Evaluation

ROLFE et al
What?
- What was my role in the situation? (i.e Director)
- What was I trying to achieve? (i.e camera, audio, lighting)
- Production paragraph, apply ROLFE. Research paragraph, apply ROLFE. etc
- What actions did I take?
- What was the response of others?
- What were the consequences? (for me & others)
- What were the feelings? (for me & others)
- What was good/ bad about the situation?


So what?
- So what does this tell me?
- So what does this teach me?
- So what does this imply?
- So what does this mean about me?
- So what was going through my mind when I acted?
- So what did I base my actions upon?
- So what is my new understanding?
- So what were the broader issues?


Now what?
- What do I do now to make things better?
- Now what do I do to solve the problem?
- Now what are the final consequences?

~

Evaluation:

      My description of my idea implied that I wanted to successfully create a multi-camera production based upon a game show called ‘GO!’, to achieve this I had to analyse codes and conventions such as lower thirds, cue cards and set design – these aspects would assist me to create a convincing final product.

     My ideas all came from preexisting games that where produced by professionals and posted online. Looking at the three ideas I researched into, I discovered key points to game shows that helped me to think up my own idea based around what I had seen. There were conventions to a game show that I had not used before, nor did I have much experience with, such as, creating a set for the show and using multiple cameras to gain more coverage of my production. Due to my lack of experience in these aspects, I decided to delay my production day a little so that I could participate in helping my peers in their own projects. Doing this meant that I could take notes on what others were doing and how they were doing it, consequently ending with me knowing a little bit more about multi-camera shoots and set design which allowed me to easily and quickly set up everything on the day I filmed. 

   

      I researched all primary information for the project, I found information such as the census of female to males for my target audience. I was trying to achieve context of what percentage of my target audience was what I was intending it to be or whether I had predicted my demographic falsely. Posting an online questionnaire allowed me to reach the majority of people, specifically young teens, without being prejudice by asking only who I wanted my target audience to be; posting it online meant that the audience had to choose whether or not they want to answer the survey depending on whether or not it interested them. Creating the questionnaire was simple as I used the resources that were provided to me, the website SurveyMonkey has questionnaire outlines that anyone can use free of charge. After planning what questions will be most useful to my research and will help me shape my production to appeal to my audience, I uploaded them into a questionnaire and posted the link on my public social media account. This meant that friends, family and friends-of-friends were able to see and access the questionnaire if they wanted to participate. Although I wasn't expecting much of a response, my questionnaire appealed to 21 people, 32% of which was my intended target audience; given this fact, people still responded well to my questionnaire, I can see this through the helpful information I gathered for my primary research and the fact that 21 people responded which, in comparison to my previous projects, is a lot more significant. The outcome of my questionnaire was of good quality, which meant that it helped to develop my ideas and understanding of my target audience and what appealed to them.

      My research into game shows taught me what I should be aiming my final product to be structured like, whilst also being unique in the content that I produce. This means that I can identify characteristics of game shows and apply them to my own piece effectively. For example, my research into the RocketBeansTV podcast gave me the idea of using a graphics card of some sort to either split screen between two cameras or to transition between games which I feel added to the ethnicity of a game show that is planned to air on YouTube, not on television. After editing my final product and adding the graphic, I now understand how to edit a multi-camera production whilst also fitting graphics and opening sequences to create a satisfactory finished piece. In my future projects, I will follow similar steps that I took in this project whilst researching. Beginning with a questionnaire allowed me to immediately identify my target demographic, as a result of this I was able to start looking at shows that also appealed to the same demographic. However, there is also aspects of this project that I am not happy with. Editing my final piece became difficult due to time constraints, I could make this better by planning a more in-depth schedule for how long I can spend editing, with deadlines for each element – such as, a deadline for editing footage so that when I reach that deadline I would have to move on to sound.
      Altogether, my research went as I had planned, and it provided help to me during the production stage as I was aware of the content I was making for my intended demographic. It also assisted me in creating the set and mini-games for my piece which where essential to making a game show.

