Evaluation upon Practical Skills.

The practical skills I have managed to develop throughout the year I believe allows a professional insight into the production industry and how to create a successful production with thorough planning - allowing consideration for any factors that can affect any of the process such as filming and editing. This was thoroughly used with all of the productions that I partaked in, from the 4 Hour Film Challenges made at the beginning of the year to the final productions I have produced - using contingencies as a way to consider undesirable factors, such as bad weather on a shoot that was supposed to be forecast sunny etc. Combining all factors in my contingency has allowed me to produce content, without the need to compromise dramatically and overall, disturbing the workflow.

Example of Unit 36 Music Video Gannt Chart

Along the lines of planning, my process has changed practically throughout the course length, within the beginning of the year I would plan my projects within the one filming date, not taking consideration of the length of time the process of work that needed to be uploaded to the blog in the time constraint - this ultimately led me to be stressed with filming as I knew I had incomplete blog posts that needed to be completed and posted in time; causing my evaluations to be rushed. I did change my approach towards complete work within a time period by introduce the system of Gannt Charts, which were constantly open on my computer screen throughout the duration of a particular unit. The Gannt chart included the number of weeks from the day the unit started to the deadline, alongside a list of tasks that needed to be completed in an x and y format. I also started the gannt chart by colour coding the tasks I wanted to get done each week, allowing a sense of structure and stability to work comfortably before the deadline. I found this system work successfully - despite the odd blips here and there, where I took a break from doing work for personal reasons. To expand further, the gannt chart allowed me to keep track of all the work that needed to be completed, therefore I found myself not forgetting anything on the list - allowing me to achieve higher marks towards the end of the course.

The inclusion of equipment and health and safety was vital to my productions, as otherwise would have not been a professional and thought out plan. Within every production, I have created a blog post to explore the Equipment I will need for each shoot, alongside a contingency plan incase something out of the ordinary occurs - this will include: spare batteries if a camera dies, a back up tripod incase the one I have is faulty, or even a second shoot date in mind - to allow myself to finish anything that is incomplete. Within the Health and Safety requirements, I have developed my understanding by doing a location recce before shooting to consider all of the factors that could affect the health and safety of myself and anyone else that I am working with - this included factors of the weather and cables from electrical equipment such as lights etc. All this is included in the blog posts 'Planning' or 'Equipment List' so it combines with the recee/ anything that has to with H+S.

The research within coming up with ideas, played a role for each unit I completed. This variated within each blog post through the use of examples or stimuli to base my research - an example of this would be when I looked at music video theories alongside producing detailed examples of the theories being applied. Furthermore, I will expand upon my research by allowing qualitative and quantative results through the structure of a questionnaire or survey - this allows me to further expand upon ideas and evidence towards a final production. I have found doing this work successful for myself as it backs up my ideas sufficiently - however, I will admit, I do still struggle with constructing an accurate questionnaire without questions being too broad. 

Allowing consideration to combine camera and lighting techniques with other elements such as the exposure triangle has proven successful, I have managed to expand upon my knowledge from A-Level Photography to use the exposure triangle successfully but also developing this to use in the video format, I always ensure that the shutter speed is at least double the frame rate of the video to allow a smoother looking footage unlike a choppier looking one that would be achieved by not caring about such things. Aperture and ISO is considered in order to balance the light allowed in the lens, without the ISO being too bright - causing grain on the footage, whilst Aperture is only used when I want something to have a shallow focus, otherwise i'm not too bothered with results. The experimentation of other lenses in film has allowed me to achieve desirable results when focusing upon aperture, for example, I used the 50mil lens in my Promotional video to shoot a clip of the pool balls being broken out of formation - this turned out successful when using a low aperture and lower ISO (due to the vast increase of light due to the wider lens opening).

Overall I believe this year in regards to practical skills has been more than successful, due to my professional outlook upon the planning and development of productions throughout this year, if i were to change anything, I would most likely wish that I could have used gannt charts in my earlier productions, however it is all about the development and it clearly shows throughout the year of my work.