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1. L3 Creative Media
Factual
Year Two Evaluation Template

2. Project
Overview

3. What was the theme of your project
and what attracted you to it?
The theme of my project was a web series/documentary
with the project being set in the past (this would be shown
by having the footage filmed in black and white). I chose the
Victorian theme because I believed it was the most
representative of the past and the only one that you can still
physically see today because film was created back then. I
chose the theme of a web series/documentary because I’m
a fan of web series and I wanted to make my own (also, of
the three methods of making a product, the web series
method looked like the best one I could use to make my
project the best because I’m talented in video editing), I
made it a documentary because I wanted to make a unique
project concept for a unique audience (teenager history
buffs) to stand out from the others in my class. I was allowed
to make anything for this project but what attracted me to
this idea was when I saw a film in the Aesthetica Festival
that used a low budget to set its story in the past, I took
inspiration from this project and wanted to use this project
as an experiment to make a movie with a low budget have a
convincing historical setting.

4. What research did you undertake and how did it
help develop your project?
I did research on John Snow’s life and his
discovery on cholera by reading all sorts of
news articles on memorials being built for
him and websites dedicated to him
because he was the best person to make
for my web series seeing as he lived in
Victorian times which adds to the past
setting. I investigated various web series
like Smosh and South park to give me in
spiration on how to properly make an
intriguing web series. Researching John
Snow helped me shape the story and
setting for my project, researching web
series helped me develop my project by
teaching me different filming and editing
techniques.

5. How did you develop and improve your ideas
throughout the project?
My original idea was simply having a documentary of John Snow by just having black and
white pictures of him, but I developed idea by expanding on its production. When I say
that, I developed it by producing black and white footage of John Snow by getting actors to
reenact his life, I also planned to get a proper relative or historian to be my interviewee. I
improved my ideas by compiling all the research on John Snow I could to make an effective
script which also was used as the basis to make my developed ideas better than what they
were already. I used the information (which was used to make the script) to make my past
scenes more historically accurate (planning to film scenes that reenact his actual detailed
life and background music that fitted with the time period), The research also improved my
ideas on interviews by helping me learn that there were plenty of good historians in York
College to interview instead of people far away who never got back to me.

6. Personal
Response

7. How did you feel about the
project before you started?
At the start of the project, I had a lack of ideas on
what to make my web series about, the last project
was hard to make it left me with writer's block.
When I finally got the idea of doing a documentary
on John Snow, I thought that I could've come up
with a better idea for a project where I could make
anything. When I got more ideas on how to make
the idea better by filming a historical setting with a
low budget and filming and experimental
documentary where I get to respect my favorite web
series, I saw potential in this project as a experiment
to make documentary films and films set in the past

8. What do you think about your project
development and how did it help you
to refine your idea?
To be honest my work was a success at the end of its
development, but it had many problems along the
way, even the development was so slow I could've
seen the flaws. When I filmed the documentary
scenes, all the footage filmed was fuzzy on premiere
no matter what quality I put it on, worse was the
audio (the past scenes weren't a problem because
they were made to be silent), because the music I
added afterwards overtook everything the people
were saying in the project so you could barely hear
the conversation. The project seemed too ambitious
at points so I refined my idea by cutting down on
how many black and white scenes there were, and I
simplified parts of the script to not take up so much
time on the project where you couldn't here it.

9. Did you collaborate on your project or engage
contributors, etc?
I collaborated the project by getting various candidates to accept an
opportunity to be in my film but most were hard to get a hold of when
production started. The candidates were; a historian from the York Civic
Trust, a history teacher from York University, anyone from the John
Snow society, Professor Stephane Snow (John Snow's descendent) and
a tutor of modern history at York College – Heather Sherman. Most of
the candidates were too far away or didn't respond so I went with
Heather because she was the closest even if the interview got
postponed several times and I forgot the updated questions I was going
to ask. We went to a private spot and Heather answered all the five
questions in great detail but I could only use one.

10. How did you feel when the project was
completed and why?
Because of the fuzziness and low audio caused me to rebuild the project from the
ground up I got a bit tired of the project and when it was done it felt like a massive
burden was lifted of my shoulders, but at the same time I felt like I made a movie
better than the ones I made at home. I didn't notice the audio was too low until I
edited it on iMovie so I had to reshoot some scenes and I reuploaded the project
many times with Dave's help changing the quality massively, but it was still ugly to
look at, it's because of these continuous problems I was glad it was over. On the
other hand, I did produce a movie where I tried out new things that I never did
before, I did a real interview and I made something in a past setting, for my first
time I did it well and I was happy to get my work out there because of how
professional it looked.

11. Evaluating the
project

12. What were the good points about
the project/task and what did you
learn from them? think of 3…
1. A good point was the historical setting for my web
series/documentary project were everything was filmed in black
and white in museums of places that fitted with the time period. I
learned how to make black and white footage from I movie and I
learned that you can easily set something in the past by filming a
scene in front of old areas (castles etc.)
2. A good point was the interview with the tutor of modern
history Heather Sherman for my web series/documentary project
which I weirdly didn’t use all of it for. I learned how to do
interviews in films now because of how smooth and quickly it was
with me telling and getting the answers for my questions and
filming everything with unique shots, I learned these from the
experience
3. A good point was recording my voice for my web
series/documentary project even if that good point sounds
miscellanies and boring. I learned how to record my voice clearly
for this project because, in the past, everything was muffled and
quiet, but me listening to the fuzzy audio taught me how to
properly hold the recording device in a quite room and speak very
loudly.

