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Mythical Crime-watch Evaluation:

By Rory Giddings ©

Our group consisted of: Andrew, Owen, Will and I. During the production of this documentary we had little, if no difficulties. We all recognised that our target audience for the Mythical Crime-watch documentary would be basically anyone from our age upwards.During the pre-production process, Andrew, Will and I contributed and brainstormed ideas. Meanwhile, Owen and Josh were already set on finding the right location somewhere in the school to film in. When they returned from their tour, they showed us the pictures they had taken on the camera of the locations and our group was pleasantly surprised to find that the school actually had some great settings to film in. We suddenly felt very confident about filming and how we would approach the task of setting a documentary tone.

The Pre-Production Process:

Finally we could begin filming; especially with all of our planning and brainstorming efforts that meant we were desperate to bring all that from page to screen. Once we began filming, it was clear that it would be suddenly difficult to film as Josh was ill. But it did however become glaringly obvious that this was only a minor setback to the filming process as we already had everything we needed and were still raring to go, despite being one man down. During the filming, the weather was absolutely perfect which we were very grateful for. We had brilliant teamwork and faced no problems at all. The only minor difficulty we faced was the clock, as we only had an hour and a half to finish all the filming. We went a little over time but were still doing fine. Furthermore, we all shared common interest in getting the filming done which gave us determination. Even better, we had no laughing fits whatsoever during filming and this brought balance to the short amount of time that we had. The technical skill in our production was mainly down to the person filming that particular scene. We all made our own contributions on set, and Owen especially made the documentary look much better and realistic thanks to his use of camera angles and shots. The creative aspect of our production was great. Also, due to Andrew and I studying Drama, we were able to make special adjustments to costume and filming to make a scene more effective which I feel contributed a lot.

The Filming Process:

The props and equipment we used all played a key part in terms of making our documentary look more effective/realistic. Obviously we used all the compulsory equipment like the video camera and tripod, but we decided to use a few other things as well. Once we were given the green light, we found many props and costumes in the Drama Studio cupboard that proved to be extremely helpful, our group would like to send our thanks to Miss DLG for permission to use these props and costumes. But asides from that, we also gave our group a small homework task of finding anything that would be useful to include in our filming process. The prop and equipment list was most definitely a strength of our pre-production and filming. Below is the list of everything that we used during the filming of ‘Mythical Crime-watch’:

-AK-47 Assault Rifle Prop -Sniper Rifle Prop -Straw Hat (Goldilocks Disguise) -School Bags -Class rooms -Scissors -Tripod -Video Camera -Desks -Chairs -Geography Block - Viewing Area (Top of the stairs) -School Uniform (To appear business-like) -School Field -School Stage (In the Hall)

The Props and Equipment:

Next, we reached the editing process. To edit our documentary we used the diverse and complex software called ‘Adobe Premier Pro’. Now before I go any further, I believe that it’s important to mention I originally feared and despised using this complicated editing software as I had encountered far too many difficulties from using it the previous time to edit our crime drama trailers. I was also quite worried as to how the final product would turn out, as previously my crime drama trailer turned out weak and had poor features to it because the lack of understanding on how to use it. From this, I suddenly became very determined to use Adobe Premier Pro to the absolute best of my ability whilst maintaining good standards for the final finished feature. Editing for me, meant importing and compiling together all of the individual clips filmed into the correct order, inserting appropriate background music and sound effects, as well as making good use of the tools and effects/features that Adobe Premier Pro has to offer. I didn’t have one particular based idea in terms of the music/soundtrack, as I thought it would improve the realistic aspect of my documentary if it consisted of various tunes. This was done to fit the music with the events. For example, I used a dark and slow track from ‘Call of Duty 4’ to promote a sense of the incoming danger that was Goldilocks with her deadly assault rifle. Furthermore, I put in a shot of the building where Goldilocks assassinates Humpty Dumpty from, and then a dark transition to the camera panning up on Goldilocks as he makes his way up the staircase. I did this to create a sense of meaning and I think it worked well as it made the viewer shift their focus more on to the seriousness of the documentary. After I thought I was finished with the editing stage, I showed Sir and he rightly said that there were quite a lot of things that still needed to be edited. To be perfectly honest, after this I was initially disheartened but didn’t let that cloud my determination. I carried on editing and got help from Sir and Andrew when I needed it. If I could improve my documentary I would get some information from Sir first on how to make it look better and more official.

The Editing Process:

The interview was filmed in an empty maths classroom to represent an official office.The place where Humpty Dumpty was assassinated was on the ground level of outside the Geography Block, near the Sixth Form building and the library entrance. The sniping position for Goldilocks was above the stairs at the top of the geography block where there is a large glass viewing screen, outside Miss Adams office.The front school field was used when Goldilocks shoots the soldiers.Behind the school stage was used as Goldilocks' official safe-house/hideout.

These are only a couple of images as I don’t have any pictures of the locations:

Locations Used:

In conclusion, I think this evaluation of my Mythical Crime-watch documentary has done justice to what went well, what didn’t go so well and what I could do to improve. Overall, I think it is a good documentary that has allowed me to gain an insight to what skills I could apply and use next time I do something like this. I am very pleased with the final result and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience.

Conclusion: