Evaluation

When planning to produce a factual programme the pre-production is a key aspect to the quality of your final work, giving the director and the rest of the people involved in the programme the opportunity to know what is going on and what is needed by using scripts for interviews or voice over, storyboards & lists of materials and contacts needed. Drawing up a storyboard before scheduling filming helps you understand where to position people in the shots and give your documentary a structure so you know what needs to be filmed and when editing you have an outline to follow, Adding editing techniques and notes for improving the film on to the storyboard also help speed up the process. When filming the factual programme which is going to be using a lot of actors, interviewees, interviewers, historians and researcher a contact list gives the producer the chance to be able to access/contact all the people who have an input in the programme. Due to our documentary being a small scale with very little input from outside sources, the only people who were on the contact list are in the production team so contact was not a problem, using emails, text messages and brief phone calls when needed, consulting was often done in class when referring to our documentary, the most contact I made was with Elliot outside of the classroom.

The materials list was one of my jobs to complete and make sure that it was filled out and changed when either new things were needed or to be brought in, the main part of the list that was altered was the Archive footage in which was used. Throughout the duration of filming and editing there was a constant change in the footage from an outside source that was going to be used, at first there were several YouTube clips which were going to be put it but that made the film run over by too much, then pictures of relevant information about the Henley college was added for effect during one of the interviews. I referred back to the materials list regularly to alter or change it whenever needed, but the group looked at it when seeing what items they have been scheduled to bring in for the filming.

How did all your research help your final product?Looking into the History of Henley College and around the Henley on Thames area gave us as a group a wider understanding of the history of the area and the college which we never knew. Looking into these different things gave us ideas as too what needs to go in the documentary or its relevance to what an interviewee speaks about, the interview with Sarah Ives-Rider where she talks about the college being used in the war, there are relevant pictures from a book about the college by Gemma Allen is put on screen.

How did you use you production schedule?Along with the storyboard, a production schedule is vital part of the production of a factual programme or any programme, giving the producer a structure to work by. Outlining what has to be done and the slots in which it can be done is very useful so that you don’t fall behind in the work effort and know how much time has been spent working in different aspects of the project, pre-production, editing & filming. For our project a production schedule was key so that all the people in our group knew what job they were doing and when they had to be done keeping a structure to what could have ended up making things jumbled up.

Did the scripts help during your final production?The use of the script became helpful during the presenter narration because the facts were in black and white and the layout of the scene had already been planned, without a script the narrator would not know what to say and the scenes would take longer to film or perfect.

Print screens of production