Evaluation

This Unit began motivation, a strong vision and a clear goal. After reseaving the brief I went straight to work developing my idea, researching into different types of documentaries, documentary directors that had similar work to what I wanted to create and popular music documentaries. I planned out my production schedule, giving myself more than enough time to get all of the pre – production such as the risk assesment, questions for the band members, and equipment lists. I had already filmmed a few things before the brief had even been handed to me, due to my uncle inviting me up to ‘The Shed’ where the band practice together. They were being interviewed by a close friend for her University to get her PhD in music and suggested I could film it to get some footage early to make everything easier on me. I was then invited to a interview with my uncle and another member Jon, the bassist, at my uncles house, then another time to get an individual interview with my uncle, and that is the night when the lockdown was issued the UK.

At first I was not worried, because at the time I did not realise how serious the COVID – 19 virus was, and thought that it would be fine to travel to my uncles house and ‘The Shed’ as it would only be me and the band there and we would not be able to get infected or even spread it if we were. However, Ian could not leave his house during the lockdown, as his wife and children were at high risk, Jon could not leave due to him living in Bristol and the travel back and forth would put at risk of getting caught, or even infected, and I couldn’t leave due to my nan and grandad being at high risk. I was stuck.

All I had was B-roll from the shed, an interview with my uncle Gene and Jon, and a individual interview with my uncle, and luckily for me at least I did have that footage, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t have even completed this Unit. At this point I still had a lot of pre – production to do including research and my pitch presentation but I was not feeling defeated yet, I still had motivation and believed I could have the documentary I imagined complete, and ready to be viewed by the public, oh how I was wrong.

As the lockdown went on, even extending to another month and beyond since the original “3 weeks”, my motivation had began to fall, my mood towards life had dropped and I was beginning to lose hope in this project. One night I woke up and had this burst of energy believing that I could complete this documentary, so I continued with the paper work side of things and began researching into video calling application like Zoom and Discord, with some of them being already familiar to me, I was not going to let this go, and then I did. I lost motivation again, and began hopping from activites and other projects outside of college that made me feel happy such as Skateboarding, Photography, and Tattoo designing. I then lost all focus on my college work and just began doing things that made me feel happy, my daily routine would be to sleep until 3pm, have dinner, sit watching YouTube for a few hours and then play video games from 7 – 8pm until 2 – 3am where I would then watch YouTube videos until I feel asleep, which sometimes wouldn’t be until I had breakfast the same morning and then went back to bed at say 10am.

My tutor then let us know that because of this pandemic, our grade would go off all of the units we had previously completed this year, leaving me with a Merit grade, unless I wanted to complete the final unit to see if it could bump me up to a higher grade. Because of this all motivation was lost, in my head I knew that if I did not complete this unit it wouldn’t matter, I would still come out of it with a Merit grade and would still be getting into University in September, but it would still be there in the back of my head, I kept feeling like I had to complete it, like I wanted to complete it.

I came to the realisation that I could not however, create the documentary that I had originally planned in my head, as I did not have the footage I needed and recording a video call interview using OBS would not be satisfactory, I would rather push the project back until this pandemic is over, where I can then film individual interviews with each member of the band, get more B-roll of Aberdare, the members homes and The Shed, I could develop better questions and not have to worry about having to complete it in a certain time frame, than hand in a half arsed documentary, without the passion put into it. I needed this documentary to be how I envisioned it, so I decided that I would instead hand in the trailer I had made for the documentary with the footage I had at my disposal, however I ran into a problem.

Due to me not sticking to my production schedule, and the work entirely, I had forgotten to document the filming process and the filming of the interviews from the production section of my wordpress, and the creation of the trailer I had made from the post – production section. Because of this I decided I would make another trailer, document my editing process for the post – production section and then I would show the two trailers to a select few people, to have them tell me which they prefered and why, and whichever trailer they prefered would be handed in, doing this would also add to the unit overall and could even add to my final grade. Although after I could not decide which trailer to give in, as I believed that without one or the other, the audience would not be able to get the full picutre, as both trailers show different sides of the band, in style, vibe and emotionally, with this, and because my uncle suggested it to me, I decided I would hand in both trailers as my final major project instead of just one.

After everything, I have hated the entire production side of this unit, not because of the project itself, but because of the pandemic. I know it could not have been helped and we have all had to deal with it in our own way, but it could not have happened at the worst time. I also believe that most of the other members in my college course have decided to leave the unit and get their grade from previous work in the year, which makes me feel about myself as at least I completed the unit and handed something in, no hard feelings towards my colleagues by the way. I do not feel bad about not creating the complete documentary, as this gives me time to improve on the project, and make it they way I want to make it, after all this is over and maybe even make it better than I originally imagined, with more interviews, longer running time etc. Overall I am happy with how the final piece turned out and if I could go back in time, I would do it all again the same.