Evaluation

Introduction-
Firstly, our social action was very different to a typical Social Action Campaign. Our group wanted to make it very different because we looked at the themes and topics included in our project and looked at similar campaigns and decided that they all use to same format and typical conventions, we wanted to go down a different path by making our Social Action Video stand out, this was important for us because by changing the way Social Action Campaigns are set out we can influences other campaigns can do the same. We started by planning out a linear narrative because we thought by using this technique it would differentiate our project from others.

After our project had been edited and uploaded we decided to ask people for there opinions ans reviews, we felt this was important because we wanted to get the opinions of close friends and people we work with because they will give us honesty and they will tell us how we can improve in future projects. We got a lot of feedback that when we looked back it as a group we thought the feedback we received would put us in good stead come future projects, The first piece of helpful feedback was that in some parts, mainly with music the audio doesn't fit the themes of our narrative and doesn't work well, we asked for an example of this and they said, the scene of the character killing himself, although the music is filled with suspense and provides the audience with some nervousness, but the music could have been replaced with something that fit the mood a little bit more and a piece of music that would link with the narrative E.G - A meaningful song with lyrics based on themes linked in to our narrative.  We took this into consideration and tried multiple songs with that scene but we decided that the best music and the music we liked the most was the music to begin with, we thought this because we enjoyed the scene with that music and also we got some criticism that the scene was cheesy with that music or sounded like a horror and wasn't portraying the narrative in a correct way, we thought about changing it but went with the music we had chosen from the start because we as a group decided that it was best for the scene. Whilst making our film, we tried our hardest to not have any continuity errors involved in our shooting process, but sometimes they cannot be helped, one criticism was one continuity error, during the one scene i don't have a phone in my hand (when jumping of a bridge) but in another shot (when i land from jumping off the bridge) i have the phone in my hand, this was included because we had original and different ideas about how to film this shot, we kept this shot in because it wasn't a big enough error to cut it out and not many people noticed it, we also didn't cu it out because it actually worked with the narrative and as a group we thought it was good. In my next group we will try our hardest to make sure that there are no audio issues and continuity errors and will make sure that next time to target audience enjoys our audio and music choice and make sure the audio cannot find any continuity errors in our work. Furthermore, these choices that we made could effect our work dramatically, if we was making this for a huge company and the target audience didn't enjoy the music or found problems like continuity errors in our work, there could be huge problems for the company in terms of financial success and popularity, for example if things like that were to go wrong with the campaign there credibility would go down drastically because the target audience as well as the audience in general wouldn't trust them to come through in a project and finish it to a good enough standard. We took this information in and talked about if they made the right criticisms and thought we actually did very well to only get two big criticism's , we felt this was a compliment to our work because it implies that they were more things to talk about in good terms than bad terms. When talking about the opinions, we felt that the had made the right choices when criticising the work because looking back maybe the audio could have changed to something more fitting and we shouldn't have been lazy and re should have done re-shooting to cut the continuity error out.

My team that i worked with throughout this project were extremely good. we all worked together to get everything done, pre and post production and made sure that everything that we needed was already planned out and sorted, normally within a group there can be arguments, whether it is a disagreement when filming or ideas may clash, during our group talks and when talking about different ideas we had, none of us argued and we all listened to each other, we felt this was the best way because then we can all give our arguments to why we should use a certain idea or a certain camera shot. I feel we worked together better than most groups is because we are all friends, this helped us a lot because we was not only used to working with each other but also it didn't feel like a working environment, it was a fun environment to be in where we worked hard but also had fun. This is what separates us from other groups because, although you got to choose your groups, i feel other groups may not have got on with each as well as us three did in our group. It was very important for us to understand each other and for all of us to listen to each other or this project wouldn't work at all. When sharing work out between us, i think that this helped us a lot because we all knew what we was doing and what our responsibilities were in terms of production work, this was important because it meant everybody in the group had something to do and they was contributing towards the production.

