Izzy 

Meeting the Brief

Looking at my FMP as a whole, I believe I have met the brief well. To start with, the brief states that 'You are expected to produce a body coherent, sophisticated research that culminates in a media product that shows off your technical ability, talent, vision and knowledge.' The research I have done for this project is very much sophisticated. This is because I went into as much detail as I could when explaining my research which shows I expanded my knowledge a lot for each research I did. For example, the first research I did was the Amy Winehouse documentary called 'Amy'. In this research I demonstrated that I can find useful sources that links to the documentary 'Amy' which helped me to go into depth about it. I used links and quotes to show as evidence and screenshots to visually show the points I was making.

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The brief says that you need to 'evidence the development of your work by including relevant research/ visual diary/ annotated journals/ reflective diary etc.' During production an post-production, I would make a note of any problems that occurred and explained about what happened, why it happened and how I solved with using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle. By doing this, it shows all the issues I faced which helped me learn from my mistakes and not face them again. When I was in post-production, I edited each interview and uploaded them separately and evaluated them using the Gibbs Reflective Cycle. I did this because I wanted to reflect on what I had done too see how I could improve it and how. 

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I chose 'Lock-down' as my theme because I already had the idea to make my FMP about teenagers coping in Lockdown. To start with I did think about making a magazine but I changed my mind to make a documentary because the brief says that you should 'work in an area you enjoy' and my favourite area of media is film/TV. I decided to make a documentary rather than a short film or TV show because I had never done one before so I wanted to try something new. Knowing I enjoy filming and editing in Adobe Premier Pro, it made me feel at ease as I knew I would have fun making my FMP project. 

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Research

In my research, I studied five different things these being:

• 'Amy' documentary

• Genre

• How to make a good documentary

• Practical research: lighting

• Practical research: fonts

I chose these five topics to research because I felt that they would help me the most to understand the process of making a documentary. I researched a documentary called 'Amy' because I had watched it before and loved how it showed old images and videos from her friends/boyfriends phone/camera or from the paparazzi. These would be of her when she's working, hanging out with friends, performing etc. This allowed the audience to see what she was really like as they never got to see her in her day-to-day life. After researching why the documentary was such a success and how they created it, it inspired me to use images and videos from my interviewees camera roll so I can show the audience their true self's in there personal life's. I took screenshots from the trailer of the documentary to give examples of what the documentary looks like while I was explaining it so it gives a clear vision of what I was researching about.

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When I was researching 'Genre' it helped me understand what sort of documentary I was going to make. I found a website which had six different genres all explaining what they mean. I decided 'Expository' was the genre that I wanted my documentary to be as I was planning to use images and videos from my interviewees phones. I then went further into researching the genre 'Expository' by going onto YouTube and I watched a preview of a documentary called 'The Dust Bowl' which had the genre of expository. I took inspiration from that preview as it had narration over images and videos. I wanted to take that into my own documentary by using the audio from the interviews and have it over the images and videos the interviewees sent me from their phones. This researched let me learn two things, one being what my documentary is and the other being how I should make it. 

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I went basic and searched up 'how to make a good documentary.' By sticking to the basics it allowed me to learn the core of making a documentary and as I had never made one before, this was important for me to learn. I went onto a website which had five key points on 'how to make a good documentary' and I went into full detail by explaining and taking screen shots of each point. I did this so they would stick into my head  and so that I can show I understand what it takes to make a good documentary. At the end o this research I did an overview of what I learn and what I would take away from it these being: making a unique font, including subtitles, having music in the background and more. This shows I learnt something from doing this research and taken inspiration from it so it wasn't a waste of time, it was in fact useful. 

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To make a change from researching on the internet, I did practical research. I learn best when I am doing something practical rather than reading for example so this practical research really benefited me. I first did practical research on lighting as I wanted to test out which lighting would be best for filming the interviews. I got camera and lighting equipment (large LED light, reflective panels) from my college and got my friend to be my model and I took photos in all the different lightings I could think of. From this research I learned how to use lighting equipment that I've never used before and which looks best when filming an interview. This made me discover which lighting equipment I wanted to use for my interviews and where to face the camera in natural light. 

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Another practical research I did was finding fonts and a colour scheme for the title sequence in my documentary. For the fonts, I already knew a website called 'DaFont' which has a lot of different styles of fonts to download, so I selected around five which were my favourite and then I reviewed them. This helped me to narrow down which ones I was going to use as the title for my documentary and gave me an idea of what the documentary will look like before even making it. I went the extra mile and made a colour scheme on Adobe Photoshop. I did this by thinking about my target audience and as they are teenagers/young adults, I thought of beige/brown colours as they are trendy at the moment. I wanted to do this so I have a selection of colours too choose from to put in my title or as a background.

