End of Course Montage edit (LGBT)

 Editing Techniques Evaluation

Editing is a part of the entire production process that I have always enjoyed. I had previous experience before the course with editing but I learnt a lot of new techniques and overall just grew a bigger appreciation for editing by the end of the course. 

Firstly, I feel one of my biggest weeknesses when it comes to editing is my lack of organisation skills. It is something that until I corrected it, had never realised how much of a longer process unorganisation was making my entire editing and post production time. For example when it comes to clips whether its stock footage/downloaded footage or fottage that I have physically gone out and shot myself, I would always find myself with a load of unnamed clips in my downloaded section of my computer. Sometimes I would put them into a single editing folder but a lot of the time it just made things more confuseing as there was no order and it was full of clips from the entire year. When using premiere pro, I would never use bins to organise my footage and I would instead spend a lot of time browsing through my computer for all my clips as I thought labeling and naming them would be a waste of time. Towards the end of the year ai began to start using bins and renaming clips and it proved to be so much easier and faster when editing footage. It also allowed me to quicky sort out redownloading files when specific footage had been lost or corrupted, rather then not editing for a few days after uploading fottage only to find out after searching for it, it wouldn't import properly. This is something I am really glad I improved on as I find this really useful outside of editing for the course. Therefore, overal i feel like this was the section i improved on the most in editing by far.

Another area I feel that I have improved on in editing is timing. This is more in terms of my shots and using key frames to add beats that sync up to the music. At the start of the year my cuts were okay but now they are alot cleaner and all match up. An example of my cuts not being as tight and clean is in my found fottage 4 hour film challenge as even though the cuts match up woth the sound for the most part they are a few milliseconds out and not as clean as they couldve been. This may have been made harder since I was rushing due to the 4 hour tome frame but also because I was just counting the time in between each beat and then cutting the shots to the beat of the previous beat so they were sometimes slightly off. Since then I have learnt how to get up the sound graph on premiere pro so I can visibly see when each beat of the music hits because there is a peak on the graph and I can add beats and keyframes to those peaks that then show up whenadding footage and then cutting and trimming it to hit on each beat perfectly. You can clearly see this in a peice i did editing a montage of the entrie course for my own amusment. Its just a montage of a load of random clips and photos from over the year to LGBT by cupkae which has some slow pauses but for the most part is a very fast paced, upbeat and chaotic song which was very appropriate for the montage. Due to this the editing had to be on point and hit every beat for it to maintain this high energy, fast paced chaotic vibe and I ended up being very sucessful with this as It was all on point, especially the photos at the beginning. It also took a lot less time because this newfound method is not only effective but I have also had several months practicing it now. So overall I feel as I have improved and made this part of editing a lot easier as I now have a much faster and more efficient way to do it.

Another side of editing I feel that I have improved on is colouring and the enhancment of my footage. I wasn't very farmiliar with colouring clips or altering the contrast, clarity, brightness etc, I only reaaly new how to add filters on to desaturate clips I wanted in black and white. This is very evident in one of my 4 hour film challenges from the beginning of the year called; The Ugly Duckling, whichs style was inspired by an old style black and white silent film and story was inpired by a fairytale, hence the title. Because it was inspired by black and white silent film. All I did was add music and added a black and white preset to the entirety of the short film. The problem with this was that even though on the surface it looked okay and it worked, with a bit of a closer look it was evident that fie to the lighting of some filming locations, the bkack and white sometimes didn't pop and blended where they shouldn't have and made the background look more important then the story being told through the main mise-on-scene on screen. This was also probably the most common critisim I had on this edit when receiving feedback and constructive critisim on this film in particular because in silent, colourless films especially, it is important for everything on screen to be clear and distinctive as your diegectic sound and colours cant tell the story so the shots and mise-en-scene have to do it soley. Since then I have leant how to add on oresets that allows you to edit and adjust the colouring and lighting and saturation of every individual shot which means in clips where the lighting is mabye brighter like the colour of a wall etc it wonr blend in if I adjust the colouring and lighting and therefore, eveything onscreen can be distinctively recognised this can be seen in my 4th July music video as different clips were adjusted to fit the setting and match the other shots. For example there were shots i needed to represent the evening when things are dark but filming shots in the dark is quite challenging as it creates a lot of noise and grain. So instead,shots like the microwave ones, I shot in the day with a lot of the other shots to save time and have better quality and then when editing I made them dark by desaturating and maximising the cintrast and minimising the brightness to make it appear as if it was shot at night in the dark to help the story be conveyed to spectators. Therefore this section of editing is another thing I feel I have massively improved on and is something I use on a regular basis now.

