Project Evaluation

Out of the three practical units this year, I would say that the documentary unit has been the most challenging. In terms of the duration, this piece is the longest at 10 minutes in total. The structure of it and editing was the most challenging. This is because it is far different to anything we have done before.
When we got the brief, I was quite daunted as wildlife is incredibly broad but also very challenging. To capture some great shots of wildlife takes extensive planning and patience. Therefore, when it came to choosing an idea for the documentary we all came up with ideas that featured animals that could be easily sourced such as at a park or centre. We decided to choose Laura's original idea as we felt that it would be the most interesting. It was also very accessible as we would be filming in one location and would have easy access to the birds. The main storyline for the idea was to promote awareness of decreasing vulture numbers in the wild. Laura already knew Jo and Leigh Holmes who ran the Hawking Centre at Doddington Place Gardens and found out that they had set up a conservation charity called Vulpro in order to raise money for the cause to help to protect the vultures in the wild.
When it came to planning, we didn't assign certain roles to each team member, we just decided that all of us would contribute to every aspect in order to get the widest variety of ideas to make some creative decisions. I would say that we worked very well as a team, communicating effectively throughout and assigning small jobs for each of us to do so that we were all contributing. We wrote the script and commentary together, deciding on the general vibe for the piece which we wanted to be professional but friendly. When it came to shooting, we enlisted the help from Josh to operate the drone for our opening sequence as well as to take on a role as an assistant camera operator. The first shoot day was quite stressful and unsuccessful as weather issues meant that we had to think on our feet and shoot the interview with Jo in the Hawking Centre. This resulted in some sound interference which proved to be very difficult to eliminate in the edit. However, we have looked at the audio channels and tried hard to tone this down. The second shoot day was much more successful. We were able to film the drone footage, as well as the flying footage with one of the vultures and the bald eagle. We also filmed much more action as our previous footage had quite a yellow tint to it that was difficult to edit out. The edit itself has been quite challenging because of the sound issues but overall I would say I am pleased with the final outcome. I think we worked well as a team and communicated well so that we could solve problems effectively. The final documentary has quite an upbeat feel about it with my personal favourite sections being some of the flying shots of which we used a Go-Pro to capture. I think that sound is still proving to be a huge challenge, having issues with it in every unit so far so that is something I would like to really improve on in future units.