Evaluation

The Doc:

Audience Research:

I Created this Survey to gain some feedback on my documentary.

One friend privately messaged me some feedback and this is what they had to say: "I liked the editing with the music it made me feel calm and it sounded like a podcast kinda like relaxing just listening to information. I feel like it's really focused on the interview but because it's only 5 minutes I think it works" 

I'm glad they said that they feel calm because of the music because that was the idea behind why i picked it, so they could get given information and not be overwhelmed or sadened by it. I agree that its heavily focused on the interview but as they said its because it's only 5 minutes but also because that was my intention. The documentary was supposed to be a personal piece with facts mixed in to support.

 The same person also answered the Survey an said that they wouldn't change anything apart from mic quality which i agrre with on my end. I should have set-up better before hand and made sure the leveling was correct. They also mentioned that they learned that Lock down has affected everyone mentally not just themselves. Which is also the intention of the documentary, You are not alone. In a way the documentary is to spread awareness of mental health in lockdown.

A second person answered the survey and said

"If anything this documentary really helps remind people that actions have consequences. I like the positivity spin though" 

This comment is quite accurate to why i made the doc. I wanted it to spread awareness and show people what is happening but i didn't want it to be left on an emotional note. 

With the more statistical Questions they said that they learned something from the documentary which is good since i used some facts that i didn't know myself. They also agreed that the documentary was effective in spreading awareness which im greatly happy with. They also rated the product a 9/10 which is a very overwhelming compliment since i don't think i would give it a 9 myself

Comparing: I'm going to compare my documentary with this documentary from New Horizion Media

I Chose this one to compare to mine because it was made to spread awareness about mental health in lockdown which is quite similar to mine. First we'll start with sound. Obviously because both were filmed during lockdown and we couldn't control the interviewees set up we both had rough audio quality.The music they decided to use is a soft but emotional sounding piano song that plays through out while mine is a calm lofi track, I belive they used this emotional song to invoke sadness or relatability in the viewer while i used lofi to keep the audience calm and listen. what i like about their use of sound is that they match sounds with whats being shown on screen, for example the clock ticking or the news in the background while this is what we're being shown, it adds depth to the piece which i dont have. More onto the visuals now. They used a lot of text to compliment the footage and what the volunteers said which culminated at the end which i really liked, I believe i should have made this effort to substitle important information as well. Their interviews were more personal speeches and constant opinion peices because we never heard a question be ask, i think this works quite well with the film. While my interview was the traditional question and answer that you would see elsewhere. Unlike my documentary they broke the general convention of a documentary and didn't include a voice of god, but this is a good example of breaking such rule because the film is based off these people, the interviewer doesn't matter, they do. We both use B-roll and archival footage but i liked the way they included a news report which added an aspect of the real world into the doc which i wish i did looking back.

The Way I Worked:

When it came to research i looked into everything. I Looked at the NHS sites, news sites, other medical sites. I tried looking for statistics about mental health issues and suicide in 2020 but these numbers don't usually get released until the end of quarter 1 of the following year. One point during the research process i was just trying to find what i wanted and ended up not finding anything at all so i took a break and came back with a level head. I thought it would be good to run a poll on my instagram about the documentary because i know my followers personally and can confirm that they fit into my Target Audience and i came out with a successful poll with interesting results which followed my other research.

With my planning i started off with my interview questions so i knew what from my research would fit in the doc itself along with the type of stock or archival footage i would use. After that i did the risk assesment which was quite short and easy since the project was filmed in Lockdown and screentime is the only actual risk in this case. After this i started to require some footage off the internet but i did require the majority of the clips during the editing process. After i had required a few clips i realised that I hadn't formed a fully written out script, just bullet point in my head, so that was the next thing i did was write, check and finalize my script ready to be recorded. After I finished the script I Schedule the interviews with Jess and Oscar as you can see on the blog page and got their consent, although Jess's Verbal consent got lost in my audio issue, which brings me onto production.

Production process was a bit rocky to start with. Before anything i tried to Interview Jess. After audio issue and audio issue i decided that we can just try record through my external mic on my computer using OBS so after 4 or 5 attempts we finally record some audio but when i came to check it later it was just horrible which is why i was forced to exclude her from the final product. So next i decided to Film the voice over i scripted and that went smooth if we exclude the multiple bloopers because i can't talk properly. After this i interviewed Oscar on zoom and it was a very smooth process with 0 hiccups this time apart from the fact that zoom records who is speaking which ruined a few shots when it would switch to me after my chair creaks a bit louder than Oscar. Now that i've required all the footage i need i began the Raw edit but i forgot to taked screenshots throughout this process because i was on a roll. The editing progress was quite smooth sailing apart from finding a few clips i needed from free stock websites because they mostly stray from controversial or unhappy topics.

Personal Quality:

The strengths I would say i had making the documentary would be the creation of the interview questions and scheduling them, finding and placing the stock / archival footage and probably the raw edit because i cut out some stutters, rambles and needless sections. But I think my weeknesses would be the interview itself, i didn't speak clearly enough and i didn't keep my voice levels the same, the way i talked in the voice over sections doesn't match to the footage and context. I believe that my voice is slightly too jovial for the topic in some places. The research could've been a bit more Vast and specific.

The skills that i need to develop to become more effective at Documentary filmaking would be confidence Infront of and talking to a camera so my voice will be clear and i shouldn't stumble as much but also so i can include myself and make my work more personal. Another thing would be editing, I believe that i didn't do it the best i could have although i do like it, there are bits to it that would make it a better documentary visually. One big thing i need to be more skillful at is setting up for sound recording and making sure it sounds as good as it can since i was too loud / not loud enough throughout the doc.

Action Points:

• More practice on premier pro so I'm comfortable with the configuration and can manouver the software without having to search for a tutorial. 
• Another software that i should learn is Adobe Audition. It would be more practical to use audition than OBS since its built for sound and is linked to Premier.
• One way to work more efficiantly would be to gather all or the majority of the media i want to use before i start editing because this will speed up the editing process, gathering a couple is fine but i should be focussing on the edit.
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