1. What were you asked to do?
I had to go into a group and I got a task to research a charity called ‘RDWWA’ and interview them to find out:
What they do in the organisation Why they started the organisation How long has the organisation been about Who does it benefit What kind of session do they do How many people attend the sessions What days does the session run
Then once we have interviewed them we had to edit the video and make it more interesting.
2. Who/what were you making a video about?
I was making a video about the charity that we researched and interviewed (RDWWA) and their work that they have done to get the organisation to where it is now.
3. What was the purpose of the video?
The purpose for the video was to show/teach other people about the charity, show them what they do and why they do it. Also to show people that this charity does need supports from everyone even if you’re not a part of the organisation they still need people spreading the word and telling others about the group because I didn’t know about the charity until I had to do it for this project so I defiantly learnt something about RDWWA which is a good thing because now I can tell other people about it and also let them know about this charity.
4. What did you do in each production stage?
Pre-production: We had to watch the old video that another group did of the charity RDWWA and see which scenes we liked and could use for our video. Once we chose the ones that we could use, we transferred them onto our computer/disk and we kept just watching it over and trimming parts off that weren’t useful for us.
After all that was done we had to then plan out different questions that wanted to ask the charity when we interviewed them to make sure that we got as much information from them as we possibly could. We had to send out an email to the woman that is in charge of the organisation to find out whether we could come and interview them one day during the October half term, and then when we did get a reply from them telling us that we could come over we made sure that we was all ready for the interview.
Production: When we was interviewing the people in charge of RDWWA we set up the camera onto the tripod and got out all the questions that we had to ask them and started the interview with just asking them about the organisation. There was times where we had a little difficulty when turning the camera to face the other person who was talking because we had to keep the camera on the tripod and try to make sure the camera doesn’t move quickly and so that the video don’t look jumpy. We got good mid shots, close ups and shot reverse shot.
Post production: Once we had the entire interview completed we had to edit the video from start to finish and cut away any scenes that we didn’t want to use. While change quite a lot of the video which is a good thing because now it flows whereas before the video would cut out or there would be a scene where everything was silent which wasn’t helpful.
We did shot reverse shot with the interviewer and the interviewee while they were both talking and we also did the same technique when the interviewee was talking about the dancing and the big groups that they have at the sessions. We also included voice overs for example, while the interviewee was explaining the session’s talk we had the clip of the talk playing while her voice was still playing over the clip. We added some graphics into the video of some of the questions that we asked would appear on the screen either before or while the interviewee was speaking.
5. What problems did you encounter and how did you solve them? There were a few problems that we came across while filming and editing.
While we were filming we had a small problem with using the tripod and getting the camera at the right shot (mid shot, long shot etc.) but we managed to sort it out after a few minutes. Also while we were editing, we had different opinions with deciding which cut away we should do and which scenes we need to use and the type of music that we added to the video, but we did manage to sort that problem out in the end and the video looks really good.
6. What were your strength and weaknesses in each stage?
Pre- production: Our strengths were working as a team when we was structuring and planning our set of questions and the shots that we were going to take. Our weaknesses were when we had to plan when we was all able to be free to go out and do the interview.
Production: Our strengths were taken turns with interviewing and adding our inputs in the interview. Also with filming the interview and getting the right shots at the right angle. Our weaknesses was trying to find more questions that we could’ve asked the interviewee but we was able to find a way out of that awkwardness because we just went back to some of the questions that we already talked about but this time we talked about it in more depth.
Post production: Our strengths were getting a lot of ideas on how we could make the video look presentable and interesting, but at the same time that was also a weakness because we all had different ideas for this one video.
7. What is your opinion of the finished product?
Overall I am quite proud with the end result of the video; we put all our ideas into this video and did all we could to get a good, interesting and resourceful video.
