Over the past 2 weeks I have been planning , filming and editing the documentary which is titled "Harlow Town - Shoppers Paradise". I will be evaluating the planning , production and post production work. Firstly I would like to start talking about the planning part of my work. When me and my group began planning for the documentary we wanted to concentrate and make sure that the documentary that was filmed contained many key aspects such as many different interviews , having a key presenter that everyone can relate to, image montages that will have older images of the town, captions in which introduce the presenter and archive images from the older Harlow town. When we first started to plan we came together to write down a variety of different ideas in which we could include within the documentary. We decided on the sound/music that we were going to have during the documentary in which we did spend time researching to make sure that we could use certain parts of certain tracks. We also established through previous documentaries that we had watched , that we wanted to have a focus on the interviews that we were going to have throughout the documentary. We also came up with the idea for the title sequence that we were going to use in which was taking a numerous amount of clips leading up to the start of the town centre.
Another important point which came into question when we were planning our documentary was where the filming would take place around the location. We needed to think about what would be suitable to show a good representation of Harlow town centre as a shoppers paradise. We decided on the parts of the town centre in which would be filmed for certain aspects of the script. We also came to an agreement about the many different props that we would need when we came to filming the documentary. We decided that we needed the presenter to be dressed smartly with the people that were going to be interviewed to look like they were shoppers from the town. The final aspect in which we focused on during the planning process was a concentration on the script throughout the documentary. We carefully and concisely planned the script for each scene was going to take place throughout the documentary. The language used in the documentary also played an important role because we needed to create a certain tone about the town. The language used was clear , concise and straight to the point in terms of information.
Another aspect I would like to evaluate is the filming/production work. As I have mentioned above , we decided to film around many different places around the town centre and chose carefully the footage that we wanted to show of the town. During the filming of the documentary , some of the planned filming locations that we had previously planned to film , we couldn't because of the restrictions that were in place at the time. In this situation whilst filming, we decided to improvise and work with what we could and find another part of the town to film which again would be suitable for the documentary. Whilst filming in the different locations I did find that because of time restrictions we had to film the majority of the footage within the same area but showing a wide range of services/shops around the town centre. If we would have had more time to film that I believe we would have filmed within a wider range of the location. One point that I particularly like about when we filmed was that we filmed much more than we needed so that we were able to view the clips and chose which would be the best to have on the documentary and also what footage we could use to improve the documentary. During the filming stage , some aspects of the dialogue were changed due to the fact that it was much easier for the presenter and the interviewee to remember , but the same message was portrayed to the audience. Lastly , whilst out filming we decided that we would change the plans that we had previously planned because we were not allowed to film in the shops that we had previously wanted to. This again caused us to improvise and decide on the spot where we would film those certain scenes.
Lastly , I would like to evaluate the post production side of the documentary. After all of the filming had been completed we were able to upload the clips and began to edit them using the imovie software. Once the clips had been uploaded me and my group began to place the clips in which we had recorded in the correct order so that we could then start to edit them. Me and my group first decided to watch the unedited footage all the way through in order to gauge what clips we needed to add captions and effects to close the clip and introduce the clip. After doing this we began to edit the footage starting with the title sequence in which had all of the group members names on screen. We then began to add a caption to the clip in which the presenter was introduced so that the audience could relate to the presenter. After this we added a variety of different transitions throughout the documentary such as the fading in and fading out effect so that the transition between the 2 clips ran smoothly. One thing that we wanted to keep and not have any effects during was the many interviews in which we had during the documentary because we decided it looked best to have the clips jump from one to the next. The many different music elements that we added during the documentary were also important because we wanted to create a certain ambiance about the footage. The songs that we included within the footage were that of "these shoes are made for walking" in which is shown through the footage of 2 shoppers trying on shoes trying to emphasize the point that the shops in Harlow are a shoppers paradise. At the start and end of the documentary we had a song which is the instrumental from "You Only Live Twice". We decided to use this because of the angelic ambiance that would be portrayed whilst the documentary is being watched to portray to the viewers that Harlow really is a shoppers paradise.
Overall , I have learnt a lot from this experience of creating this documentary. I think in future projects I will try and equally share out the time I have to plan , film and then edit because I did feel that my group didn't leave enough time to edit at the very end of the project because of the huge amount of time required for filming. I also believe that it is important when out filming the project that clips that are wrong with the actors saying the wrong dialogue should be deleted at that point as my group had to re watch clips in order to then delete a huge 60-70 clips that we couldn't use. I think that if my group had used the time that we had avaliable much more efficently then we would have had much more time to edit the footage to then boost the quality of the footage.
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