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Over all, I found by looking online at other documentaries or websites linking to documentaries really helpful because they all gave me inspiration and ideas that I could input into my own documentary. However I did find the practical research the most useful because I find it easier to learn whilst doing something and it gave me good practise (particularly with the lighting research) for when I actually film my documentary. If I were to do any of it differently, I would perhaps use another research method like looking through magazines. I would consider going to an event but due to being in Lockdown while doing the research, there wasn't any events happening at the time so I was restricted to do that. The reason why I would've done another element of research is because I feel like it would've expanded my knowledge even more as it would be a research I had never done before. As it would've been a different type of method than the others, I would've had a lot of fun with it. I also would've used the Gibbs Reflective Cycle to write about my research. I discovered this when I was on planning and production and I used it then and found it such a great way to get my points across with how I feel, what I am thinking, what I'd do differently etc. 

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The Effectiveness of your Workflow

I would say I did well in recording every problem I came across by writing it in the problem solving page and I would write what happened and how I will fix it. I then would write when I had solved the problem and what I learned from it. Sometimes I took screen shots to show how I fixed it and proof of me sorting it out. By doing this for every problem I cam across, it allowed me to not the same mistake again because I would write down what I learnt from it. This helped my workflow because it put me in a good mindset by knowing every problem can be fixed and it saved me time by not having the same problems happen again. 

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I would also say I did well in planning and production. I made a schedule for the whole project, production and post-production. When I got behind I made a amended time table and put the parts I changed into the colour red so I could work from that instead. This showed my organisational skills and helped me keep on track/get back on track with the work. I filled out all the production docs that I thought were appropriate for making a documentary. After I filmed and edited each interview, I uploaded each one to YouTube and did a Gibbs Reflective Cycle style evaluation on each of them. By doing this it made me realise what I need to do to improve them all. I realised I needed to refilm the interview with James because the lighting was bad and have a chat with the interviewees before filming so they feel more confident. The Gibbs Reflective Cycle helped me put stuff into perspective because I could see what I did well in and what I need to fix or improve. It also lets me express my thoughts and feelings in a lot of detail. 

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If I were to change anything, I would say I wish I did more Gibbs Reflective Cycle in my problem solving, research and planning and production because I found it very useful to explain what I did in that format. I would also change the fact that I was the only crew member on set as I wish I had another person there to help. I think this would've made a big difference in saving time and I could've had them operating the sound equipment which I was unable to do while operating the camera equipment. The only downfall of having another crew member is that it would be another person to rely on by being on time. I did come across this problem with an interviewee being late and so I had to reschedule so I wouldn't want to make the chances higher of this happening again by having another crew member. 

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Scope of the Project

To make my documentary successful, I had to stretch myself by doing things I had never done before. For starters, one of the things I had never done before was during my practical research of lighting and it was setting up and using the lighting equipment that I found challenging. I found this challenging because I had never used the large LED light and the reflector panels before so I had to work out how to set them up and use them on the spot. Fortunately, I had my friend who was being my model and my other friend who was going to hold the reflector panels for me, to help me work the equipment out so the process was quicker. I soon figured out how to se them up and to use them and it was pretty simple but I did feel worried it would be hard. Now I feel confident to use those lighting equipment again in future. 

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Another time I felt challenged was trying to complete all the tasks in time on the timetable I made at the start of this project. I felt under pressure to stick by it as I didn't want to get behind but I didn't take into account when making the timetable is to allow time to fix any mistakes. This being said, I got behind on the timetable because I had to solve any problems I had. To make things right I stretched myself by creating a amended timetable so I was able to work from that and feel more relaxed as I was back on track and not get behind again.

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When I was editing James' interview that I had to refilm, I was frustrated that the wind was so loud in the background. Unfortunately, I did not have time to reschedule to film again so instead I went onto YouTube and watched videos on how to get rid of the wind in Adobe Premier Pro. It was fairly straight forward to do but it takes quite a while to get it right and as I had seven different clips to edit I did not have time to do them all. I looked at all the editing tools that is used for sound on Adobe Premier Pro and managed to find one that cancels out the wind slightly. It wasn't 100% cancelled out but James was still easily heard and it was a huge improvement. This challenged me because I had to come up with ways how to fix the sound on the spot a number of times with very little time.

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Management

As I said before, I made three timetables them being one for the whole project, production and post-production. I did this so I could know what I should be working on each or day so I then don't get behind. To make each of these timetables I simply wrote on the planning and production page a subheading for each one. I wrote the dates from the start date till the end date of when I will complete each tasks whether that be a day or two, and then explained what I will be doing and how. These worked to begin with but as I got to the production stage, I got behind on schedule which made me confused on what I should be doing. To fix this, I made a amended timetable which is similar to my original timetable for the whole project but some of the dates and tasks are changed. To show the difference between the original timetable and the amended one I highlighted the changes I made in red. The amended timetable helped me to get back on track with the work and I felt more at eased as I knew what I was doing again. 

