Evaluation -Victoria

Throughout this project as a group we've definitley hit some highs and lows

Editing fun strong point assigned

How Well Our Group Coped When Problems Arose - Ellie

I think our group fared okay with problems as we didn't encounter any hugely disastrous ones.
I think this is because of the simplicity of our idea, and how it mostly involved interviews and easy to film footage, so mostly the only thing we had to worry about was coordinating our schedules with our interviewees for when we were able to film them, and if the studio at college was free when we needed it for some of the interviews - scheduling interviews prior to when we would like to film prevented us from having the issue of our interviewees being unavailable when we wanted them.

However, although we did not encounter too many big problems during filming, we did have an issue with sound when in the studio filming some of the interviews. This is because we were relying on the camera's inbuilt microphone and, in the echoey studio, it could pick up loud sound from the adjoining room. We watched the footage back and decided that, for the most part, it is only really noticeable when you focus on it (if you know it's there) and when the interviewee goes silent - so, to fix this, we cut the footage affected in such a way that there aren't pauses where you can hear the background noise, as well as added faint background music during the interview answers; this solved the majority of this problem as well as, I believe, simultaneously raising the quality of our documentary by making it more professional and easy to watch. We were planning on including faint background music anyway but the volume we made it was sometimes affected by how loud it had to be to cover up the background voices without washing out the interviewee's voice.

We also faced a rather large issue when using Final Cut Express: there was an error and almost all of the editing we had completed up to that point was deleted and we had to start practically from scratch, thereby losing the time we had spent editing up to that point - following this, however, we made sure to save regularly (especially after editing difficult areas of footage) so that Final Cut would be able to keep up and so that if there were any more errors we would have a recent save to fall back on and would not lose nearly as much work.

We have also encountered the problem of Victoria being absent on the day of the deadline, our project being saved on her account, and it being almost but not quite finished; to fix this we have attempted to contact her for her mac login details so that we will be able to complete the final stages and touches of editing and meet the deadline.

Although I feel that not too many problems arose, I think that when they did we handled them calmly and logically, and generally managed them quite well.

How Well Our Group Managed Time - Ellie

Time management was a key part of this project; this is because we had to ensure that our pre-production tasks were completed before we could begin filming as we would need some of them to successfully film (such as the interview questions, the script, etc) and then we would need to leave enough time after filming to edit our footage to a good standard.

Even though we ensured that we left enough time to complete each part of the project (pre-production, filming, editing), as well as time to face any possible problems that could arise, I think we underestimated how time consuming the editing would be. This then caused Victoria to stay behind out of lesson a lot (as she was our main and head editor) to ensure it was completed and at a quality we were proud of.

Although I feel that we managed our time quite effectively, I believe we could have managed it slightly better by being more focused on our tasks during some of our lessons; as sometimes we were slightly behind with tasks that we needed completed and so we had to postpone filming. (This happened with our interview questions, and we had to postpose the start of filming for about ten minutes - not a very long time period but the delay still put us behind on our schedule and meant we weren't able to film as many interviews in that period as we'd have liked.)

I think that, although our time management was most definitely not faultless, we still managed it quite well overall.

How Our Group Managed People - Ellie

Overall, I think our group managed people quite well.

At the very start of the project, we took on an equal workload (within the independent tasks) each and ensured that we communicated so we were able to complete these tasks as well as possible - for example, to ensure that Becky and I were able to do the bibliography correctly, we had to talk to Victoria to know where she was finding her secondary research.

Also, when it came to filming, we took on roles that we felt were suited best to our individual abilities (such as Victoria being the interviewer, myself and Cheryl writing the interview questions, Becky managing the lighting, etc) so that we would have good and useable footage when it came time to edit.

Outside of our group, I feel that we managed people just as well. I think this is partly because, because we had multiple people as interviewees, to be able to film their interviews we had to be organised and clear about:

• how long each interview would take;
• when our interviewees' (and our) schedules allowed enough time for us to film;
• where we would be filming;
• explaining to the interviewees how we would like them to answer certain questions (for example, their favourite social network - just to say its name so we can use it for the beginning of our documentary);
• how we would light each individual shot, if we could use the studio lights, if we would be using lamp light or daylight for other locations, etc - as we could not waste time figuring it out on the day. 

