Evaluation for “inside the creative industry”

I solely produced a short documentary on the creative industry, it involved intense research
into my topic so that I could ensure I was knowledgeable on the subject, this research
helped on numerous occasions in the production process such as when interviewing
candidates and having to slightly move away from my planned questions based on a
response they gave, it meant I was able to confidently ask the questions and assist the
candidate accordingly if they needed help further understanding a question.
The key traits of a documentary maker are creativity, organisation, approachability, passion,
and inquisitiveness, I found a documentary maker who possesses all these traits, Michael
Moore, his most famous work being a documentary called “bowling for Columbine” in which
he investigates on what he thinks the primary causes of the Columbine high school
massacre are. He uses all the traits listed at some point, he uses creativity with his thinking
to shock the audience, he shows us that in America you can get a free gun for opening a
bank account, the whole documentary was filmed over a period with Moore arranging
protests in stores that sold guns
with victims of the high school
massacre joining him showing his
organisational skills at another
level. Throughout the
documentary Moore must
maintain approachability as he is
dealing with an extremely
sensitive topic and can’t make a
mistake as he’s getting involved
with extremely traumatised
individuals, we see his passion shine through in all of his work, Moore becomes emotionally
involved as an individual in all of his documentaries showing us as an audience that he’s
striving for justice in his work. It’s clear Moore pushes extremes in his work and makes
headlines using his inquisitive quality to do so.
I believe in this unit I’ve shown creative skills with my planning of the documentary in the
early stages and as I began to produce the documentary, I feel that I’ve thought practically
as well as creatively during all processes whether it be the editing or collecting footage, I’ve
maintained a creative mindset. This whole unit has really tested my organisational skills with
deadlines needing to be met and some even being moved forward its meant that I’ve had to
plan every single piece of my production to ensure it was finished on time, an example of
this is my use of production schedules to plan out my week, creating crew lists in order to
have a well-produced interview and an equipment list on top of location reeces. I conducted
3 different interviews all filmed in different ways, each presenting various difficulties. For
these interviews I had to maintain an approachable persona so that my company felt
comfortable and would be able to give better answers to my questions I did this by
maintaining eye contact and attempting to relate with my interviewe, my interviews also
involved using inquisitiveness so that I was able to get the answer I wanted from the
participants in my documentary. My passion for my work started when chose my topic
which was the underfunding of the creative industry I have a passion for industry as I see a
future for myself in it and felt it would be relatable for some of my classmates considering
they are on a creative media course.
At the very start of this unit, we were given a brief, so we knew what to expect and how to
go about creating our productions, we then started to gather research in all shapes and
forms (primary and secondary), I used various knowledgeable websites and referenced
them for my secondary research. Collecting primary research was physically collecting
research from other people by the means of focus groups and interviews. At the very start
of my planning before I even knew what topic my documentary was ging to cover I did a
spider diagram of ideas and possible ways I could execute these ideas, I concluded this with
idea about the underfunding of the creative industry as I had the contacts and a suitable
audience for it. For my secondary research I watched documentaries with a similar theme to
my own and made notes and partially evaluated it.
I held a focus group containing members of my target audience to find out what they would
want to see, from this I found out that the youth of today is aware
of the risks there taking going into the industry and are very aware
of the fact that work is not frequent. One person in my focus group
had planned how they want to go about surviving and getting a
career in the industry, they plan to work from the bottom and build
there way up to more senior roles. I also wanted to do a piece in my
documentary about the underfunding in creative subjects in
schools, most people in the focus had previously taken a creative
GCSE and felt they were overshadowed by the other more academic
options and their grade suffered from the lack of funding or they
had to fund a lot of their course themselves which they deemed
unfair on the basis academic students do not have to do the same.
For my stop motion task, I made a short clip clearly depicting the creative subjects in schools
receiving more funding than if they were academic, I tried to make it
look as creative as possible and attractive to catch people’s eyes, I had
my production contain facts and figures so it could educate my
audience, I also had a slogan at the very end to maker the whole clip
more memorable. I produced a short documentary on the creative
industry because I knew I had access to the resources I needed for it
during the pandemic, there were certain aspects that I ended up not
including in my production that I was really heart set on including such
as interviewing politicians and getting a political take on my topic
however there was no reply which meant that I had to scrap that idea and look into using
contacts I already had.
Before I started the production process of my short documentary I had to get some ideas to
spark my creativity, I did this by watching other documentaries aimed at my target audience
about British youth, I watched documentaries all presented In different formats to decide
which format I felt matched my topic, after analysing each format I settled on a bbc 3 style
documentary as I felt it suited my topic best and would appeal to my target audience ,
overall I felt my work wasn’t particularly sensational and was my much more tabloid and eye
opening so anything presented in a vice format just wouldn’t work. I feel like I made my
production in a as similar possible format to bbc 3 however my production does differ in
some aspects to bbc 3.
After I finished all of my production I needed to gather
feedback, I got this in multiple ways the most efficient was a
survey I sent round to people In my target audience that had
watched my production, I also showed my work to people
and got verbal feedback from them with the majority saying
they liked my work although the camera set up for interviews
needed to be improved, I sent around a survey and had a
total of 6 responses, with average rating for my production
being a 6/10, and everyone felt my documentary appealed
towards my intended target audience, my work was proven
unique when people said they had not seen anything like my
work before, a criticism on my work from a technical aspect
was that the lighting in a few of my interviews was a bit too
dark.
I also received feedback from my course leader which was helpful as it made me understand
the mistakes I had made and how I could fix them and prevent them from happening in the
future, an example of this is that I was told the stage I made for my short animation to take
place on was good however they would of liked to see another angle in retrospect I can see
how I would do this and improve my production. I was also given feedback on my short
factual programme both positive and critical; I was told that my interview with the director
Dylan Harvey was very insightful, however to make it more enticing I could of cut to some B-
roll and reflecting on this I understand their point and feel it could’ve majorly changed a lot
for my final production.
Overall, from this brief I have learnt various new skills whether they be practical skills like
how to set up an interview and what lighting needs to be used or more people skills and
how to produce an effective interview, this whole unit has taught me how much I need to
be organised when producing a documentary or short film and that it is not an easy process
and you need to be able to communicate otherwise you will struggle throughout
production. What I am going to take from this unit and use in the future are the skills I have
learnt and the contacts I have made, some things I have learnt from and will not be
repeating again the future is leaving my script to the last minute and possibly giving myself
more time to edit.