had help from Ferg, who advised s to set up the coach at an angle, as well as filming the angle, not from straight on, but from a slightly right-angle in order to give the appearance of depth. He also aimed a cardboard cutout and a light at the wall behind Jackie, which provided a shadow pattern, which also provided depth to the shot and made Jackie stand out in the shot.
We also went to Rochester campus and filmed some extra footage for intercutting with our interview, as well as filming our intro. Our intro involved filming Aodhan in two separate environments to how we had planned it in our script. These two environments were just behind Rochester campus halls (about twenty minutes from campus) and in the high street. We did our interview with Jackie right after as she gave us a lift back to the studios after we had finished our filming in Rochester.
Conclusion
Overall, this unit involved a lot more work and communication due to it being a group project, whereas the last projects we could pick whether to work alone (which I find easier) or whether to work in a group. It was very stressful and for some of our group never really worked together until right at the end to do work that we planned to do weeks before, but members of the group hadn't turned up. But, this is a learning curve for me, to learn that groups need communication to work smoothly and that as long as I get my side of the work done I've done my part. I would also make sure that our group was clear on what needed to be done and when and we wouldn't spring sudden changes last minute when it is already incredibly stressful.
Overall, this unit involved a lot more work and communication due to it being a group project, whereas the last projects we could pick whether to work alone (which I find easier) or whether to work in a group. It was very stressful and for some of our group never really worked together until right at the end to do work that we planned to do weeks before, but members of the group hadn't turned up. But, this is a learning curve for me, to learn that groups need communication to work smoothly and that as long as I get my side of the work done I've done my part. I would also make sure that our group was clear on what needed to be done and when and we wouldn't spring sudden changes last minute when it is already incredibly stressful.
Comments
Post a Comment