Project Evaluation

I started my Experimental video just over 8 weeks ago and exhibited my work to the public on December 2nd.

At the beginning of the 8 weeks, it was all about the preparation and the paperwork that I needed to fill out to be able to begin filming. I had never done this part of the work before so it was all new to me, but got the hang of it eventually. First I had to come up with a concept for my video, and then I could work from that and begin to have a final idea. Once I had decided to work on the concept of dreams, I had a concrete idea which meant I could begin the paperwork. I started with the storyboard for my work, which didn't take as long as I thought it would.
Once that was done I had to write up the health and safety sheets for when I would be filming, also this did not take too long so I was able to start my filming as soon as college started after half term.

When we returned I began filming on Tuesday, November 3rd at a house. This filming process took between 90mins to 2 hours. This was due to distractions from those not in my filming. Though once I had filmed the shots I needed, I was happy with the results as they looked quite similar to how I had imagined them and how they were written down.
Next I had to film in my next space which was in Crawley towns, memorial Gardens.
This was filmed on Wednesday, November 11th during the day. The only major issue that day was the weather. It kept raining throughout the day, so I knew when it stopped I only had a few takes to shoot my scenes, in the end I managed about 5 takes in 20mins and got what I needed for my video.

The next part of my project was the editing. It was all going to be done on the Macs and I had never used one before, but once I had a lesson looking at the applications, I was confident enough to begin editing my work. I didn't think this would take me 2 weeks, however I needed every lesson in those 2 weeks to edit my work. Each lesson I was either editing my clips or testing out different audio clips to add into my video.
At the end of those 2 weeks I had edited all my work; added transitions, sounds and the final credits.

The last part of my project was to exhibit my work in front of the general public, which included, friends, family and strangers. I chose the college restaurant to show my work in, and I did that on December 2nd at 7pm with 2 other Media students. I gave each person a questionnaire to fill out after they watched my experimental video.
The only issue with the exhibition was that we had to ask security if we could use the college late at night, and we also had to talk to those in admin, so we could use the car park for our quests, free of charge. We managed to get the all clear with security and admin. The restaurant manager agreed to let us use the restuarant as long as we were not going to be serving food and drinks, as well as moving around the room too much.

The concept of my experimental video is about dreams and how real they can seem, and even though you can't remember much when you wake up, it somehow feels very familiar.

The feedback I got was positive, and the criticism was very constructive.
Many people had said the continuity in the house was very good, so it connected the video well, I also found that the majority liked the audio and thought it fitted well.
Many of the people liked the video clips where I had the 2 people run through the trees with the country music playing, however some did not like how the character went from being in the house to being in the gardens. Though I got positive feedback about the way I edited the clips together.
The country sound was what the public enjoyed about the audio in my video, however not all of them enjoyed the laser sound, which I used to get my character to go looking around the house.
The audio was my favourite part of the experimental video, because it was strange enough that I thought it worked well with the concept of my video.

Overall I found the paperwork the most difficult as I had never had to do any pre production work since I started Media 3 years ago. I also found the experimental video idea, hard to come up with, but I decided to write up a mind map to help me with ideas. Once that was done the plan just came to me, and I had a solid concept to work with. I feel I achieved quite a bit in this project, as I learnt new skills through the editing process along with learning how to plan out a video through pre production. I learnt how to use different applications on the Macs, and have managed to come to terms with what I am able to do and what I need to learn a bit more on.