Documentary Unit - Evaluation of BIG FAT LIES

Big Fat Lies has come a long way in a short space of time. originally in a group of just George and myself we really pushed ourselves to prove that it didn't matter what group size we had. We then had Cailan join us at a vital time to help the last parts of post-production and make sure he liked the idea as much we did.

Why this topic? & our planned filming style
We wanted to prove in this documentary that you can't cheat your way to a slimmer or healthier body, we found numerous facts and figures online before starting that showed a lot of these "hacks" do not actually help at all. To suit our documentary style, we wanted to have a presenter to guide us along our journey. Of course one of us could have done it but we wanted to push ourselves and try and find an actor on castingcallpro to present our show. I was the driving force in finding a presenter and as I narrowed it down to three we came together to chose the best via a skype interview. Andrew was great so we decided to go with him because we think his personality could really drive our documentary.

Locations and interviewees
I was really happy with the locations we sorted for the documentary as they really fit well with the show. We got some great access with Pole fitness and our nutritionist Jayne and Ryan and Carley also came up with vital information. The interviews were not the most engaging but with the B-Roll we shot to go along side it, it did actually work pretty well.

What went well?
I think we got great coverage in some interesting places which we may have originally not gone to. For example Pole Fitness is a segment that divides opinions on people that watch it but it was slightly out of our comfort zone to start talking about, but once chatting with the guys there you really feel that the taboo is not correct.

I think all the shoot days were a success, I don't like complimenting myself but I was really happy with what I personally shot throughout the whole show. I think the footage I got looked great, on my Panasonic DSLR which started out as a back-up cam but we quickly found it made the best looking shots so towards the end it was basically our main camera. The drone shots also added an extra dimension to our show which I personally think does make it stand out. They are not also just random drone shots for the sake of it, they are all relevant to what's being said on screen.

I think the planning layout and footage sharing systems we employed were great. I set up a google doc to share ideas and then scrips etc which meant we could all edit at the same time, whilst Cailan set up a dropbox for footage and graphic sharing after the shoot days. These were incredibly helpful tools that meant we could edit quicker.

Cailan's professional Microphone setup added an extra layer of quality to our project. The voice over work we did initially was superb and we were really impressed with the outcome.

I think that overall when we were all there for the shoot days we worked superbly well as a team, we bounced ideas off each other and were not afraid to say if we didn't like them. Unfortunately though there where a few days where it was just myself and George meaning it was tough to tell if we were going in the right direction as we did not have the extra set of eyes to help.

What could be improved?
Audio in Pole fitness and some parts of John Lewis were bad, we forgot to ask for them to turn the music off in pole fitness and it was just incredibly loud in John Lewis meaning editing was hard, but we did a good job to mask it as much as possible.

It seems you can never have enough B Roll as we did seem to struggle right at the end to fill the final gaps but it wasn't a major issue, but with more time I would have liked to have got more.

George did great job with the pop up facts but they took a long time so we could not really perfect them and we never properly settled on a colour scheme.

One shot that annoyed me was in John Lewis you could see me in the reflection of the crazy mirror layout they had got. It's probably not something you'd see if you only watched it once but I noticed it after seeing it a lot.

With the time constraints we had I think we did a very good job, especially in a team of three I think we really did push ourselves in this project.

What I Learned

The biggest thing for me in this project was getting so many people together for a 10 min documentary, I learned a lot in the way you approach people and the way to keep them onboard. We sometimes had a big gap between emailing and then shooting meaning we had to keep in constant contact which I think I did well.

I think I took the next step in camerawork and editing and I feel that I have made good progress this year and this project looks in a different league to what I made in late 2016.

Whilst we did technically work in groups before we never really had to have the same commitment as to when it was a group project. I feel I have learned how to interact in a group to get the most efficient outcome. Sometimes that meant piling on pressure to get it done, other times it was a case of "leave me alone for a bit". I think as a group we did well at helping each other through it as it was tough being in a smaller group with more responsibility on each of our shoulders.

Final Conclusion

I would say out of all the projects I have done so far in uni, this is the one I am most proud of. I think that George and I would have never have thought it would get to this stage after Ethan left and we were in a group of 2 that looked like it was going to have to fold. I think we did a good job at fitting the project brief, I think our show really does fit a BBC 3 audience of a younger age because a lot of young people are concerned about how they look and how the media pressurises us into it.

It was great to work with George and Cailan and I think we worked very well as a team. There was a slight lack of communication early on in the project which probably meant we had to make up for lost time later but on the most part I was very happy about the individual contributions in this project.

I was really happy with what I filmed, it's the part I enjoy the most so to see my footage on screen and looking like it did, I was very happy. George did an great job in editing and Cailan went to the next step to create an awesome opening sequence that really sets our documentary up how we wanted.