FINAL EVALUATIONS
Post Mortem
Introduction
During this project it was our task to create a drinks brand and product which we will then advertise and release to the public to then hear back on feedback etc. We explored all areas down to the individual techniques to marketing such as identifying target audience all the way up to the creation of our drinks product advertisement and how lighting/camera angles can affect a shot.I set out to create a chocolate energy milkshake drink which would give both health and performance benefits to the consumer, it would do this by utilising certain protein powders and energy supplements such as caffeine and glucose.
Unable To Follow Storyboard
One of the problems i faced during the physical production of my drinks project advert was that when i set out to create my pre production planning documents i highlighted some of the shots that i wished to use during my advert, i chose these shots because it allowed me the ability to demonstrate the new skills that i had learnt and also because it allowed me to sculpt that video in to the best that it could be. However I later realised that I would not have enough time to record all of the specific shots that I required due to the complex nature of them. This impacted my outcome because it meant that not all of the shots that I had planned could be used. The steps that i put in place after this to prevent it from causing too much of an impact on my final product was that i had to move around some of the planned time for things that i had set out in post production so that more time could be allocated to the editing to try and adapt some of the footage i already had to see if it could be made suitable and also to ensure that more detail was being taken in the clips that had already been filmed. This worked out to be better and allowed the final product to experience more detail than I had planned out originally. If I was to undertake this same outcome again I would set out a more detailed time plan of all the tasks I was going to undertake to ensure that I would have enough time to gather all of the footage necessary to achieve the best final product.
Access To Specific Equipment
Some of the shots that I had set out in my pre production documents involved the camera being above vertically to the drink on a green screen table. This would allow me to get 3 shots which involved an overhead stationary shot of the drink, a shot of the bottle being opened and then also a shot of the bottle being picked up and poured into a glass. These shots would allow me to showcase the physical product inside of the bottle and would also allow me to show more angles of the bottle. The important piece of equipment that I required was a two piece tripod which is a standard tripod with an additional arm which stems out from the top to allow a camera to be mounted and facing down. The outcome of the lack of this equipment meant that the shot was unable to be created efficiently and an alternate method of achieving this shot was required. Thankfully I had managed to implement some solutions to allow this shot to still be filmed effectively and prevent the impact from being too great on the final outcome. I achieved this by using one of the handheld stabilised shoulder rigs and placing the camera on top of it. I then stood on top of the green screen table over the product and stabilised the rig up against my body to achieve a stationary and stabilised view to then achieve the shot. If i was to do this kind of sophisticated shot in the future i would ensure that all of the equipment required to achieve it was available to me at the moment i needed it. This would prevent issues such as unnecessary time wasting from occurring again.
Bottle Had Been Thrown Away When Needed
The actual recording of the shots for my drink project advert were to be recorded over a two day period to allow myself enough time to gather all of the relevant shots, re-shoot anything that was slightly incorrect as well as review the footage to ensure that it was up to the correct standard. On the first day of filming I had brought in the physical product of my drink that I had made so that I could use it in the shots. The filming was then conducted and a good 70% of my shots were finished to the correct standard on that first day. This included all of the static shots and the sliding shots using the automatic slider. The second day was going to be for all of my alternate angles including a free hand shot of the bottle and my overhead shots of the bottle being opened and poured. As I went home after the first day, I was careful to leave my bottle in a safe place where I could find it overnight. When I came back the following day however, that bottle was missing and I haven't been able to locate it since. The problem that this had created for the remainder of my filming was that I was no longer able to create any further shots with the bottle including the shots of the bottle being opened and poured. This meant that these shots would therefore be missing from my advert. The impact of this bottle being missing could have been larger if I hadn't been further prepared in my gathering of footage the day before. The way that I had managed to prevent a further effect of this was by ensuring that the 2 day production time I had set out for myself was organised and controlled. An example of how I did this was by ensuring that I recorded and gathered as much usable footage on that first day as possible to ensure that the second day was more for fixing issues and getting any last minute shots that I didn't have enough time to gather on the first day. This allowed me to only miss out on the opportunity to fix any shots and gather any small additional ones. This was further fixed by allowing myself more time in the post production time frame to be spent on editing to ensure that all of these issues could be removed or fixed then. If I was to undertake this again I would ensure that my bottle stays with me at all times and is stored in a more suitable place so that it would not get lost and this would not happen again. This would prevent the issue of not having the bottle to gather the last few shots etc.