To conclude, when starting the course I felt quite confident in my editing but I soon realised I wasnt anywhere near my best as I found several new methods and ways of editing that make life more efficient and faster for me when editing. So I take pride in the fact I found a lot of criticism and flaws in my editing as I now feel my editing is. A lot better then it was several months ago.

 Practical Skills Evaluation

Throughout the entirety of the course, I have had to use and develop my practical skills for all the units that required them. So over the year they have improved significantly. For the first unit that involved a lot of practical, 'camera and lighting, I found it quite challenging as I don't have much expereince in practical work compared to other areas of production like editing. I had never really used a camera before so when learning the basics at the very start of the course I was very cautious when using them and that can be seen through my examples of camera and lighting as they couldve been better and clearer. Upon reflection I wish I had spent more time working on camera techniques and these examples were a bit longer and more in depth and clear as they were quite vague. I quite enjoyed the lighting side of the unit and demonstrating different lighting techniques which can be seen on my blog. Although I did find it challenging like using the camera, I feel I was a bit more confortable with it and as a result, my examples on blogger of lighting techniques are better than my camera technique examples. I also didn't do as well in this unit with my final mark compared to more recent units which just highlights my improvements. For example if we compare the Camera and lighting unit to my most recent Music Video Unit, I was a lot more confident with the production side of things. I grasped the use of the camera very quickly as last time I was unsure about using it and needed others to guide me whereas this time I picked it up and just starting using it after farmikiarising myself with the buttons. I also was using a different camera to the ones I had previously used at college before so i was even less farmiliar with it. So this even more so is a clear example of how immensely I have improved over the course.

Health and saftey was an intersting part of this course as it seemed easy to remember and make sure I was doing it but at the start of the year especially I kept forgeeting I had to be concious of health and saftey at all times. An example of this was during the camera and lighting unit when we were demonstrating several practical techniques for both camera and lighting, we would use the studio or film around college orboutside of college and espevially in the studio where there were multiple saftey hazards and we were not being concious of them, we just ignored them and were always being reminded to think about how to practice safety measures when using equipment and working in the studio. Now I feel I am a lot more concious of health and saftey as during the Practical skills unit, I had to research and constantly validate and explain health and saftey measures which made me utalise that knowledge in the Music video unit as I used one person to minimise risk and filmed in places that I was familiar with so i knew the risk factors opposed to somewhere I didn't know. Overall I still feel I could improve in this area and I feel if I do more practical work in the future I feel it will become natural to be constantly thinking about health and saftey as now I still feel I have to be reminded at times.

Organisation for the practical side of this course was something I feel I definitely improved on throughout this course. Supporting evidence of this is at the start of the year when doing camera and lighting. This is due to the fact I didn't really keep up with what I was doing so when the end of the unit came around I had half of my work while the other half was missing which caused a lot of last minite stress. I also felt I didn't put as much quality into my work and would rush it it times because I wasn't planning specific times to complete work so as a result a lot of it in this unit was only up to a satisfactory standard. In contrastto this, in the promotional video unit especially, I did a lot of planning because that was the whole point of the unit and I feel I really enjoyed focusing on pre-production and planning and as a result I made a detailed and visually pleasing pitch powerpoint for my video idea aswell as a detailed and visually pleasing storyboard. My feedback from teachers and fellow students proved this as they were all impressed with the quality of my work. I was also always prepared for meetings with my client and had something new to present with good quality. Overall I feel this may be the area that I have improved the most and one of the areas that I enjoyed the most because I can be very flexible with it.

To conclude I feel that I have significantly improved with my practical skills for all the reasons I have expanded on above. Although i thing I still have a lot of room for improvement especially in some places more than others, I am still very pleased with how much I have learnt and improved p

On throughout the year.

Editing - Organisation Evidence

At the start of the course when doing 4 hour film challenges, I never used bins to put my audio and footage in which made finding clips harder and ending in general, a much longer process.

Now when editing, I separate all my footage and audio into separate bins when I start editing so I can easily access the shots I need easily and quickly and I don't have to worry about missing shots.