I feel they were many pros rather than cons in our production, i am confident in this because our production was fantastic and we tried our hardest to make it the best we could. A few opinions we got back from our production was the camera shots we used throughout, a specific shot caught the eye of many viewers and they didn't fail to tell us how much they enjoyed it, the specific shot was when the main character committed suicide and we got given a lot of praise on how well the shot was done and the creativity and thought that went into making this shot realistic, When we was thinking of our idea we took time to talk about camera shots and techniques that could be possibly used throughout and one of the shots one of us suggested that was very popular was the use of green screen, we had some difficulty thinking of how to do certain shots such as the suicide scene because we was thinking of how to do it creatively and realistically, we decided that a fast POV zoom shot would make up a part of the shot, with the characters hands overplayed on a green screen this would make up part 2 of creating this shot in this scene, this was actually very easy to execute when we was filming it which was a surprise due to it taking us a long time to come up with an alternative to how big budget films would film this shot. Leading up to the climax of the film, we use a scene that includes slow motion, at first we didn't include this in the first draft, after getting some feedback from different people we thought adding this would make our production have some dynamic and make it very different to other projects in the class, after we edited it together with the slow motion, we decided that it worked perfectly by building up tension and making the audience nervous for what he is going to do next. We also thought it worked well because we think the slow motion is what is happening in the characters mind and the whole world is slowing down for him in his last moments of life, we thought this was clever to add because it can then show the audience what it is like to be in the mind of a bully victim and to see his thought process and what victims go through. The next piece of feedback we got was about our editing, as i said before the audio editing didn't fit the narrative but they're still some positives to take out of the editing such as the excellent editing with the green screen and how well done it is, but also the overlay work with the text messages, again, in our first draft we didn't have the overlay text messages, we got some feedback on the first draft and everybody we asked thought it would be a great idea if we included the text message overlay into out video, they thought this because it would make the video not only better looking but gives the video a sense of realism, with the texts on the screen at the same time as the characters, you could see how the characters are reacting to being bullied but it also takes you away from the main character and helps you focus on something else for a while, we also thought it fit the narrative well an looked unbelievably professional, it proved to be quite easy and was simple to do as an overlay. When editing the sound we thought it was vital to add realistic sound effects that would fit what is happening at that certain time, so sound effects was huge for us to get right, sometimes in productions editors get the sound effects wrong an it ruins the whole scene or possibly the whole movie, for example if a gun sound effects doesn't fit the gun it takes away from the scene it fails to deliver to the audience. We needed to get great sound effects because our production focused on realism and one way to do that is for the production to sound realistic, we gathered a lot of sounds and tried many of them, we came to a decision and chose the ones we liked and added them in.

Comparision:
Firstly, i will be comparing my production to another from the class, i feel this will be good because i can compare techniques to the techniques used in my production. Just before i start i want to credit all of the productions and ideas that were created and this is strictly my opinion.

I will be comparing my production to Lucy's, Toms and Chloe's production on LGBT Campaign, i can say they're many good things with this campaign because there is, there idea is nice, vibrant and is awesome on paper, i love there idea in terms of how they tried too execute it by making it happy and how they don't follow the typical convention of a typical campaign that goes down the road of a sad narrative or dark message, this campaign shows what LGBT can do and the positive effects gay pride can/has had on people's lives, throughout the campaign there are interviews with Bisexual or Gay people, i like this idea because i don't think any other group thought about doing interviews, this was a clever idea because it allows the audience to connect with the people involved in the campaign, i thought this was the strongest part of there campaign, i really liked the idea of being able to meet people who lead different life styles to me, i wanted to understand what they go through and there story, after watching there campaign it made me feel more connected and helped me understand what they go through on a daily basis ans also there stories.

Now the negatives, firstly i have to mention the editing, some of it is terrible such as the 'scale to frame size' which they didn't fix, this is disappointing because little faults like this stop it from becoming a great campaign, and also makes it look very unprofessional, not just to media students but to anybody who watches the video, i feel with the editing they could have took a little bit more time to just make sure the small things were fixed before exporting the final product, that would be my biggest advice. I actually think they're quite a few more positives though such as the camera angles they have used where the person talking doesn't always talk directly into the camera, i think this is good because although it is typical, it fits this campaign perfectly and lets the audience understand that the interview is more just like a friendly conversation. Adding to this the stock footage is 50/50 in my opinion, although it works when sending a message like in this campaign and also helps to convey there message about LGBT and how well supported it is, but seems too easy and the group relies heavily on the stock footage to make the campaign work. I think the music they included into the video worked amazingly and gave the audience a sense of happiness and not sadness like my campaign and a few others, this is what i feel was strong about this campaign it didn't follow the typical conventions of a campaign, this is why i feel the happy music was a great addition because it took us away from the sad or upsetting campaigns.

I feel in terms of little things that could be improved on were things such as camera focus on the interviews, editing techniques, less reliant on footage that already exists and for the group to include some factual information to inform the target audience on LGBT a bit more, adding to this they didn't focus on all of LGBT which i thought they could have done a little bit more, by including some interviews with a transgender, it might help the average audience to come to terms with them and there life style rather than discriminating or making jokes about them, with this not included it only covers 3/4 of LGBT, i feel this campaign video could have been executed better in some places, but overall this is a good campaign that informs the audience on the basics and allows the audience to connect with the gay community and individual members of it which i feel is important.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, i feel that our production went amazing and we really worked great as a team, our production came out better than we expected, at first i wasn't confident on the idea because i thought the directors views and shots that he wanted to try were beyond our talent and creativity but when we started filming i realised that they weren't and we could do them comfortably, i learnt a lot about myself and what i could when i put my mind to it on a project, i liked doing this production because i love doing realistic pieces and i felt the themes and topics involved were gritty and involved tragedy, these themes were great because we could experiment with them in our filming, furthermore i feel by doing this project it allowed us to express our creative sides in terms of camera techniques and building a narrative, because our production is all narrative it needed a strong story or the target audience would not be interested in our story, so i feel we was very creative with our narrative and all of our choices in pre and post production.