1. Evaluation
Interpreting the Brief
The first thing I did at the start of this project was read through the brief a few times and then write
up my interpretation of it and the ideas that came to me as I was thinking about it.
When I saw that it was about young talent, I immediately thought of the range of talents that the
people around me have and thought this would be a good opportunity to showcase that, so I listed
some talents that I initially thought of and went from there.
Since there is a wide range of talents that I wanted to talk about with some of them being harder to
show then others I decided to rather take pictures of each of them. This also gave me a challenge
because I had to find a way to show the process of making these things in image form.
Client Research
Since the product is for Sunderland Culture it was
important for me to understand the organisation. I
looked on their website to learn more about how it
began and their morals and why this is important to
them. I learned that their staff is very diverse and that
their money comes from public funds so it’s very
important for them to give and support things that the
public would want.
They also run multiple venues and have events happening often that are open to people of all ages,
so they clearly care about people of any age being able to showcase their talents. I know that at
Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens they display a lot of art from young people.
Subject Matter Research
To fully understand the topics, I would be talking about I wanted to do some research into each of
them so I could learn about how they originated and became popular.
I added a definition for each of them to get a clear understanding of the official meaning of each skill
and proceeded to talk about my research into each of them, finding
out the year that each of them began or the era since knowing exact
years for some things is impossible, such as poetry which has always
existed. For the ones that we don’t know the exact date for I talked
about the earliest known works in that field or the most well-
known.
(The first ever photograph)
2. Existing Product Research
I proceeded to investigate existing products that talk about talent in the Northeast and give young
people an opportunity to show off their talents. It was difficult to find examples of previous works
that relate to the topics I wanted to talk about that also relate to the area so many a lot of my
product research is related to other places, but I did manage to find a couple of things that were
local and related to the talents I wanted to talk about.
The local examples I found are Poems of Town and David
Lawson Photography. The former being a workshop made by
Sunderland Culture so relating back to what was learned in my
client research. The second being a family-owned photography
studio that offered work placements to college students who
are interested in photography.
The examples that are not local include music documentaries
and poetry competitions that I came across whilst doing subject
research. Knitting and scrapbooking were a little harder to find
sources for, but I managed to find some interesting things
relating to them.
Audience Research
I sent out a survey to various people to learn more about my audience since I already knew who the
client was, but I also needed to know who else would be viewing my project. I sent the survey and
got back 10 responses, answering questions such as age to make sure they fit the age group that was
given in the brief which is 16-25. I proceeded to ask other basic questions such as whether they are
in education or if they are working so I could infer social grade.
I then asked a more relevant question, this being if they enjoy any of the talents that I will be talking
about, and everyone did except for one person who said they don’t enjoy any of them. I did include
an ‘other’ option so they could share another talent they have an interest in, but they did not
answer that although that can be an overwhelming question, so it’s understandable.
3. Rationale
For my pitch I briefly ran through all my research including interpreting the brief, target audience,
client research, existing product research and subject matter research.
I explained each of my photo ideas along with how I wanted to edit them since I really wanted to
make my audience believe in my ideas, I also talked about what I feel the unique selling point for my
product is. I proceeded to create a focus group where I showed them my pitch and explained my
ideas to them in detail, there is only an audio recording of this.
Since directly giving feedback can be difficult and there may be things you don’t think of in the
moment but then later realise, I decided to send out a form that asked the audience for their
thoughts on my pitch and if there are any improvements they’d like to mention.
After going through the feedback, I went back and improved some elements that were mentioned.
Pre-Production
For my pre-production I filled out all the necessary forms such as location scouting, location release,
risk assessments, resource list, personnel list, filming schedule and sketches.
The forms such as locations and risk assessments are important since they showed that I have
permission to film and insured everyone’s safety. The other lists and forms apart from the sketches
were mostly for organisation, they reminded me of all the equipment I would need, and I didn’t
forget anything important because of them.
The sketches were to give a visual representation of what I wanted to create so I could base my
actual photos off those and helped to keep those specific ideas in mind throughout the production
process.
4. Production
Production went very smoothly, there were no mishaps or difficulty for the most part. The only real
struggle was keeping my dogs away when I was taking the scrapbooking photo since there were lots
of small things around that could be easily chewed on, but they were taken outside and so that was
fixed easily.
I took all of my photos within the span of three days, I knew it wouldn’t take too long to take any of
the photos since I already had all of the needed materials and had specific shots in mind so I only
really needed two day to take all of the photos but instead gave myself an extra day so as to not
overwork myself and also give extra time in case any issues did arise.
Post- Production
The editing process took a week to complete since I was trying out many things that I had never
done before on photoshop. I struggled a lot especially with the poetry related image since I had to
add a steak of light into it, and it was difficult to make it look realistic but after watching tutorials
and playing around with different methods I think I did a good job of making it look the way I wanted
it to.
All of the prints took a lot of thought and each one took a while to complete but looking back on this
I learned a lot of new editing techniques and a lot about how to make an image look good.
Final Product
It took a long time to get my final prints the way I wanted them, a lot of drafts were made and there
was a lot of trial and error with trying to tell what looked good since I wanted all of them images to
have a similar style so you could tell they were from a set of images.
Explaining each of my pictures was also very time consuming since I wanted to clearly articulate the
thought process behind each one in the same depth since I had thought very deeply about it
throughout the process of making them.
Looking at my prints now I am very proud of how they turned out and I feel that all the effort I put
into them paid off.
Full Evaluation
Reflecting, I think I learned a lot of things through this project.
I learn how to plan well through making a shooting schedule, although the schedule was brief it
helped me keep on track with what needed to be done on which day. I also looked back through my
resources list often, so I kept very organised throughout the entire project.
I also learned a lot about editing during this project, although I was already familiar with photoshop I
didn’t know a lot about what lighting looks good and how to edit things in a realistic way, but I learnt
5. to do that this time and that’s something that I’m very proud of and would like to continue learning
more about in the future.
The last thing I feel I learned a lot about with this project is consistency, usually when working on
projects I rethink my ideas a lot and end up changing them last minute but this time I was very
confident in my ideas from the start, and I just kept coming up with ways to further my ideas rather
than changing them completely.