 Evaluation on Research 

For the research unit, I had to look into several research methods and explore and establish their strengths and weaknesses and then apply them to my own research, specifically to the music video unit. 

Firstly, I looked into questionnaires. Upon basic research, I learned that there were two types of questionnaires open and closed. I had previously thought they were the same thing and hadn't realised they were divided into their own subcategories. This information proved to be very useful as after evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of both questionnaire types, I decided that for my own music video questionnaire, a closed questionnaire would be more efficient. I came to this decision because of the fact it saved time not only for me making it but also for individuals taking the questionnaire as people only took the questionnaire due to the fact it only took two minutes to complete in contrast to an open questionnaire where they would have to put a lot of thought and consideration into their responses. However, this factor specifically, did make analysing some of the responses harder, for example, I asked a question about 'how individuals like to feel after watching a music video,' listing a few emotions and an 'other option'. I was then surprised to see that most people put other meanings that could only rule out what people didn't feel making it harder for me to work out what emotional response I should've been aiming for spectators to have after viewing my video. This is where an open questionnaire would've been very effective as people would've been able to state their specific preferred reaction, giving me a more reliable statistic for this question. A positive to this question being in the closed questionnaire style rather than an open questionnaire was that it allowed me to be able to say that due to the fact that most people selected others, I was able to make the claim that it didn't really matter how people would feel after viewing my music video because everyone responds differently and take their own individual reading from it, which also kept in theme with my music video about not conforming to the systematic and repetitive, copy and paste ways of society. I did however use my found knowledge on questionnaires to have the first question as an open one and not have all ten questions as closed questionnaires. I think the results from this question made me feel justified in my decision to keep the rest of the questionnaire a closed rather than open one due to the fact it seemed like a lot of people didn't put a lot of thought into their answers to me asking their 'favourite and least favourite music videos' as some people just put generically hated songs for their least favourite and it seemed like people didn't want to put a lot of thought into their answer. This made my results less specific which goes against the whole point of using an open questionnaire style. So overall I was quite happy with my research on questionnaires and felt it made creating my own questionnaire less tedious. Although I do wish I had maybe done more extensive research into example questions and responses of these questionnaires so a had a better understanding of the listed pros and cons as I feel this would've helped me avoid the minor issues I had with my music video questionnaire.

I also did research into focus groups. This newfound information from my research on focus groups proved to be helpful when getting feedback on my music video especially as in contrast to questionnaires, I didn't really have any prior knowledge on focus groups. As it's a method of qualitative research, meaning it could be done informally, allowed very truthful and reliable responses. For example, when I showed my mood board along with my initial ideas for my music video to some of my class members. I asked for feedback, criticism and further development on them. This information gave me more ideas and because of this, it proved to be really helpful. In contrast to a questionnaire, the responses from my focus group research were more specified to my video and helped me a lot more with the details of my music video as the people I got feedback from were more niche than the people answering my questionnaire as my focus group was aimed at people who were also making music videos and had a more critical and analytical perspective when listening to my ideas and commenting on them. Due to the fact I found the focus groups really effective, I wish I had done more focus group interviews and recorded them or made notes like when showing people my first cut from a portion of my music video. I feel like this would've been helpful to constantly be looking back on and would've helped justify some of my decisions.

Overall, I feel that the research went quite well as the information I had gathered really helped me when identifying choices I needed to make for my music video, which I did through the use of questionnaires and focus groups which wouldn't have been done nearly as thoroughly without my initial research. As I have previously explained, I feel that the only regret is that I didn't do further more detailed research so I had more sources to justify my decisions. However, I think that the research I did do was still of great help and played a significant role in the final product of my music video.

 Research Techniques

Questionnaires

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 - A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Questionnaires can be thought of as a kind of written interview. They can be carried out face to face, by telephone, computer or post.

- Questionnaires provide a relatively cheap, quick and efficient way of obtaining large amounts of information from a large sample of people.

- Data can be collected relatively quickly because the researcher would not need to be present when the questionnaires were completed. This is useful for large populations when interviews would be impractical.

- However, a problem with questionnaires is that respondents may lie due to social desirability. Most people want to present a positive image of themselves and so may lie or bend the truth to look good, e.g., pupils would exaggerate revision duration.