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To film the three interviews I had to make plans with the interviewees to meet up and film it. This required for me to message them all and say a day and time I am free and fortunately they all said they were free for the days and times I said to them. Enya and James were very reliable as they arrived on time and was prepared to be interviewed. However, as said on the problem solving page, Hus did not show up for the day we organised to film his interview therefore I had to reschedule with him. This was very frustrating for me because I have no control on getting Hus to the interview or not I can only talk to him about it. I organised to film his interview asap because I didn't want to waste time in waiting for him and before the day of filming and the morning of filming I messaged him to remind him to turn up on time and he did. Having to reschedule filming Hus' interview affected my production timetable but I found other stuff to do in the days between the original filming date and the new one. 

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Because I had to refilm James' interview, it took out some time to edit the documentary and it added more editing to do. James' second interview had bad wind sound in the background but because I didn't have a lot of time to edit, I couldn't edit the wind fully out like I would've wished to. This impacted on my final piece because it wasn't to the highest standard as I would've liked it to be. On the plus side I did find a way to block out the wind slightly and James is still well heard in the documentary. 

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Autonomous Learning

I love working independently and in a team even though they are very different. For this project I had to be self-dependent through out all of it as it is my project no one else's. With this project making me self-dependant, I had to organise everything on my own. This was daunting at first as there was a lot to do but once I had the idea to make a timetable at the beginning of the project, I felt more relaxed and confident in myself because I organised myself. I enjoyed having all the responsibilities and not having to rely on anyone else (other than the interviewees to turn up on set on time) because then I couldn't be frustrated with anyone not doing the work and letting me down as it was all down to me to get stuff done. I have learnt that I am more relaxed when working independently because I know no one, other than myself, will let me down with not getting the work done in time or by it not being good enough. I enjoy having to do all the work because I feel like I know what is going on within the project more as I am having to do it all other than other people doing parts of it. 

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I'd say I need to improve on sticking to the timetables I made because this made me fall back on the work and got me stressed out. If I were to do things differently I would make time in my timetable to fix or amend any problems as I came across quite a few problems throughout this project and didn't have a lot of time to fix/amend them. I felt tested when I had to organise day and times to film the interviews. This is because I had to rely on the three interviewees to turn up on time which was the first time I had to rely on anyone in this project. One of the interviewees did not turn up on time so I had to reschedule a different day to film their interview. This required for me to stay positive and I had to quickly adapt to find other work to do in the mean time. My organisational skills were put to the test here and I feel like I handled the situation well because I organised to film the interview as soon as I could and learned that I needed to message the interviewee before filming so they would turn up on set and they did. 

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I encountered many problems throughout this project but too over come them all I remained calm because I have stressed out before during these sort of situations and I found being stressed makes the situation worse. I would evaluate all the problems I had in the problem solving section on my blog and I would explain what went wrong, why it went wrong and how I will fix it. By doing this made me feel positive that the problems will be sorted out as I would always find a way. I would do all this by myself which I was happy about because it gave me confidence in myself that I could solve anything if I put my mind to it. 

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Ideas

When I started this project, I had many ideas of how I wanted to make my documentary and how I wanted it too look like. As time went on, I came up with more ideas for it which mainly happened during the research and production/post-production. While I was doing research for this project I found a lot of inspiration particularly from another documentary called 'Amy' and when I studied 'How To Make a Good Documentary'. The documentary 'Amy' inspired me to use images and videos of my interviewees life as it shows the audience a side to them that only the people close to them see. The research on 'How To Make a Good Documentary' gave me the ideas to use music throughout the whole documentary to set the tone, create my own unique style with the title and use subtitles as it is professional. The subtitle idea was great at first because I thought it would add an element to my documentary but as I got to post-production I changed my mind and didn't create them. This is because I didn't think they were essential so I wanted to use my time in editing another part of the documentary rather than that. This shows how much ideas can change throughout creating and planning for my documentary and how my mindset develops as time goes on.

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I am very open into exploring new ideas. I wasn't too sure how I wanted my title sequence to look like but once I edited the interviews, I got the idea to use the images that the interviewees sent me and create a collage with each photo appearing after one another.  As I was editing it all together I got a new idea to have a part of speech from each interviewee that stands out and is powerful. This shows as time goes by doing something practical (editing the documentary) my brain opens up to more ideas as I can visually see it all come together while I'm editing it. 

