Week 33

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Monday 23rd May

Thanks to the planning of my action plan yesterday, I knew what I needed to do today. I started by creating and sending out the survey that acts as evidence for my final evaluation. The survey consists of questions, first gathering the gender and age of the person, and then gathering their opinions on the piece. Including things they liked/disliked, things they would change and what they felt the main message of the piece was. This survey will provide useful feedback for me, to see how people feel about my final production. But it will also help to provide context and information for the second part of my evaluation where I discuss the target audience and how I felt I targeted them within my final production.

With the survey sent out and waiting for the results, I started on the beginning of my evaluation. For today that consisted of the first 3 sections within Part 1. Which discussed my original intentions, the idea and the creative problems I ran into. I feel pretty happy with what I’ve written within them so far, although I feel I could probably discuss the first section of my original intentions a bit more. I’ve sort of linked the first two sections as they both discuss my original thoughts which then lead on to my idea and the reasoning behind it.

The third section about creative problems, ended up being quite extensive, mainly due to the fact that I discussed my Ebsynth problems in great detail. However, I believe it’s good to mention the different challenges I overcame, even though several of them were focused around the same base of Ebsynth.

My plan currently is to complete the first part of my evaluation and then get one of the lecturers to read through it and see if they can give me some guidance. I feel if the way I’ve written the first part turns out well then I’ll be able to complete the rest knowing what sort of things I need to discuss. This will come in useful as next week is half term, meaning by the time I finish my evaluation it will be harder to get lecturer feedback, so getting help while I still can is the best way to go, and will make sure that my final evaluation will turn out the best it can.

Since I finished the first three sections at College, I decided to try and get ahead of my action plan and finish off the last two sections of part 1 when I returned home. This covered the logistical problems I ran into as well as the creative differences that happened throughout my piece.

I’m pretty happy with all of my evaluation that I’ve written today. As I said earlier, I plan to get one of the lecturers to read over this part so that I can feel more confident about writing the rest. As currently, although I feel happy with what I wrote, I don’t 100% know for sure that it’s what I should be writing about.

Monday 23rd May

Tuesday 24th May

I started the lesson today with having my review with John. He said that my website and all the content on it looked all in order and so it was quite hard to give me pointers on improving it. There were a couple things he did mention though.

One was the timelapses that I made during post production. He said he really liked them and they are fine how they are for this project. But if my website were to be open to the public in order to show them, then it might be worth making the timelapses faster than they are as the general public are unlikely to watch a 3 minute video of it, whereas if it was 30 seconds they most likely would. But he said at the moment in this project, it’s not worth changing them.

The other thing was a minor change on my homepage which was simply to summarise my writing better. So instead of writing “Click here to go to my FMP Menu”, John said to simplify it to simply “FMP Menu:”. As that’s a lot easier to read and looks nicer on the page. This was a very easy fix and something I easily completed in lesson.

The last pointer was what I discussed in my last couple journal entries, about me improving the look and aesthetic of my website. John said that on all the pages with content such as production and post production, it’s fine to leave it how it is as the main priority is the content and making sure that is all laid out well. And the images and text I include are all enough on the page. However, he did say that if I wanted to improve my Menu pages I could include more things like I have on my Home page, which are drawings of Cody. This helps to show that the work is related to Cody, and I thought that was an excellent idea. When I returned home I implemented these additions, and I think they really work in just brightening up their pages a bit.

As I completed the whole of Part 1 for the evaluation, I was ahead of my action plan. Originally I was going to try to write the whole of part 2 today, but my survey is still not fully completed by all the participants so I will wait till tomorrow still to properly complete that section. Instead I wrote the first paragraphs for both Part 2 and Part 4 of the evaluation. I began with part 2 as this was really an introductory paragraph for the whole of part 2 and so I didn’t need the survey for it. Then since I had spare time I wrote the first paragraph for part 4. This turned out to be quite an extensive section and I discussed all the job roles I undertook. I’m quite happy with everything I wrote today and writing them today, will mean I have slightly less work to complete over the coming days.

Tuesday 24th May

Wednesday 25th May

In my action plan I had originally stated to write up the second part of my evaluation today. However, when looking at the results from my survey, I realised not everyone has completed it yet, and so I decided to push back the completion of part 2 until the survey is fully completed.

So instead, I pulled forward the fourth part of the evaluation, which I had started a bit yesterday. And thanks to my initial start on it yesterday, I was able to completed the rest of part four today. This included the sections on; my teamworking; how I feel I worked and my future career aspirations. I feel pretty happy with how I wrote everything today, and I’m fairly confident in saying I’ve finished this part of the evaluation.

Because I completed part 4 today, part 2 is either going to be completed tomorrow or Friday, dependent on when the survey is fully completed. But either way I am still on track to finishing the written evaluation by Sunday, even though I’ve had to slightly alter the structure of this production.

