Project evaluation

Project Evaluation

As a whole went really well I felt like with this project we have managed to create a very realistic news piece that hopefully looks and feels like a news company that's been around for a while. We managed to get some really effective contributors, which helped our story seem professional. On the other hand, we did not have a smooth time with organising everything, we had a lot of problems getting hold of contributors because our story idea is so sensitive and not a lot of people want to talk about it.

Pre-production:


Finding contributors for this unit has been the hardest of them all, due to our story being about medical cannabis we found it hard to find activist that would happily speak about the benefits of medicinal cannabis. Originally, I found out that a few years ago Callie Blackwell went onto the news and was promoting how cannabis saved her son's life way before it was considered to legalise for medical use. We all thought having her on the show would give us the insight we needed for our story. However, she never replied to any of our emails we sent out to her meaning that we had to keep looking.

In Suffolk (which is where I was born and raised) there was always a tale going around that there was a CBD facility 5 minutes from where I grew up. After doing research to see if this company actually existed we decided to phone them and ask them if we could potentially interview someone there so they could tell us what they did. Also, after researching that CBD could potentially help with arthritis, I thought that we could kill two bird with one stone and interview my Grandad (Leslie Castro) who also lives in Suffolk meaning we could do all the filming in the space of one weekend. Recently he had a really bad flare up with his arthritis so my mum decided that he should try CBD oil to help him, however, because he's set in his ways (with cannabis being frowned upon) he stopped taking it so it was interesting to get his views and opinion on medicinal cannabis.


One thing that I wish we did earlier was to contact the CBD company in Suffolk. After we contacted them the first time we just never heard anything back from them which meant that we just assumed they weren't interested anymore. This meant that we ended up going to Suffolk 2 weekend in a row as the first weekend we only filmed Leslie's interview and nothing with the farm. However, when leaving Leslie's I decided just to turn up to the farm with the other boys just to ask them again. Luckily, I have a family member close to the general manager of 10 10 farms, so when we did arrive she knew who we were. We could have easily avoided this a week earlier and would've managed to film both interviews and the live segment as a member of the group did go home to Suffolk a week prior to us filming Leslie's interview, but he never went to the farm he was just waiting until they phoned back.

If I could do anything differently it would be to have more initiative and just ring or go to the contributors because they don't understand the pressures of sticking to a deadline. So most of the people we asked to be in our production just assumed that we were from the BBC, which meant that they thought they could reply to it whenever.


Production/filming

Overall I felt like the filming and the shots we produced in our production were really well thought out and achieved. When it came to the interviews I felt like we got very good lighting during my Grandad's interview. We managed to get the lighting right by using the LED pack, I really like using these lights especially for interviews because the tungsten would've to produce too much light and would've resulted in the shot looking overexposed. Due to us filming that interview at my Grandad's I knew what room we should film in before even recce the location as I've grown up there. They have a conservatory, which is always well lit during any time of the day so we could've potentially not used any lights, but that wasn't worth the risk.

Another thing that went was the other interview with Zeeus Stone, due to us all having done effective research meant that we could go into depth with everyone that worked there about medical cannabis, which made the whole expereicne of meeting extiroir contributor a lot less daunting.

One thing I felt that did not go wll with the production side of our production was the live segment. Due to us only managing to get the CBD laboratory a few days before filming we didn't have enough time to really think about how we were going to do. We also didn't think about where the camera was going to go, it ended up being rushed and when looking at the live it makes me feel a bit dizzy because the camera is constantly turning. This means that we couldn't focus on the machines Zeeus was talking about. Another thing that went wrong was that we couldn't get the clip mics to work so we just had to put the shotgun mic onto the camera, thus meaning that the camera had to be facing Zeeus and Reuben just to be able to hear what they were saying.


One thing that we should've done before we even went to the lab was to get the mics working because when we couldn't get them working it made us look really unprofessional. When we told Zeeus that we couldn't get them working I had a feeling that he just thought what has he gotten himself into and I don't want contributors thinking that because if we were to ever ask them again they might say no.


Post-production:

Ewan was the main editor for this project and all I can really give him is praise for the achievement he's managed to accomplish in the amount of time we had left. Before our first draft feedback, our news shows was a shambles as it didn't really make sense and flow of it felt off. However, with the feedback, we got for both edit reviews Ewan and the rest of us really took to consideration what Helen said. I really feel like we managed to produce a smooth news piece and it doesn't look like this is our first time doing something like this sort of work.

Due to us only having a few days to turn our filming into somewhat of an edit meant that we never got the chance to go through all the clips and transcribe them. Therefore, when it came to the edit we didn't know the main points our contributors were trying to tell us. So poor Ewan really tried his best to fit everything together, but he wasn't alone. As the director, he'd edit something together and he'd get me to watch it and I'd try and find parts that could be trimmed down so we could fit the brief.

If I've learnt anything from the post-production side of this unit is that doing transcripts is a must! Not doing a trans script for this unit really made it difficult to pick out what was right and what was wrong.