Watford Ladies Commission: Evaluation

This project has definitely been the toughest for personally so far in university. It has challenged me in all areas which have led to me learning new things about the industry.

I started this unit always wanting to do the commission because of the mix of being in a professional environment as well as having my own creative freedom. This played out well because I managed to work for a company that let me basically do everything, meaning I made all of the creative decisions in this project. While it was nice not to have someone pestering me about the project, I would honestly have loved a little more support from the club in terms of improvements for the project. This is because all of my feedback was generally "we like it" but nothing about how I could improve. This led to me asking peers for feedback instead.

I enjoyed being the presenter for the second project in a row. I feel I have become more confident in front of the camera and my presenting is becoming more and more authentic and natural. I was happy to go through the extra stress of doing this myself because I knew about the subject and also the project was created from the ground up by myself so finding another presenter that fitted the bill may have been a waste of time.

I enjoyed planning and preparation for the project. Storyboarding and scripting went smoothly but it is the part of the project I enjoy the least as it always ends up giving me anxiety about if it is going to run smoothly and also if it is ever going to actually happen. (I was worried after many obstacles in the way whether at some point it would just fall through)

Thanks to my thorough planning, however, the shooting did go pretty smoothly and I managed to get all the plans I wanted in a much shorter shooting period than I expected. The club was going through some tough times meaning shoot days had to be cancelled as well as my whole idea had to be changed around 10 days into the project. I think the filming went smoothly thereafter and after a change to the script once again we got a good amount of footage to work with.

The editing process was enjoyable. I had all of the creative freedom with this as well, I assume Watford did not have much background in media because they were happy with everything I produced. This did make feedback and improvements hard though. After a number of different versions it felt like it was getting there and with the addition of graphics and drone shots late on, it gave it a much more professional look.

Overall this unit taught me a lot of things about the industry. It taught me that no two clients are the same and some people don't really know much about filming and what you have to get a good documentary. It was a challenging process early on with the changing of ideas which did keep me worried for weeks but I kept planning and it all went smoothly from the shooting period until the end.

I am happy with the project but would have done a few things differently if I was to do it again.

1. I would ask a few more people if they could help me film so that I would have had an assistant on the match day to cover more angles. 
2. I would have asked the club, even more, question about the clubs weekly activities before we started filming to get even more knowledge on what they do on certain days
3. I would have liked more time to edit, some of the transitions are a little "un-smooth" but in general, they are ok.

But in reality, I feel like the project was a success. I challenged myself and took on all of the roles for this project, even being the presenter. It led to me being super strict on my time management but it worked. I also managed to film a 12 min documentary from start to the end with only help on 2 shoot days which was a massive challenge but one I have completed and learned a lot from.