Communication is of utmost importance when managing people and I think that our group communicated rather well - both with each other, and those we were filming - which made our managing of people quite good.

How well the group copes when problems arose - Victoria

In the process of making our documentary we definitely stumbled across many errors that were mainly technical. An example of this would be when using Final Cut to edit, there was a point when the system must of glitched because we lost the entire intro/other items we'd uploaded from our timeline, we tried everything to recover the items but it was a lost cause and it resulted in us having to start from scratch all over again which didn't help us for time.

We also encountered problems with filming this was only when recording sound as we weren't using a microphone so we relied on my camera to pick up sound which worked well but it also managed to pick up background sound, especially when filming in the studio as any background noise is immediately picked up in such an echoey room. Luckily the background noise isn't detectable when our interviewees are speaking it's only when they're not, even so weve added music to most of our documentary which helped drain any unwanted background noise without dimming out wanted audio.

How well our group managed with health and safety - Victoria

I think as a group we had minor issues with health and safety, this may be due to the fact that we were pretty organised in terms of equipment which I would imagine would be the main source of possible health and safety's concerns. The closest we got to running into any health and safety issues was probably whilst using the studio, we were using a lot of the equipment in there and this obviously highered the risks such as the lights. The lights were a concern to almost everybody because of how bright they were meaning in order to experiment to get the best lighting we could to highlight our interviewees meant moving them at different angles constantly, this May have caused discomfort for our interviewees as we ran the risk of shining the light into their eyes, the lamps themselves were actually quite hot so if we touched them in a way they weren't meant to be handled we could have burnet ourselves, this is all down to the fact that we didn't really have any knowledge of how to use the studio equipment.

How Well Our Group Coped When Problems Arose - Becky

I think our group when it came to problems, coped well and very calmly. We managed to have a lot of patience when the problem with Final Cut Express, as it deleted our documentary.  This meant that we had to start over and calmy cope with a more tighter time limit to what we were working with. After this we made sure that we saved our work after every little bit that we did to allow the programme to keep up with the work that we were doing. There was a few problems when it came to trying to interview such as, having the studio free and the right people at the time that we needed them.
Overall we didnt really suffer that much with any problems, our idea helped us meaning that we were able to keep it at college and not have any problems at a place we were trying to be at. This allowed us to keep calm and work well. We were able to get on with out work without having any major problems stopping us.

How Our Group Managed Health & Safety -Becky

I think our group managed the health and safety issues well when applied.  We were able toreally face the hhealth and safety issues when working in the studios and managing the ligts that we wanted to use. We had to make sure that we did not burn ourselves whilst handling the lights aftee they had been used during an interview.  We also had to make sure the surroundings in the studio such as tables, ladders and the backdrop poles weren't an issue whilst working. This also meant making sure that the people we interviewed weren't harmed in anyway.  We had to make sure that there was no tripping hazzards around whilst arranging the different sets for the interviews.
I think our group overall looked at the health and safety issues in a very responsible and appropriate manor to making sure we kept ourselves save and the others around us.

How Well Our Group Managed Time - Becky

I think our group managed time effectively and efficiently. We managed to plan ahead on what it was that we had to do in the process of making our documentary. I think as a group we didn't realise how quickly the time ran out. Meaning that we used quick a lot of the time on our pre-production work and probably not enough on the filming and editing.

All of the pre-production work had to be done first in order for us to use the plans to film. It was difficult when it came to you finishing your tasks and some others still had a couple of things to do. This meant that we sometimes had to put on hold the plans for that lesson.
We managed to film a lot of the interviews on one of the days which meant that the filmong process wasnt dragged out and took time that we didnt have. This allowed us to put the last effort and time on the editing of out Documentary.

Overall I think that we managed time well, we were able to have time to face any problems that cohld possibly happen.

