Evaluation

Documentary

What helped me most on my journey?

The thing that helped me most on my journey was definitely perseverance and commitment even when things are going wrong. Not everything goes right, and if there was ever a time I learned that, it was during the making of this documentary. I also think that because I've had experience making long format videos before, that really helped. I also think my ability to pro-long what I am saying to push things to the 10 minute mark really helped (the art of waffling). One of the main factors that helped me was also my past projects that I have done, without them it would have been a lot harder to complete mainly the written work as it is easy to always refer back to.

Importance of planning

I always feel like a broken record player when it comes to talking about the importance of planning as I can never stress enough how important it is to plan for the worst. One thing that I will consider next time is definitely to have a back up plan when all fails. This project I have had so many issues and it has been a real learning curve for me. I have switched ideas mid way through this time due to scheduling issues with one of the main people in my original documentary. These things to happen however so you can either adapt or plan for these things to happen! This time round, I had to adapt to the issues at hand and come up with something entirely new to fit the brief. Next time I will make sure I have a back up plan.

Importance of experimenting

Experimenting on things is the most fun thing in a project that you can possibly do. Whether it's experimenting with editing, different camera angles or in this case a new documentary entirely. The difference with this project and the others, is that I had no clue how I wanted it to look. I didn't know where to put things and what part of the documentary I wanted to go in certain places. I have always for past projects had a somewhat clear idea and what I wanted to do with things. This time I didn't and that is why experimenting was so important. One of the biggest things for me when creating a video project is making the music sync. So I tried many different songs to fit what was playing on screen. I did lots of it with the original documentary and it's one of my favorite things about creating videos.

Importance of feedback

Feedback is so important to a project and you have to listen to that feedback. One of the main bits of feedback I received this project was to not start something new when everything went wrong. I clearly ignored that feedback but it worked in my favor. I do believe however that in terms of what is actually on the screen you have to listen to the feedback as you are more the creator than the viewer. The viewer always has an unbias point of view and after all the project is catered towards them. The people around me told me what was good and what wasn't. It's about how I act on that information what makes the best version of the documentary and I think I have done very well making them decisions.