Evaluation

 I think mostly my idea for my documentary didn't really develop although, instead of focusing on lockdown as a whole i did break it down just to the affect of lockdown like mental health and business's going bust. I think this was very helpful in the process because it meant my final piece was based on one subject that had a couple ideas linked to it making it easy to follow along with. This was important because i wouldn't want a piece that was all over the place as my audience would find it difficult to watch.

To complete my final product i had to out so much research into it, for example i have a lot of statistics which proves what the documentary was about was true but also the size of the issues raised in it. The statistics included deaths and cases of COVID-19 ; i used this to create a reaction from the audience because yes everyone knows how bad covid is but when put into number in millions just in the UK it creates panic and urgency and hopefully makes the audience want to stay home even more to help stop the numbers get even higher. For the documentary i needed research on money given to businesses to help them run through lockdown and i needed this because i was showing how shops were affected but even though money was given to help them stay open why were so many still closed, so i needed to research this too. I think i could have looked into how many shops were closed in the UK altogether because saying thousands doesn't confirm and give the audience the true scale of how many were fully shut meaning they don’t know if it was 1000 or 10,000 because i didn't clarify.

I got the inspiration for my documentary from a short documentary i found on youtube one day, it was about lockdown and it takes a look also at the affect lockdown had on businesses student and tourism which really gave me the idea for my documentary, altogether this documentary was much more delayed and had factors like tourism which i didn't include in mine because i had a 3-5 minute time limit also i really wanted to target the audience at students and retail workers because i feel like we suffered so much not as much as healthcare workers but we did stuffer a huge setback in education and a social decline. I think the short documentary really worked and really hit close to home not just because the subject but the clear and saddened voice over and the sombre music playing throughout which really inspired my choice in background music.

I think I developed several skills while creating this documentary, firstly i have never interviewed someone so really nailing down on the questions that would stray to far from the subject was a big factor. I did this by really trying to link the questions with the subject with effect and as you can hear in the final piece because i kept my voice in while asking the questions i really nailed in “ effect” it was almost in every question and i think repetition was really smart because to the audience it will make them think about the effect it had on them and i wanted the audience to answer the questions to themselves.

Another skill i developed was being able to make clips filed on my phone look as professional as possible and my hands shake so much so being able to hold the phone still to create shots was very difficult. I overcome this obstacle by buying a tripod which would hold my phone still although i did use this for some shot some are handheld and i was so happy with the stillness of them also because i was filming on my phone i had to learn to transfer footage over to my laptop to edit, doing it my emailing didn't work because the size of the clips so I decided to upload them all the a google drive so i can insanely access them all to edit together.

I think an area i could have really worked on was capturing more footage than I actually need. I originally made a plan to film one day and the very next do the interview however, when i began to edit after the interview i realised to had either missed out clips( like the empty college shot) or just didn’t  have enough range of shot types, i did manage to go the next say to get some extra clips but as you can see in the final product some shots are quite jumpy and that because i didn't hade enough of that clip once it was edited, an example was the shot of the card factory being closed.

In my documentary i had such a wide range of used conventions such as, archival footage, voice over, exposition, montage and actuality. I used archival footage (audio)like Boris Johnson's lockdown announcement and news clips how how school children and businesses were affected. The voice over was actually the archival footage instead of having one (voice of god) i wanted to include several because it creates a sense of urgency and panic being are going through because so many people are speaking in the news about it. Another convention was exposition, this was the introduction by the title “LOCKDOWN” as soon as the audience watch they know what its about and then straight after presented with the affect coronavirus had and the background to why the country had to be put in lockdown. I included several montages of actuality this was important because just having the voice over or actually using the archival footage of the news reports wouldn't show the actual devastating affects so having several clips of several shops really portrayed that it was actually affecting things like business and not just “fake news”.

I did say the codes of my documentary was expository but also participatory and observational and i still stick to that, its expository because its educated the audience on the real affects of lockdown, participatory because I actually did have to participate and record myself in a shot, this was bevause lockdown restrictions and obviously not being able to mix households. And also observational because there is only raw footage (of shops, playgrounds and college) the only archival footage i really used was for audio.

I think altogether it was really successful and it did what i planned it to do, a relatable emotional response from and audience which i saw when i ask for feedback from fellow class mates everyone said the documentary made then feel sad and that they related to it. Altogether everyone said it was a very interesting topic to choose for a documentary and that it showed the feeling surrounding lockdown well. 

The feedback i collected from classmates also showed me some useful criticism, most said to proof read which i aggree i spelt a couple words wrong and to be taken more seriously i think spelling should be up there with the most important things bevause if not it looks half dome and that not a lot of effort went into it, it didn't help i was editing at stupid times in the morning, which also bring me onto my next point of improvement which is time management, the beginning of the project i really felt the set back of lockdown and i didn't have motivation but i think in the future setting time plan for what in going to do each week will help so much. Another point of improvement i could make is so do with editing because i didn't have proper usage of equipment because of coronavirus i didn't have a mic for the interview meaning i had to put the gain up but as doing this it also really stood out the background of birds chirping and i feel like maybe if i played around a little more with it the bird sounds would drown the voice of the interviewee out.

Altogether i think it worked really really well because the audience reaction which is shown through the feedback form and how smooth clips and footage in the documentary is. And i managed to complete this whole documentary without use of professional equipment and limited use of editing software. 

Down below are some responses to the feedback form.