How Well Our Group Managed Health and Safety -Cheryl

Whilst filming there where many health and safety things we had to keep an eye on. Once set up in the studio we made sure we watched where we stepped with expensive equipment. We looked out for wires and other tripping hazards. To set up our interviews we had to move around chairs and lamps sometimes even tables. To make sure we avoided damaging ourselves we lifted properly and took care of the other people around us.

How Well Our Group Managed People - Cheryl

For our documentary our group has to interact with a lot of different people. This was because our documentary involved mainly interviews. The interviews consisted of ourselves asking mainly young people questions involving around the internet.

Before we set off to do the interviews we sat around as a group and decided who we where going to interview. This then made us more organised and we could work out exactly who to interview and when. Once this was decided we cracked on with the interviews. During this process we took our time to listen to the person we where interviewing. We tried not to interrupt them and we where polite.

As a group I feel we worked well together. We got some good interviews and everything was pretty much clear from the start on what we where doing. This was because we split up the tasks equally. This was the same for both pre production and filming. During the filming process Becky was in charge of lighting, myself and Ellie worked on the questions and content of the interviews and Victoria asked the questions. We all shared the filming throughout the process.

Overall, I feel as a group we managed people well. This is both interviewees and other group members.

How well the group managed time - Victoria

Time was the most important aspect of this project as a big majority of the process of making our documentary revolved around organising, relying on dates and times ect. We spent a lot of time putting effort into the pre-production planning aspect, but maybe not enough time dedicated to what we actually wanted to do as a basis for our Documentary which was holding us back a lot of the time and stopped us from completing at the time quite vital pieces of pre-production work.

I'd say we completed the pre-production work pretty quickly which made more room for filming and planning. When it came to the actual process of filming we had set aside dates and times all in the same week we were planning to film, and it actually all went according to plan. I definitely think time was on our side for this project seeing as the amount of time we had set overall, seemed like such a short amount of time to make a 5 minute documentary considering the amount of footage we had to cover in order to not put things at risk when it came to editing just in case we wrap up filming then in editing decide we need more clips to cover the voice over and more filming needs to be done. There was a moment when editing I thought we had this problem, but I think this was just a case of me wanting more clips to cover up the footage of myself talking which I eventually got over and sooner realized this wasn't an issue and besides we had already gone over the 5 minute mark which was perfect and the next step was just working out how to wrap the documentary up and add the few finishes touches before the deadline on Monday.

How Well Our Group Managed Time - Cheryl

Our group managed time effectively. We planned our time out at the beginning of our assignment. We done this by allocating certain tasks out to our group. For example Vicki was in charge of the roles and responsibility list, Ellie worked on the location list, Becky the mind map and I the primary research. After we had completed the paper work we worked out who we where filming and when. We filmed a lot of people on Thursday (6/03/14) We even filmed a few people over the weekend. As we got filming completed quickly this allowed us more time to edit and write the evaluation.

Overall, I feel we have managed our time well because we planned out who was doing what and when. This has helped us keep on schedule even on top of the technical difficulties we faced with Final Cut Express.

How Our Group Managed People - Victoria

Managing people in this project was by far the most stressful, time consuming aspect. First of all we knew we needed about 7 or more people to interview in order to get different responses and so on. The hard part proved to be organizing times and places in which we could sit down and interview these people, myself and Ellie had a brief idea of people we could potentially interview (these people being mutual friends of ours, mainly because they were more accessible and easier to contact) Of course nobody is going to be available to be interviewed at the same time on the same day in a orderly queue type of way, so I thought the sooner we find out when these people are free the better, I immediately got in touch with possible interviewee's in a week that as a group we'd set aside for filming. I contacted all potential people that could feature in our documentary and got a very good response back and were available and happy to take part in our production, despite the almost last minute contacting of people.

That was probably the hardest part out the way and once we had organized when/were we were interviewing these people the next step was to focus on filming itself. There wasn't much directing we could do towards our interviewee's except from minor rules such as; not looking into the camera and answering the questions in as much detail as they can. Our interviewee's did a fantastic job and we couldn't have asked for better participants.

How our group managed equipment - Victoria

I feel as though our group were pretty set up and organised in terms of equipment, it was personally one of the first things i thought about when I heard about this project, what were going to use, where we're going to get it and so on. I felt like the sooner we knew what equipment we we're using the more in place things would fall and be ready for when we came to shooting footage.