As I had a bit of spare time today, I made good use of it, and planned out the other parts of my evaluation. This simply incorporated writing some brief notes under each of the headings of what I will write. This will save me a bit of time later on as I’ll be able to see the things I need to write about instead of having to think of it immediately before writing.

Wednesday 25th May

Thursday 26th May

Luckily, everyone I needed to fill out the evaluation had done it by today, and so I was able to finish writing up the second part of my evaluation. Although this is different from my action plan, where I was supposed to write the third part today, I think it’s important to catch up on the parts I was already supposed to have completed. And thanks to my premature finishing of part four, I have the time tomorrow free to complete the writing of Part 3.

And so I started writing part 2. I had already finished the first section of it, and so the next two sections were focused on whether my production met the needs of my target audience and the reactions I had to my final product. These were the sections I used my survey as evidence for, as I was able to use the responses I gathered from the survey to prove the things I discussed within these sections. I’m quite happy with everything I wrote in these sections, and I believe that they cover all the information I was able to gather within the survey.

And the final section was about what I felt I could improve in order to suit my Target Audience’s needs even more. I found this section a little harder, as the main things I could do to meet the needs further was to just push the things I had already done even further. This mainly included the themes and story as well as spending more time on the animation. But I struggled a little bit on writing about this, as phrasing it into the right words was quite hard. But I am happy with the final product from it, and I believe I was able to figure out the correct phrasing in the end.

Since I had a little extra time at the end of the lesson, I decided to make a start on Part 3, which I’ll be properly completing tomorrow. From my planning, I believe part 3 is going to be quite a large part of the evaluation and so finishing some of it now will allow me more time tomorrow to focus on the rest of it. Today I completed the last section of it on representation. I chose to do this section as it was a relatively small one, and I felt it was best to complete a whole section than to leave one half completed. But I’m very happy with what I wrote and I’m confident in saying my representation section is complete.

Thursday 26th May

Friday 27th May

Although I’ve differed from my original action plan, today I wrote up part 3 of my final evaluation. And this turned out to be quite a large section.

But before I began to write this part, Nigel came to me to discuss the first part of my Evaluation, as I was able to send it to him yesterday for review. He said the content in it was good and there wasn’t really anything I needed to adjust about it. This was good to hear as I mainly wanted to make sure the way I was writing was correct and I wasn’t just describing or writing the wrong things. The only thing Nigel said to make sure to change was the layout. But at the moment the evaluation is just written up in a Google document, and I haven’t added the pictures yet, so the layout was already going to change, especially when I lay it out on my Wix Website. Overall, it was good to hear the content I’m writing is accurate and it allows me to finish the evaluation with confidence.

Part 3 covers the application of media theories to your final production. This includes Genre, Narrative and Character, Technical codes, Symbolic codes, Editing, Sound Design and Representation. Thankfully I had already written the section on Representation yesterday and so that allowed me more time today to spend on the other sections.

I completed the first four in the lesson, being Genre, Narrative and Character and Technical/Symbolic codes. I wrote quite a bit for all of them, especially the first two as there was a lot to discuss. Within them I made sure to reference the relevant theories, such as Metz, Todorov, Propp and more. And I was very happy with the final work that I was able to produce. This then left me with the final two of Editing and Sound design to complete at home.

And so when I returned home, I made sure to finish off these last two sections. Both of them covered relatively similar topics being focused on the visual and audio parts of post production. I struggled a little bit more with finding appropriate theories for these sections. For visual editing I found the Show don’t Tell rule, and for audio editing, I used diegetic and non-diegetic sound, although I was unsure whether this properly counts as a theory. However, either way I’m quite happy with what I wrote in these sections and thanks to Nigel’s review of my earlier work, I believe I’ve finished this part of my evaluation.

This leaves me with only part 5 of my evaluation which I will be completing over the weekend. And then by the middle of next week I should have my FMP officially completed.

Friday 27th May

Saturday 28th May

I began today by writing the first three sections of Part 5 of my Final Evaluation, as this is what I had planned on my Action Plan. These sections covered the successes and failures of my project, the aspects I was most proud of and the ones I would have liked to develop further. I was quite happy with everything I wrote in these sections, and as Nigel had confirmed the way I was writing my evaluation was correct, I was more confident about what I was writing.

By the time I finished the first three sections of Part 5, I felt like I was on a bit of a roll, and so instead of waiting till tomorrow to finish my evaluation, I decided to finish the last three sections today as well. These sections focused on how I felt I’ve grown as a filmmaker, looking back on my Extended Essay and what impressions I wanted to leave on my audience. These sections were more complex than the first three and so took me longer to complete. But I’m very happy with what I wrote within them, and I’m now quite confident in saying I’ve finished writing my Final Evaluation.

With my Evaluation completely written up, all that's left to do is gather the images for it, upload it all to my WIX and then check my WIX website works. I’m still on track with my Action Plan and so hopefully by the middle of next week I’ll be able to have my FMP officially completed.