Evaluation

For this unit, we had to create a multi camera piece and this could be anything of our choosing such as a game, news or cooking show for example.

I had a couple of ideas going into this project however they did not feel concrete. One idea I had was a follow up to my Unit 9 project called The Man of Steel: Behind the scenes, which was a behind the scenes mockumentary about Clint Fleetwood, the star of the new Superman film. The  follow up, would've caught up with Clint after he was fired, dealing with life after Superman during the third UK lockdown. This idea would've had so much potential and could have been done in a mulitple camera format as the original also used some multi camera elements. However I ultimately decided to not use this idea because I wanted to create something completely new for the Unit 10 project. 

Another idea that I had, was a rework of my original year 1 FMP/Unit 9 project called the night shift. In the original idea was to do a mockumentary TV show pilot called Employees, which would have featured a mix of a human and puppet cast. However I would have adapted the project to fit the current lockdown situation in order to film something via Zoom with the characters and the script that would have been adjusted too. However I again decided to not do this project for Unit 10 because I don't want to write off the original for my FMP.

So my the idea I eventually settled on was a News piece which later became, The Good News Network. 

The Good News Network, was to be a news programme dedicated to primarly good news and uplifting stories. I decided to make a programme like this because I felt that in these times, good news is so rare and that people may need to be reminded that there is always some form of good news out there, but it just doesn't get the attention that the negative and depressing stories out there. 

For my research, I wanted to look at a similar programme that was created by John Krasinski for YouTube called Some Good News which did exactly want I wanted to achieve which was create a platform for good news to be shared throughout the first lockdown of the Covid19 pandemic. I looked at the show to study how the host (Krasinski) differed from a more profesional network news host, the shows format and how to make something for the fast paced YouTube style, which is where I decided I wanted my show to go. 

I also looked at network news programmes such as BBC News to compare the two programmes and to also understand the proper Codes and Conventions of a news programme so I could still make a proper News programme but for YouTube rather than network television. Many of the News codes and Conventions were included in my final piece. Such as the camera angle (medium close up), formal clothing and making sure the host felt trustworthy and someone the audience could rely on. 

When Planning to write my script, I searched through social media to find positive news stories and stumbled across a couple of videos that I thought would make for some nice stories, however I got most of my news stories from the BBC news website, on the Uplfting news page, where they had hundreds of positive stories that I could choose from. I ultimately decided on 3/4 of the best most recent ones, and began writing my script from there. 

When writing my script, I knew that the news stories would carry the main chunk of it and really had to mention the main facts of the stories for the audience to really understand the stories in a short time frame. So, knowing how the stories would be the biggest part of the script, I only really had to write the intro, outro and links into the segments which was a fairly easy task. My other pre production documents such as location Recce, Proposal and treatment were all completed with no additional issues. 

Usually with the production phase, Iwould have planned to have filmed at the college in the studios with a green screen background. However this has not been possible at all throughout the entire project due to the lockdown and being unable to work in college. So I had to adapt to fiming at home, which wasn't a huge issue. I decided to ultimately film in my kitchen, while it does not look the most professional, considering the circumstances, it did the job for the project.  I shot the project twice. The first time I was unhappy with the length and the lighting of the kitchen so refilmed it a few days later and I felt much happier with the second attempt. The second attempt felt somuch so much more organised than my previous attempt, I felt that I knew my stories a lot better as I had to try and memorise the script which I struggled to do the first time. Also I used natural lighting for my second shoot rather than the flourescent lighting from kitchen which actually made it look so much brighter. In future, hopefully if circumstances are different, I want to be able to use the studio at the college because it would look so much more professional and will have much better lighting. And Iwill also print off a copy of my script that I can have to read between takes in order to make sure I fully know what I am meant to be saying. 

As stated in my production page, I had to use IMovie to edit, due to not having access to the editing suites at the college and to the fact that Premiere Pro does not work on my current laptop so I had to use what i had on my phone, however like having to film in my kitchen, although not ideal,it did the job for this project. 

This project, was a learning curve. Doing the entire project from home including online lessons was a challenge,trying to stay as engaged and as motivated as I possibly could be was tough, arguably the biggest challange was trying to keep going and there were points where it felt like I was running on empty but I really feel that I'm very happy with how this Unit 10 Multi Cam Project turned out.