Evaluation (First Draft)

 Evaluation.

Over the duration of the course we have had one main aim to come up with an idea for a creative enterprise. Along the way we learned about all the things necessary to set up a creative business, from legal requirements to finances. We also had to make sure that we completed some practical work that would help develop our skills in the creative industry.

Fairly early on in the year we were tasked to make a short film which we titled ‘Hollow’. This was the first time that we had worked as a whole group, as a whole the process was quite smooth but did have some small issues which for a first time is expected. One of the things I think we actually did well was coming up with the idea, it did take a few lessons to get the main plot points out with a few different variants of the idea being thrown around but this did mean the main idea evolved. When it came down to filming although we got through it we had problems, like no real shoot plan and that not everyone fully understood the equipment that we used, both of these were just things we had not prepared for and a shoot list had been made but not everyone had looked at it . During the whole process I pretty much took the lead on both camera work and the editing, this is when I knew that I wanted to definitely pursue something that enabled me to do both of these as it's what I enjoyed and found that adapting someone's idea to fit the screen and seeing the enjoyment that people get out of seeing a simple idea come to life.

Throughout Unit 1 and Unit 2 we had to conduct a fair amount of research into things like finance and regulatory bodies to help us gain knowledge in the ways to set up and legally run a business. As I knew I wanted to in basics be a cameraman before researching, I was becoming more aware of the struggles that local business were having in switching to online and then not having the support base behind it and one of the easiest ways to grow a following is through high quality advertisements this was the start of a very basic idea of providing video content for local businesses. This is where the research came in handy as alongside all the necessary content that we have to show I made sure that I looked into things that affect advertisements, I did this as places like the ASA have certain codes that would need to be followed for the creation of a piece of advertisement. We also looked into the different finance streams including grants and loans, I decided for my business to start by using a business loan as this will cover the cost of buying the equipment whilst also leaving some money spare incase costs arise and as long as the business makes money these will be simple to repay, plus down the line if we as a company want to work on any specific productions then we can always look into certain grants to just fund the project rather than a project plus buying all new equipment.

When I was trying to come up with an idea for what kind of business to look into I knew that I wanted it to involve both filming and editing, one area that I don't fully excel in is idea creation so this meant that creating short films or documentaries based on a subject that we have to come up with and make didn't appeal to me. One thing that was present during thinking process was covid-19 and specifically the need for business to be found online and to be able to be seen above other similar companies and this made me realise that not many companies had either high quality photos of the products they sell or any video advertisement content especially in the smaller local companies. This is where my idea sprung from creating photo and video content for smaller companies to help invigour interest and shoppers to their businesses, I felt that before companies relied just on people coming into the shops but in recent years it's been more and more essential to have an online presence if that's simply social media or a full on online website. 

When I started thinking about Branding for my company I knew that I wanted to keep it simple , with a limited colour pallet and a simple logo that can be used in any situation. I wanted the colours of the brand to be limited across all platforms, in basics i decided to go for black, white and a small mixture of teal greens, I did this because I wanted the company to come across as being peaceful and also Green can represent being ‘restored’ which is what we do as a company in restoring companies presence. The logo itself is a simple mixture of two interconnected “L” this simply represents my initials whilst also keeping a simplest lined based logo which from research seems to be the way companies have  switched too recently.

Work experience has helped shape and improve my skills in both filming and editing.  The bit of work experience I have done is with East Norfolk sports department where we recorded and edited football interviews and then posted them onto the ‘East Norfolk Sport’ youtube page where we have had just shy of 1000 views in total with one video surpassing 100 views and through making these they have steadily improved in quality both audio and video, this was the first time that I had worked on something where dialogue was the most important part and working with the audio equipment was a pain to start off with as weird quirks meant that audio was unusable but this meant that we learnt to just have a backup audio device in case any problems acurd. I also played a large part in a documentary that we filmed focusing on just one player from the women's team. This meant that we had a new challenge of making a basic sit down interview look interesting with extra b-roll, but the main challenge was the editing. Luckily through editing the football interviews I had gained  a nice work flow into how the best ways of compiling and editing clips, so when it came down the documentary I was confident that I would be able to get the pacing and syncing correct on the documentary. The experience as a whole working with the sports department has helped dramatically improve my skills both behind the camera and whilst editing. The other main work experience I did was outside the college at Gorleston pavilion, we filmed a stage production that consisted of two actors. This was the first multi camera production that I had worked on. Setting up the 3 stationary cameras was simple and normal and we had been told where the actors needed to walk and we set up with that information in mind. To start the video we had 2 tracking shots , this meant for the first time I used a camera rig which is something that helps you steady the camera shot, this worked well and the shots looked nice and stable. The main thing I took away from the day was that storage backups are important as we ended up using like 10 sd cards across the 3 main cameras which meant that a lot of memory was taken up, so I made sure that when adding what I need that I need to have a lot of storage on hand incase they fill up.