Evaluation of Video project

As a whole, I believe that the project went well and I gained and learned many different techniques for interviews that I can now place in future projects. Here is the first interview project me and my partner undertook when starting this course.

First interview production
As you can see with this by this piece my interview skills needed work, as well as the lighting, being dim and dark when watched back as well as the editing being jumpy and choppy. Because of my work within this project, I feel like if I re-did the first production the quality and look would be more professional.

Within this documentary I believed there were many aspects that worked well and looked good when watched back. For example, each interview had small pauses breaking up the long winded talk and slotted with small cutaway shots of the animals and the general surroundings. This created a better-paced flow whilst creating interest and sparking emotion for an audience watching. Music I thought also worked well and helped spark an emotion and set a different mood. Pauses that were created felt awkward to listen to but music allowed the pauses to be there without unwanted quiet sections.

An aspect that the group was unsure about was the colour difference between the interviews due to the lighting used in the location. The interview with Val and her dog Sol the footage was very yellow looking taking away the continuity of the project, to change this and make it more attractive to watch the group selected each shot and used the effects to try and correct the colour balance playing around with the different colours to cool down the look of the yellow footage, which worked well within the final edit.

A few aspects of the production we need to work on is the set up of the camera in the production stage. Within some of the shots, we had to rotate and zoom in due to the frame being slightly angled to the left creating a 'wonky' look to the first interview. To prevent this in future projects, we will have to set the camera up straight and compare it to certain objects in the frame to check if they seem straight or not. Another thing to look at when filming is to look into the white balance when filming making sure that we set up a white balance before filming in a room with artificial lighting giving the shot a warmer look than we would like.

As a group working as a team with this project we came across some bumps when planning, filming and editing. Due to all of our different ideas and opinion that clashed, arguments and disagreements did occur between us making editing and filming difficult and unpleasant. A member in our group believed she was being treated unfairly causing her to have rants over internet group messages by using curse words towards the rest of the group, again creating an uncomfortable environment to be in. This made it hard to film and edit creating more stress for this project.