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Decision Making

A lot of decisions had to be made throughout this whole project some were minor and some were big. I would have to make informed decisions so I wouldn't rush into things and so I knew what I was doing. This happened a lot while I was finding a solution to the problems I had because I didn't want the problems to happen again or stay there so by evaluating how I will solve them allowed me to solve them correctly. 

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The biggest decision I made for my documentary is too refilm James' interview. This was a big deal because I didn't decide this till near the end of this project so I had very little time to organise, film and edit it. The reason why I wanted to refilm James' interview is because the lighting was dark so the camera couldn't pick up James' face well. I wanted the audience to be able to see James' face well so they can see what he looks like and to see his facial expressions whilst being interviewed. Even though this was a little stressful because of the little time I had left, I am still very much happy I made this decision. The second interview I filmed of him looks far better than the original one and by re-filming it, it shows that I learned where I went wring with the lighting and I am able to fix it. 

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Pride

For my FMP I have developed idea, explained my problems and how to fix them, gained new editing and production skills and made a documentary which I have never done before. Before starting this project I knew I wanted to make something that I am proud off and I feel like I have done just that. I am proud of my work because I explored every idea that came to mind because I didn't want to exclude anything that had a chance of being included in my documentary. When I came across any problem I fixed them all which shows I had determination to get my documentary to the best standards I could so I am proud of myself for having that determination. I learned how to use lighting equipment and edit out wind in audio so I am very happy I have gained new skills from doing this project. The fact I have never made a documentary before shows how willing I was to explore something new and to take a risk. I think the end result of my documentary is exactly how I wanted it to be like with the colour scheme and the idea of images and videos from the interviewees phones to show them in a different light. I think the ideas I had for my documentary worked really well as it suits my target audience well and I manged to create the ideas how I imagined them. 

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With my work, I will put it in my portfolio for whenever I am applying to University, apprenticeship or a job. This will help me out a lot because say I was applying for a job, the employer can look at what I have done and it will show how much hard work I am willing to put into things, how creative I am and how much I love studying media. 

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Skills

This project has made me develop soft skills like organisation, problem solving, responsibility, self motivation and ability to work under pressure. I had to be organised so I could know what I was doing and when for which is why I made a timetable at the start of the project. As I got close to the production stage I decided to make a timetable for production and another one for post-production. I did this because I needed it to be specific of what I should be doing for each day. As said before I came across many problems but I couldn't ignore them or let anyone else solve them so I would evaluate the problems and figure out a solution. I had to do this a number of times so it became a habit to do this process and it worked really well for me because I solved every problem I had and made sure not to have the same problem happen again. I did this project all on my own so I had a lot of responsibility. I had to make sure all the camera equipment was booked for the dates of filming and that my interviewees knew the day and time of their interviews. Having all the responsibility on my shoulders was daunting at first but as time went on I really enjoyed because I like to have control over what goes on in planning for production and post-production. Self motivation was really important to have so I would get on with the work. At one point for about a week I didn't have motivation at all but at the end of that week I looked back on the work I did and realised it wasn't enough. I also looked back onto the ideas I have for my documentary. This motivated me to get back to work properly because I had catching up to do and also because I couldn't wait to start making my documentary as my ideas were fun so I just wanted to start using them in my work. Because I got behind on the timetable I made, I was under pressure to get back on track. To cope with this I made a amended timetable so I felt relaxed about it all. This showed I worked well under pressure as I didn't stress I just solved the problem and got on with it. 

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I gained hard skills while I was doing the practical research on lighting. For this research I tested out all the different lightings, some with lighting equipment and some without, too see which lightings I liked the best for when I filmed the interviews. As some required equipment I used a large LED light and reflector panels. I had never used these lighting equipment before but I quickly adapted and figured out how to set them up and use them. I remember how to set these up and use them still so if I ever need to use them again then I will feel confident in using them. While I was in post-production, I came across a problem with the wind being too loud in one of the interviews I filmed. To fix it I searched on YouTube how to get rid of the wind in Adobe Premier Pro and many came up. I watched one and followed the steps in my own project and it worked really well. However it took far too long to do and I had seven clips to edit so I did not have the time to do them all. I took away new skills from doing that research as I now know how to edit the sound of wind out of a video and also how to make it sound quieter by using just one tool which is what I did in the end. 

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Future

Now I have finished my FMP and am about to leave college, my plan is too apply to University for September 2022. I want to have a gap year to build up my portfolio more by making short films and documentaries in my spare time. By doing this it will help me to get into the University I want to get into and will give me more time to pick the Universities I want to apply to and which course. This project has made me discover that I enjoy making documentaries which has meant that as my future career, I will not only want to work in film and TV but I will also want to work with making documentaries. As this is the first time I have ever made a documentary, it has made me realise it is good to be open to try new things because I might really enjoy them which I did with tis project. 

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