Evaluation

Evaluation – Documentary

My documentary began with researching into modes and conventions of other documentaries and how they used interviews, stock footage and other aspects. I was able to see the way they structure documentaries and use these techniques in my project. After I chose the subject of basketball, I decided to watch basketball documentaries and see how they performed and what conventions were relevant in them. After watching some basketball documentaries, I had some knowledge how they structured interviews with archival footage. The basketball documentaries that I watched and took notes on were very useful as they had different modes of documentary and it allowed me to see what works best when creating a basketball documentary. I decided to go with an observational mode of documentary as then I could view the basketball lifestyle from a perspective from someone who doesn’t play the sport. This mode is what I saw when watching the Shaquille O’Neal documentary and during this interview I saw a lot of archival footage and interviews, the interviews mainly consisted of explaining the life of Shaq and the archival footage is there to provide visual to what they say in the interviews. From this I began to develop my idea. My idea that I chose over the other three was chosen as it felt more relevant to the current time and the audience will be able to relate with it more. My idea was changed as the purpose of showing dream vs reality wasn’t as present but did have moments where it was shown, however it wasn’t focussed on and meant that the relatability was slightly lost. This wasn’t a fault from not doing enough research into dream vs reality in the world of basketball however I began to mould the documentary into why more people should play the sport. I believe this was more effective as instead of providing just knowledge I was able to promote this message that will have a greater effect on the audience as I am trying to entice their interest in a sport that will provide a healthy lifestyle. My inspiration to do this was because I have an interest in basketball and for me it provides entertainment and motivation to improve and I wanted to attempt to portray this to other people, I also show this with the use of a rhetorical question at the end to try and prompt the audience to think about attempting the sport. I developed many skills as I believe I have improved since my previous project. I am able to edit more efficiently and use more tools in Adobe Premiere Pro. I was able to advance my using of keyframes for the images and being able to create smoother transitions between visuals. My camera work has also improved and I feel like I have used different type of shots. I was able to record my interviews successfully and integrate them well in my piece as they push my point like I intended and gave some information to the audience and me. My interviews did have some audio issues as there was some white noise in the background of one and due to the fact I was recording outiside in another it lead to unwanted backgorund sound. In the future I will ask the interviewee if they could repeat their answer in a better sound quality area. This audio issue didn’t effect my attempt at pushing my point as I was able to add archival footage as a form of b-roll over the interviews. By adding archival video I was able to push my point and provide context to what the interviewee’s were saying. I used the Ken Burns effect when presenting some pictures to reveal information in a picture and to add more motion to the documentary so it doesn’t become tedious.

Regarding my overall production, I feel like I successfully created my intended documentary with the sources I had. I completed risk assessment and developed my audio visual script over time. My audio visual script was altered as it didn’t follow my original idea and I didn’t feel like it would have the same intended effect. I feel like in the future I will keep a diary that logs what I have done regarding production and post production, so then I have an ongoing script of my developing idea. By me not doing this during this project it lead to me not having a fixed plan when editing together my piece. Although I was able to formulate an edit as I created my piece however if I stuck with an idea and followed it through then certain scenes would have been better quality. I was able to produce the edit between three and five minutes as I had enough footage recorded. I was able to record at multiple locations which gave me a lot of footage to edit and I could decide whether certain footage was used. Not having enough footage wasn’t an issue so when formulating my edit I could choose from multiple clips and takes to see what was the best suited. Overall, my project met its intended purpose and promoted the message I wanted and hopefully made people motivated to try basketball or at least feel like they should be living a healthier lifestyle. If this wasn’t met then I still attempted to give basketball a spotlight for people to see how entertaining it is to watch.