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.