Equipment specifically consisted of a camera (mine) which is a Canon 110D, Tripod, 16GB SD card, Studio Lighting and Final Cut Express. Everything apart from Final Cut & studio lighting were my own which made me responsible for knowing a schedule in which when they were needed, I had to be committed enough to bring in (if shooting in college) and take care of and be careful not to lose these. I decided it would be easier to film everything on an empty 16GB SD card, meaning plenty of footage could be shot in long/short takes. When filming in the Studio in College we used the Lights which were really easy to direct although it took a while to figure out what lightning looked best on camera and thus more professional which took up some valuable time. When setting up the camera and tripod we thought cautiously about composition of our interviewee's, the idea was to set up the interviewee to either the left or the right of the screen, this made room for a potential header that would go next to them when editing, but also it's a composition tradition to not always have a subject central towards the camera, but at an angle with background visible behind them.

I feel like overall managing equipment was one of our strongest parts in this production, this might be because we had it all under wraps anyway, and didn't need to rely on anything else such as taking out/borrowing equipment it was all under our control which really helped when it came to the physical aspect of our production.

How Our Group Managed Equipment - Becky

Our group decided that we wanted to use a camera that we knew well and could work easily. We chose to use Vicky's camera to film the whole duration of our Documentary, so that she could film her friends at home and feel comfortable whilst filming.

As a group we were able to co-operate well and decide that this was a better idea, and meant that we were always able to film wherever and whenever we wanted to.We were able to use the filming studio for most of our interviews, where we used equipment such as the lighting and back drops, these we managed with care as we knew that they weren't our property to break.

We used a tripod from college as they were easy to access when we needed one. This meant that our work was steady throughout the process of filming out Documentary.

I think in general our group managed the equipment well and with care. 

The equipment was definitely on of the main points that we focused on during our documentary.  We thought hard about what it was exactly that we wanted,  and how long we needed it for. We tried to have make the filming easy by being organised such as not having to hire a lot of equipment out or relying on things that we didnt need. We planned out a time schedule where each different task would fit and be done.

How Our Group Managed People - Becky

I think that our group managed people well, by taking on independent roles. As a group we wanted to come up with many different ideas that varied different target groups. This allowed us to look at each idea openly and decide which we thought would work well the best. We choose the internet idea as we thought that we could a wider variety of questions to do with their own personal experiences involving using social networking sites, and if they have had a positive or negative experience whilst on social networking sites.

Our group split the written work equally to allow us all to had individual jobs which made it easier to get the work done. We used our own strong points when it came to picking the tasks, which allowed us to pick two tasks that we thought we knew/could do better in. This allowed us to all individually have at least one task that had a lot of writing to do. This made it fair as we split the bigger and smaller tasks out. This also helped us when it came to having jobs whilst filming.
Ellie and Cheryl colaborated on writing up the questions for the interviews that we did. Victoria felt more comfortable filming and as it was her camera we used, a as a group we thought it was best if she used it as she knew how to work it the best. I lighting was one of my jobs that I helped do. This meant that when we filmed in the studio we wanted to enhance the backgrounds and make the different interviews that we did look different.

Over all I believe that we managed people well, but being organised and patient with one another. We allhelped out on the different tasks when needed and had our own input said when we felt our opinions would matter the most.

How well the group managed equipment - Cheryl

Our group managed equipment well.

For our filming Vicky brought in her own camera that we recorded on for the whole documentary. We picked to use her camera instead of the colleges because it would be easier for us to take it out outside of college. As well as this Vicky's camera gave us a guarantee that we would have a camera throughout the whole filming process.
I kick puppies in my free time.
We had to borrow a tripod from the college for Vicky's camera. This was easy to get hold of and did not effect our time management.

For our documentary we did a few interviews in the studio at college. Whilst we where in there we took care of how we treated the equipment such as the lighting and back drops.

Overall, I believe our group managed equipment well. We did not have to wait for a long period of time for equipment. This helped us keep to our filming schedule. Whilst filming we looked after the equipment and used it effectively.