Evaluation

When starting my FMP I had the intention of creating a social media campaign for the
creature of Gilman lake college project and promoting it through various types of post’s for
example job role posts where people would be explaining their role within the project using
both photo and video as well as more fun types of posts like interview bloopers or peoples
favourite memory with the project, but when I did a photo post I would try go more into
detail about the role within the captions so people could get a clear idea of what their role,
but that was something I didn’t keep consistent which is something that I will remember for
future projects that I do, my other intentions we are reaching the target audience for the
college film by posting content that I feel will reach that audience and keep them interested
until the release of the film. I chose this FMP project just before the final day of production
for the Gillman lake project and I was talking to the director of the behind the scenes group
Ben Lomas and the idea of using the Instagram profile came up and I was thinking that I
could be good to try get some experience doing promotional work and have a client brief it
was also something I had never done before and I found I really liked the editing side of
media and I found that my editing skills increased exponentially and I’m always looking for
ways to improve my work and throughout this FMP I have seen my skill set improve during
the production and I saw this as a way to improve the quality of my work further which is
one of the factors that helped me come to a decision when choosing this for my FMP. Before
starting this FMP I had grown my premiere pro skills and was growing more and more
confident in my abilities which is one of the reasons for me doing mostly video posting since
it was the one I enjoyed the most but the area that I have been most confident in, I also had
some confidence in using photoshop since that was one of the first pieces of software I used
and I have had a lot of time to learn new skills and techniques but I didn’t use photoshop
besides creating my poster. Since this final major project, I haven’t really increased my
technical skills since I haven’t had to get any additional footage for content since the
footage, I am using is the same footage that the behind-the-scenes team captured. During
the production of this I was introduced to Lightroom Classic for editing photos for photo
posts and this was the only piece of software that I hadn’t used before and the only other
software I was using was premiere pro for my final major project, so I found learning this
software fairly challenging because I wanted to learn how to colour grade and colour correct
which was a skill that I have very little experience attempting and attempting it on a new
piece of software definitely was a challenge for me which eventually started to become less
and less of a problem after I was getting more experience using it and I found I was getting
better at using lightroom and had a bigger grasp on how to get a good result on colour
correcting and grading. I also definitely noticed my premiere pro skills improving and my
attention to detail on where to cut music for comedic purposes and matching video and
music so they are in sync and this project has allowed me to get so much more experience
with video and photo editing and at the start of this project I would not have expected to
have this quality of work compared to before the project started.
I feel like I have gotten a fair amount of primary research but I don’t feel like I completed
enough of this, I think I should have created more forms to gather more audience feedback,
but the main type of primary research I undertook was my teams chat and face to face
conversations with Ben Lomas this is where I would primarily ask for ways to improve on my
work and what he thought of the post’s, I would also ask questions like what are my weaker
points in my skills to look for ways to improve them so I could better my quality of work but
this did have a drawback as well since I like to look for ways to better my work I do take my
time during the production of my work so I had been posting but very slow and I looking
back I would have done more to my production so I would have a solid posting schedule. I
feel like this was the primary research I found the most useful at bettering my work and
where areas in my work were underdeveloped so I could quickly fix the weaker elements
within my work and I started to be able to spot them myself after getting enough experience
using Lightroom and premiere pro, since Ben L taught me the basics of lightroom. I used
secondary research a fair amount but I feel like I could have definitely used it more for
looking into different types skills and techniques for premiere pro so I could have more ways
to engage the viewer and make my content that I made more interesting and specifically I
wish I would have put more secondary research into colour grading and correcting because
it has such a big impact on the mood of the video/photo and I want to know how to properly
use this skill at a better level of quality since I don’t feel my work reflects a good quality of
colour grading and correcting. I also would want to put some more secondary research into
transitions and find a way of incorporating them since that was something I was planning to
do at the start of the final major project but after a few ideas not really working because of
the way we shot the footage during the project didn’t leave me with many transitions I know
how to do so I abandoned using some nice transitions and learning new ones so I would not
have many limitations when it comes to making and using transitions. Throughout the final
major project, I had learnt and used a variety of different software skills and techniques
when using lightroom I had experimented with colour grading and correcting, this skill is
something I want to work on to improve the quality of what I produce and learn how to
change the atmosphere of a photo or video since I very much believe this is one of my
weaker points in my skill set and wish I improved it more during the production of my
content. When producing my videos and photos I used quite a few skills that I have learned
throughout the whole of college and one of the most common skills I used was using green
screened footage and using the ultra-key to be able to use the footage, I used this for mainly
attempting different transitions because it’s something that I really wanted to use but I really
struggled to find a good way of blending the types of transitions for example I wanted to use
a sea wave transition to try fit the theme of the creature of the Gillman lake but I ended up
scrapping the idea because I couldn’t find a good spot to blend the 2. When using lightroom
towards the end I used a lot more of the style pre-sets to give my picture a drastic change in
aesthetic purposes and it gave me a image that I was really satisfied with and I felt that it
helped me with the amount of photos I could produce because it gave me a good final result
and I am able to produce them at a faster rate.
I felt that I stuck fairly close to my statement of aims with a few minor changes with when it
comes to the amount of primary research I was going to do and the number of posts I would
make a week. When starting this fmp I wanted to post 3 to 5 times a week with photo and
video posts, but I ended up getting caught up just doing video posts since those were the
types of posts I enjoyed making the most and I neglected posting photos since I didn’t really
know too much about making a good photo post which is something that I regret when not
sticking to my statement of aims. I also planned to get loads of primary research by asking
for feedback after every post I made through teams, forms or Instagram comments and
reflecting on what I could do to better my posts and make them more interesting to the
audience and what they would want to see so the profile could have more growth. When it
comes to facing challenging, I encountered the same issue many times during the
production of my content was losing premiere pro files while editing them, this mainly
happened when I was switching rooms and I hadn’t finished making the video and this did
lead to me having to restart quite a few video edits slowing the amount of post’s I would
make a week. The best way I found to get around these problems were to either restart and
try and re-create what I made previously so I could continue where I left off or the other way
I felt that was the best about getting around this challenge was having an organised globe
and making sure that I save my work to it and that it’s the right version of my work so I
would be able to procced in other classrooms and be able to complete more content to post
for the Instagram. When looking at the content of my final major project the post that I feel
worked the best was the bloopers video which I received the most positive feedback from
peers in conversation and from lecturer feedback, I feel like this specific post was one of the
most popular because it showed a more fun side of the project that not everyone was able
to see. I also feel like this post was successful because of the comedic side of it and people
were able to enjoy the less serious types of posts. There would only be a few things I would
do differently within this project and the main part I would change is the amount of posts I
would do and incorporating more photo posts since I very much neglecting them until the
fmp was coming to an end which is something that I shouldn’t have done because I wanted
to keep consistent posting weekly and making photo posts were key to this and being able to
make multiple posts and keeping a good consistent amount of content and keeping the
audience engaged with the project