My Overall project is a 4 minute long educational documentary about the life and habits of a bearded dragon. It is mainly aimed towards the audiences of children, although it can also be watched by an audience of promising lizard owners.
My finished project turned out very well, though, it isn’t the same as my original idea. I think that the change from idea to finished product turned out to be an exceptional change for the better. The finished product overall would have about 70% difference to the original idea that I came up with at the beginning. I feel very happy with my work and I am proud of how the overall video looks, I hope that audiences will enjoy it.
Through the pre-production process, I gathered various amounts of research based on a bearded dragons diet, characteristics and bodily form. I gathered fact files and video information on bearded dragons both to be informative and the gain further insight on more facts that I didn't even know about my bearded dragons. I did a storyboard on what shots I aimed to achieve for my production. I did this because I need to gain a mental understanding into the plan for my documentary.
Throughout the production, I gathered interviews from the likes of Jessica-Mae lee, Connor Winstanley, Rylan Hollingworth, Ellie Armstrong and my media teacher Michael O’Keefe. Each question asked was a personal question on the person’s opinion towards bearded dragons. I also acquired wonderful shots of my actors, the bearded dragons. I also gathered various different cutaways of the lizards in their vivarium and on their times in the bath and with family members. The casting wasn't exactly difficult because of the fact that the actors were my own pets. Through the production, I planned to use my own personal video camera.
Once I had finished filming the various scenes I needed I returned to Hyde Clarendon to begin the long process of editing and shot cutting. Each video encounter with my bearded dragons was about five minutes long though I only needed certain sections for the overall project. I used software called Final Cut Express to edit the raw footage of my lizards. The editing process took a matter of lessons to bring it up to its current glory. I used various transitions in my video such as crop zoom and dissolve to make the video smoother for my viewers to watch. Whilst sorting out the sound setting I used a special tool that would allow me to move the sound files audio balance in order to make it louder or quiet. Next, I gathered an H2 recorder to take my voice recordings since some of the raw audio footage from my documentary proved unusable. I then had to gather voice overs for my bearded dragons and also for my facts about lizards. I did this because I was giving my bearded dragons voices to appeal more to children. The voice overs for the lizards consisted of my teachers Andrew Findlay and Michael O’Keefe, as well as me. The voice overs for the facts were spoken by the voices of Adam Griffiths, Matthew Adderley, Paul Mather; Andrew Findlay, Michael O’Keefe, Jamie Apple-yard and Jake Lomas. All this editing was done in order to attempt to make my documentary look clean cut and professional.
In conclusion, I believe that I succeeded in making my documentary as great as it is now and I feel positive that it will be enjoyed by audiences on YouTube. I believe that my strengths throughout the documentary are that I gathered many various cutaways; views of my bearded dragons and then interview shots from people who I believe might be potential lizard owners. I also think that I did a great job choosing and creating the voice overs. I did very well on the entire editing process because I made it look as professional as possible.
Although I believe I made a few mistakes and these are my weaknesses. My camera quality was shifty throughout the entire process and the sound had noticeable flaws. The sound problems were solved by the power of subtitles. The entire problem was because of the videos being a little too quiet. At the beginning of the video, I made a small side note in which I apologized for the quality in which this video is made.
As of areas I could improve on, I believe that I could possibly improve on how to film my shots, which quality it should be set on for the cameras and also the time management in which I made this video. I also believe that I could do a little bit better on how I choose my shots for the videos so that they can be better.
