Task 8
Evaluation
Research and Pre-production
I feel that I produced some excellent pre-production work; I was in-depth and considered as many details as possible when conducting and compiling the research. I completed all of the pre-production on time, fully and within a structured schedule. I also uploaded it all to Weebly as I finished each individual task, which was one of my targets to improve upon from my last Unit. In this, I have been extremely successful. Another part of my pre-production that went well was how my idea developed over time. At first I was concerned that changing my mind about the details of the advert would show a lack of decisiveness, but I realised as I changed small details that it was actually improving the advert slightly each time, so I wasn’t concerned that my final advert is slightly different to my original idea. I think my research and pre-production was what organised me so well and allowed me to successfully finish this project to a high standard.
Filming
I think my filming and editing went well on the whole, although I was restricted in certain areas and this held me back. For example I was unable to film on Newsagents’ premises due to legal reasons, so I ended up using the chocolate selection in the College canteen for part of my advert. This doesn’t matter however because all I needed was a close up of the Mars bars on a shelf/in a tray and I achieved this shot. Apart from this I was very successful: I completely took apart my living room and rearranged it to create the set of an office. I paid particular attention to little details; I put printed charts on the walls and had plants in the corner of the room. I put a desktop-phone and a laptop on the table and also used an in-tray full of work – all to make the set as realistic as possible, and I believe that in this I was again successful. It looked like an office, and due to my knowledge of filming and editing techniques such as the 180 degree rule I was able to record footage that I knew would make sense when put together (for example when the “boss” looks in through the door; this is in fact a totally different location in the house, but I made sure the eye line match was correct for where he is looking and where the door is suggested to be in the shots of Mark).
Editing
As for the editing I was very successful: I consider myself to be very capable when using Premiere Pro – it is to my advantage as well that I have Premiere Pro CS6 at home and I made full use of it. Also, when I realised I needed a colour correction on some of the shots, I was able to use After Effects (I own all of the Adobe software at home) to fix it and this allowed me to practice and indeed learn more about the program, improving my knowledge. I also used Photoshop for some of the shots; I knew that after Mark threw the ball of paper in the bin and it missed, there obviously had to be a ball of paper on the floor to avoid having a continuity error. However in my footage the ball of paper would have been in the wrong place. In Photoshop I created a ball of paper and removed any background to it and placed it in the shot in Premiere Pro. I also created the final shot (where the Mars bar and the slogan slam on to the screen) in Photoshop. I think it looks really effective and this is proof of my growing knowledge of using these pieces of software that professionals use. I finished my editing with plenty of time to spare on the final day and used the time to finish other small tasks.