      I planned the entire production by myself, I found the planning stage to be simple as I work better by myself – given this fact, I also tried to involve others when I proceeded on to the production stage which made the experience much easier as I wasn’t worrying about being too focused on everything that what was occurring. The planning stage was mainly about me collecting information before my production day. Using risk & recce forms allowed me to condense all the important information on to two sheets of paper, this made it easier to locate and refer to if I ever needed it. I found all the documents to be useful to me and as I already know a fair amount about the location I was filming in I knew if there were any constraints and/or limitations to me filming here – there were no constraints as I pre-booked the studio and the only limitation in the end was the lighting on the green screen as multiple shadows prevented me from getting a smooth finish on the background.

      

       Before the shoot, I gathered all the paper, scissors, sellotape and blu-tac into a folder so that when I arrived at the studio, I was able to evenly set up the games quickly and without hassle – meaning, more time would be spent setting up instead of messing around – this is something that I will carry on to my other projects as it resulted in less stress before filming. Generally, the effort that I put into planning my production made the process easier and I am positive that my piece would not have been as successful if I hadn’t gone into detail with the script (the opening) and my plan of the set design, I am satisfied that the other crew who were involved also appreciated my planning on the day as well. If I was to change one aspect of my planning, I would schedule a test shoot for my production – this would allow me to get a general idea about what I am looking for when it comes to the official shoot as well as more time to see what aspects work and which do not. 

       In my production, I had the role of director and presenter. I was aiming to achieve a multi-camera game show that was of decent quality with dialogue and a green screen background that was successful in appealing to my target demographic. To achieve this, I tried to base my camera set up on what I had analysed from helping other people as well as what I had found from my research into podcasts – this was successful for two of my camera angles but one of the camera’s had too much head space above one of the contestants; there was no one operating Camera 1. This action effected the quality of my finished piece as it meant that important footage was unable to be viewed by my audience – to prevent portraying the lack of important footage to my audience, I only tried to use this bad camera angle when the contestant was stood upright and in conversation with the presenter and contestant. This made my final piece look better as the contestant wasn’t constantly leaning down and out of frame. As the director of this production, I told the camera operator what sort of shots I was looking for and as I was the presenter I relied on his understanding and skills to capture the footage I asked him to. However, asking him to operate all three cameras would have been unfair and extremely difficult which is why I do not mind that one of the cameras footage was worse than the others. Even with the bad camera angle, the peer feedback I received, as shown in my production page, was primarily positive – this is reassuring as I worried that my final product would not appeal to my target demographic meaning that I would have to re-shoot or alter my idea. During post-production, I aimed to have my piece fully edited, including graphics, an introduction and transitions between games. This goal ended up being unrealistic with the deadline constraint and instead I changed my target to fully editing the first game of the show whilst also including the opening sequence and one transition. This was more achievable and meant that I would have plenty of time to re-edit the short piece if the computer crashed or the edit corrupted. All these aspects of my production tell me that I should have spent more time considering how the shoot was actually going to go and from this I have learnt that I should give myself more time to plan. To make things better for my production in the future, I will consider the amount of planning that I would need to do depending on how big the task as hand is, I will then appropriately set the date of the shoot which will give me a deadline for all of my planning. I should aim to have all the planning completed on that date as this will give me something to refer to if I need help. The consequences of me not doing this for multi-camera production are that the piece is not to the standard that I was expecting it to be, and the late date of the shoot resulted in a slimmer time period for everything that I needed to achieve in post-production.

      Prior to this project, I had no experience with shooting or editing multi-camera productions. This lack of experience caused me to be hesitant with the lengths I could explore and what sort of production I would be able to produce. Now, however, I am more confident with my skills in setting up a studio performance and syncing a multi-cam shoot during the editing stage. This new confidence will help me when progressing on to another project like this one. If I were able to re-shoot my project, I would schedule a day that is more suitable for others, I understand that this is a variable that I can’t rely on, but my finished edit would look more professional if there was camera operators making sure that the framing is correct. I would also use more studio lights to make the green screen easier to Ultra Key in post-production. Overall, I am more satisfied that I was expecting with my final product aside from these two aspects that I would change if I had more time to.