13. What challenges did you face and how
did you respond to them? think of 3...
1. One challenge I faced was the fuzziness of the footage in colour, it was
clear on the iPad I filmed it on, but adding footage from iPad to Premiere
leads to issues that even Dave’s help and changing quality couldn’t fix. I
responded to this problem by rebuilding the project from the ground up
on iMovie which showed the footage in good quality even when it was
uploaded to YouTube for the billionth time.
2. One challenge I faced was the audio because of how low the characters
voices were and any music I added (along with background noise form the
footage) overtook everything the characters were saying. I responded to
this problem by reshooting footage on my iPad on full volume close to the
actor's face and turning music down as low as possible.
3. One challenge I faced was the music because there was so little to
choose from (before I knew what era to choose from) and none of them
felt like they fitted with the project, all the music options I dumped were:
Cobblestone Village, That Thing Called Love, Evergreen, Gold, Sweet, Inner
Glow, Monkey Machine, Pink Deville, What’s your Poison, The Summit,
Love Dream, Debussy Preludes, Sleeping Beauty Waltz, Then you’ll
Remember me, Chanson De Martin, Chopin Waltz, Claud Debussy, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Intermezzo, The Merry Peasant, Odeon and
the Entertainer. I responded to this problem by properly looking into
Victorian music and choosing a simple one which would play all the way
through.

14. How would you rate the final
piece? [think along the lines of
poor, satisfactory, good or
excellent...justify your rating]
I believe my project is good, despite all its problems, I
was able to produce a piece of work that looked and
sounded professional for my factual web
series/documentary project. I give it the mantle of
good because the final piece’s transition from
Premiere to iMovie made its quality looked a bit cut
down and all the problems mad various corners that
would make it better be cut (like cutting down on the
interview footage to save on time). Still, the flash
back scenes still look good with convincing silent Era
effects and an entertaining reenactment of John
Snow’s life with good sets and camera shots to make
the project look professional.

15. How well did your project apply the characteristics
and conventions of the medium you worked in?
My project applied the characteristics and conventions well for the time limit I had, while I focused more on
web series, I researched one Youtuber called Oversimplified who does funny cartoons about random points in
history, the other two web series that fit with a documentary I researched were Epic NPC Man and Don’t Hug
Me I’m Scared (DHMIS). While my whole project was about a documentary set in Victorian times and none of
these examples fit with my project, however, if you look closer you can see they’re all linked to history close to
the Victorian Era and have humor which I was wanting to implement into my project; Oversimplified has made
many videos in the 20th century where he makes points in history hilarious sketches, Epic NPC Man whole
series is about humor but it’s setting of nearly being in the industrial revolution also adds a Victorian theme to
it and DHMIS’ whole story is based around dark humor set in 1955 were that year was still in the shadow of
the Victorian Era with the show having some Victorian scenery, all of these examples align with my project. My
documentary applies the characteristics of a documentary by coving the subject (John Snow) from start to
finish in slow detail with reenacted history scenes to keep the audience engaged, I also interviewed Heather
Sherman like documentaries interview histrions to prove their information is correct. When people watch my
documentary, they’ll have the conventions of what a documentary is and this documentary satisfies their
expectations because it has a professional interview with a historian like all documentaries do, it has massive
reenactment scenes with convincing effects to make you feel like you’re living in that era and the entire
dialogue is covering the subject in detail from to bottom like all documentaries do.

16. How did you design appeal
to your target audience?
My design of a documentary with black and white footage of the
Victorian Era appeals to my target audience of teenagers who are
history buffs because this project is made to look historically accurate
when it’s set in the Victorian Era. My target audience care about the
accuracy of how historically accurate something is, and the design of
my reenacted footage was filmed in parts of York that were ruins of
the Victorian Era and there was no shortage of sets because York is a
historical city, I also got costumes that looked like the fashion of the
19th century, and I filmed in the recreated Victorian town in the York
Castle Museum which was built to be exactly like the 19th century, all
of this accurate historical detail of the Victorian age appeals to my
target audience. And secondly, like all teens, my target audience also
wants things to be more modern (modern talk etc) my documentary
appeals to the teen history buff audience by looking like the Victorian
Era but everything else from the dialogue to the technology the film
was filmed with fits with the teenage culture they want.

17. Analysis

18. How did your skills develop during the
project? [technical, organization, time
management, communication]
My technical skills developed thanks to Premiere braking, I
learned different ways of using Premiere when trying to fix my
films quality, but when I used iMovie again it retaught me how to
use it (how to put videos together and add audio etc). My
organization skills developed by doing thorough research into
John Snow and tracking down the best historians who know about
him to set up interviews, having to do this all in a short time and
film and edit my project helped my organization develop by a
lotting all these activities into certain times. My communication
skills massively developed because of how much experience I
gained by writing carefully polite emails to interviewees and then
having to do back and forth emails about filming when they or I
were available on a Zoom call or in real life.

19. What messages did you want to
convey and were you successful?
The meaning of my project was for people to
remember John Snow because of how little he’s known
even from his home city of York. I was successful in this
because my project only talked about him with all
information telling every minuscule detail about his life
along with showing all his monuments and what made
him a hero. Because of all my success in letting the
audience know and remember John Snow, no one will
mistake his name for Jon Snow the Game of Thrones
character.

20. Action Plan

21. If you were making a similar project in the
future, what would you do differently?
If I were to make a similar project in the future, I would make the
reenacted scenes have more of a higher budget and have a longer
interview. The past reenactments looked so badly done because
you could see places and people all over who didn’t fit with the
time period, I would use a bigger budget to buy proper costumes
and build proper sets to look like the time period I’m reenacting for
my similar documentary project. My interview with Heather
Sherman was very short because I couldn’t use all the footage I
filmed for the run time, if I were to make a similar project, I would
film the same length I did for the interview but find away to make it
fit with the run time while trying to include all of it.