- Questionnaires can be an effective means of measuring the behaviour, attitudes, preferences, opinions and, intentions of relatively large numbers of subjects more cheaply and quickly than other methods.

- Often a questionnaire uses both open and closed questions to collect data. This is beneficial as it means both quantitative and qualitative data can be obtained.

Closed Questions

- Closed questions structure the answer by only allowing responses that fit into pre-decided categories.

- Data that can be placed into a category is called nominal data. The category can be restricted to as few as two options, i.e., dichotomous (e.g., 'yes' or 'no,' 'male' or 'female'), or include quite complex lists of alternatives from which the respondent can choose (e.g., polytomous).

- Closed questions can also provide ordinal data (which can be ranked). This often involves using a continuous rating scale to measure the strength of attitudes or emotions.

- For example, strongly agree / agree / neutral / disagree / strongly disagree / unable to answer.

- Closed questions have been used to research type A personality

Strengths

- They can be economical. This means they can provide large amounts of research data for relatively low costs. Therefore, large sample size can be obtained which should be representative of the population, which a researcher can then generalize from.

- The respondent provides information that can be easily converted into quantitative data (e.g., count the number of 'yes' or 'no' answers), allowing statistical analysis of the responses.

- The questions are standardized. All respondents are asked exactly the same questions in the same order. This means a questionnaire can be replicated easily to check for reliability. Therefore, a second researcher can use the questionnaire to check that the results are consistent.

Limitations

They lack detail. Because the responses are fixed, there is less scope for respondents to supply answers which reflect their true feelings on a topic.

Open Questions

- Open questions allow people to express what they think in their own words. Open-ended questions enable the respondent to answer in as much detail as they like in their own words. For example: “can you tell me how happy you feel right now?”

- If you want to gather more in-depth answers from your respondents, then open questions will work better. These give no pre-set answer options and instead allow the respondents to put down exactly what they like in their own words.

- Open questions are often used for complex questions that cannot be answered in a few simple categories but require more detail and discussion.

- Lawrence Kohlberg presented his participants with moral dilemmas. One of the most famous concerns is a character called Heinz who is faced with the choice between watching his wife die of cancer or stealing the only drug that could help her.

- Participants were asked whether Heinz should steal the drug or not and, more importantly, for their reasons why upholding or breaking the law is right.

Strengths

Rich qualitative data is obtained as open questions allow the respondent to elaborate on their answer. This means the research can find out why a person holds a certain attitude.

Limitations

They are time-consuming to collect the analytics and data and they take longer for interviewers to complete.

Bibliography

Saul Mcleod (2018) Questionnaires: Definition, Examples, Design and Types. simplyphsychology.org https://www.simplypsychology.org/questionnaires.html

 Focus Groups Research

• Focus Groups are a method of qualitative research. Qualitive Research is 'a process of naturalistic inquiry that seeks an in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting. Focusing on the why rather then the what of social phenomena.'  UTA (2022)
• Quantative Research is more structured research for example, interviews, measurements and reviews of records.
• A focus group are 'are controlled interviews of a target audience that are led by facilitators. Participants in a focus group are selected based on a set of predetermined criteria, such as location, age, socioeconomic status, race, and more.' Devault (2020)
• The purpose of a focus group is to' identify an individuals thoughts and feelings on a product, service or Solution' Default (2020)
• You also mut have a defeind goal and know your target audience to make sure you get the most accurate and reliable responses from individuals.
• A benifit of focus groups is that in contrast to interviews that are usually taken individually. A focus group is taken in groups allowing members to idiscuss thier answers with each other each other during the discussion ideas in order for the interviewrs to get more defined answers.
• Another benefit of focus groups are that 'they don't discriminate against people who cannot read or write and encourage participation from people with anxiety about be interviewed on their own or who feel they have nothing to say as focus groups allow them to contribute to others ideas.' Kitzinger (1995)
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Bibolgraphy

University of Texas  Arlington Libraries (Apr 13 2022) Quantitaive and Qualitive Research. libguides.uta.edu  https://libguides.uta.edu/quantitative_and_qualitative_research/qual

Gigi Devault (Dec 5th 2020) What is a Market Research focus Group? the balancesmb.com https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-a-market-research-focus-group-2296907 

Jenny Kitzinger (Jul 25 1995) Qualitive Research introducing Focus groups. bmj.com https://www.bmj.com/content/311/7000/299