The student created an advertisement video for a plant shop on a tight deadline. They researched other similar ads for inspiration and planned the script and filming. Despite initial struggles with communication and planning, the group worked well together to quickly film close-ups of plants with consistent continuity. In the edit, the student used basic transitions and incorporated text/logos to maintain a good balance without overusing effects. Overall, the rushed project was successfully completed with a short, professional ad meeting the brief, though planning was identified as an area for improvement in the future.

1. Richard O’Connor IG3 Short Film Evaluation
Evaluation
During the pre-production period of this unit we were given the task of creating an advert for the
Folly Brook plant shop in our college. This was a good topic for us because although we had the
guidelines to follow as to what to create our video on we also had the ability to do whatever we
wanted in terms of capturing footage to create a video that could look a variety of different ways.
Even though our project was very rushed we still managed to create a professional looking advert for
our outcome using both research and ideas brainstorming. When we were given the task our first
action was to research other videos and adverts of the same purpose in order to get ideas of how to
film and edit the video together. We then proceeded to begin to shoot footage of the plants which
included still close ups of each plant because we intended to keep continuity throughout the entire
video. One of the things we worked best with at this stage was the scripting of the video and how it
would look under the pressure of only having a few weeks until we had to begin the filming. We
understood the situation and worked well with each other to create an appropriate, professional
advert that matched the brief we were given.
Speaking in terms of how the video was filmed and edited, we used a wide variety of different
techniques especially considering the style of video we were making. When you are making an
advert style video as we were it is important, not only to make sure there is some use of editing
techniques but even more so to make sure you don’t over-use them. I feel that in my edit of the
video I maintained a good balance of edits by including simple professional looking transitions such
as fades in and out; jump cuts to give the video a quick montage feel. I also incorporated text and
logo images.
Overall I think the project went quite well despite the initial rush. We successfully completed the
task with a short, professional looking advert to show as our final outcome. The areas we worked
best in were things like filming and editing because we got these done very quickly and worked well
together as a team to complete them. Our downfall came mainly in the planning aspects of the unit.
This was down to our poor team communication at the beginning of the pre-production where we
failed to get our ideas across to the group; a mistake which we later learned from and corrected.
This is why we were struggling initially because our ideas ended up being impossible to accomplish
the way we had hoped. Fortunately this resulted in us being able to prove ourselves by quickly
coming up with a plan to prevent us from just carrying on and creating an unprofessional, bad
quality film.
If we were to do this task again one thing I would do differently is that I would get the planning for
the entire unit done right at the start week by week so I knew where I was up to and could make
alterations to my plan if anything went wrong. I think that as a group we would be sure to come up
with a more simple idea and sort out the filming in advance.