Conclusion
In conclusion there were a few issues in the creation of this project, however following the guidelines that i had set out when writing my Pre Mortem allowed me to prevent a lot of issues that could happen from happening in the first place. Most of the issues that I had found occurred were usually something that was unexpected and unaccounted for during the Pre Mortem, or it was because of lack of care on my part when following the guidelines set out in full. I will learn from the mistakes made here to prevent anything like them from happening if I were to do a similar project in the future.
Feedback Form
Final Evaluation
In this project I went through areas of both happiness and enjoyment to areas of stress and upset. It is important for me to sit back and try to gather an understanding of why I felt that way and also how my work quality could be improved for future projects. There was a range of both practical and theoretical work required in order for this project to meet all of the criteria and that was good for me as it allowed me to split up areas of work to prevent myself from getting bored or overwhelmed due to the constant repetition.
Alot of the tasks within this area of the project were relating to us looking into what good and bad examples of advertising looked like. This was beneficial as it allowed us to get an understanding of what our work should look like for it to be at its best quality. I enjoyed this area of the project as I had a better understanding coming out of it for what our project would need to look like. There are areas which I can improve on however such as having a wider range of work to look into and not keeping it all within one specific area. For example a lot of the work that i looked at was to do with the technology area so things such as apple watches or go pros where as i should have looked at things such as clothes or cars etc to understand how techniques change.
In this area of the project we were taking a lot of the basic information that we gathered from the context stage and then expanding on it to build an idea in our heads separating the good work from the bad. I felt that the tasks we completed in this area were pretty heavy in terms of the minimum word count etc however there was never a lack of information to discuss so i did not find this to be an issue. I was using skills that I had learnt in previous projects such as planning out my work first to ensure that I cover everything and also staying on track. There were areas of the research stage that I could improve on however, such as the time it took me to complete the advertising standards presentation. This task was given to us in a time where a lot of other work was being given too so i had to prioritise areas of importance and unfortunately this got pushed down the list meaning that i had to pick it up towards the end further adding to my workload.
This stage of our project was key to identifying our target audience and subsequently identifying who we would be pitching our product to when advertising it. It was important to understand the selling points and characteristics of our product to decide who would be most likely to benefit and therefore purchase the product. In my case this was young people who are interested in sports, health and exercise. This is because my drink has certain health and performance benefits such as the use of protein powder within the ingredients. I feel that i did really well in this stage as i managed to correctly identify and pitch my product to a target audience, i however feel i could have improved by making my product a bit less of a niche which would allow me to pitch it towards wider groups of people therefore increasing sales traffic.
This is the stage of the project that I enjoyed the most, it was very practical based and required things such as shooting adverts to use the techniques which we explored in the research stage as well as creating things such as packaging. This was satisfying for me as it allowed me to see the link and journey from idea generation to actually doing it. I feel like my work output in this area was really good and accurately depicts my work ethic and abilities throughout. I would say however that I could improve moving forward by identifying and experimenting working with wider ranges of equipment to ensure that my knowledge within this area is the best that it can be. I am overall very happy with how this stage went however and will take everything i have learnt forward if i was to do this again.
The outcome stage of this project was a bit of a strange one for me, rather than it being like all of the other projects I have done within the 1st year of this course, it was instead reliant on my practical creation skills and crafts ability. We were tasked (along with other things) to create a physical bottle of what we had created on the screen so that we could show it to potential customers and get feedback on it. This was beneficial to me as it allowed me to feel like what I was doing was real and that it wasn't just theoretical and being marked by college tutors. I am overall really proud of what I managed to achieve in terms of my outcome stage and feel like the quality accurately represents the rest of the project. I would however like to have taken more time in the small details of the bottles label and will improve on this should i do a similar project again in the future.
In conclusion this project went really well and was a really good starting point for the rest of this academic year, it is obvious that every time I reflect on work such as what I am doing now that I improve the next time I do it. I will continue to take everything I have learnt in this project forward to build my skills and allow me to be the best I can be. I will combine this with the feedback that I received from potential customers to build a better outcome if I was to do this again. I am overall happy with what I managed to achieve here and will ensure that this work quality remains consistent throughout future projects.