The student created a documentary about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected those who work in football media. The theme focused on photographers, presenters, and social media teams within football clubs. Through an interview with a sports photographer, the student explored how their daily work and jobs changed during the pandemic. The final outcome was a 10 minute video split into sections, though the student felt it did not fully achieve the intended documentary style. Areas for improvement included adding more interviews, better color matching, and being more comfortable on camera.

1. Evaluation

2. What was the theme of your
project
The theme for my project was heavily centred around football, more
explicitly the professionals who bring us the game through media
outlets. I wanted to cover how their working life was around the
stadiums on matchday; the social media teams, the presenters,
photogragher and the more inner workings of a football club. Rather
than the usual focus on the teams, coaches and specific players.
Not only just the daily work life of them but how the covid pandemic
affected their jobs and what sort of disruption as well as problem
solving they endured through that season. I was interested to find
out if it brought about any long term changes ; like schools using
teams, and what short term changes it caused or created. To do this
I wanted to create a documentary type series where I would follow
one of these professionals on their work day and have a sit down
interview with them to ask them set lists of questions to be able to
discover my answers.

3. What made you choose this
theme/idea
My reason for choosing this was that football is something I hold a
massive interest and passion for. Not only this but sports
photography is something I love and that industry is something I
want to work in and be able to produce my own form of content
around the sport. Covid was also something which massively
halted a potential chance of getting work in sports photography so
being able to find out how it affected people already in the
industry I thought was interesting and especially in careers you
don’t see or hear much about

4. How did you develop your idea
throughout the project
I constantly developed my idea and my project as the weeks
unfolded. I found my self drawing inspiration from those around
me, id see elements of classmates projects and really like the
way they may have cut something or the sound effects they’ve
used so quite a lot of different parts of my project have been
formed from drawing inspiration from others projects. Aswell as
this my project was developed from peer feedback from both
tutors and classmates and I would make improvements from
what they said about my piece.

5. What was the final outcome
My final outcome was a below 10 minute video. It was split into 4
sections, an opener, an introduction, the main interview and then
an outro. The opener was an edited montage with a narration
talking about what football is and how the pandemic affected it by
not allowing fans into the stadium. The introduction was
introducing Greig and what his job and role was within this
industry. The interview is pretty self explanatory, it was my
interview with Greig where he answered my questions and it cut
from the main shot to cutaways of him working. The outro was just
a short credit scene after Greig's final words.

6. How did you feel about the final
outcome
Although I was happy with what I have made I feel as
though I could have made something a lot better had
certain scenarios been different and harder challengers
overcame. There are certain issues which I will delve
deeper into in the " what didn’t go so well" section of my
evaluation. These issues have certainly limited how pleased
I can be about the end project however overall I am glad I
am finished and I am definitely happy as I feel it is progress
from my first work in year 1 and my first interview in year 2
but I feel like I could have made something at least 20x
better under certain circumstances.

7. How did you feel before the
project
Before the project started I had a rough idea of what I wanted to make
and I was excited to see if I would be able to have the idea stem into
an actual project. However this made the earlier stages of planning
and research harder as I already had my mine set on what I wanted to
make and it was more down to researching logistics and how I would
be able to get the shots and interviews I needed.

8. How did you find contributors
Luckily I had a family member who works as a sports
photographer, and since I was already lucky enough to
accompany him on a match before I asked if he would be willing
to let me come again and also to answer several questions about
how the pandemic affected his work. He obliged and I got to go
along to Barnsley to document his day. As for the other
contributor he is a colleague of Greig's of which he was able to
pass me on his contact details so I could enquire about an
interview. This resulted in an interview via email as his schedule
was too busy to meet. I tried to get other contributors for the
project but was not able to or didn’t hear back after sending
questions across.

9. What went well with the
project
I think the main success of my project was the initial shots for the
interview when the sun was in the right place so the lighting looked
unbelievably good and it created a lens flare on the shot which I
think made it look great. Aswell as this I am really happy how the
intro turned out as I think it looks professional and creates a good
platform for something which could become a series. The audio
almost throughout is to a good standard and one which I am happy
with.

10. What challenges did you
overcome
The main challenge which became present was finding footage
to use. Although I had filmed loads for the interview and
cutaways, these shots were not appropriate to use for my outro
and intro. My un-willingness and lack of being comfortable in
front of the camera really became a challenge when I needed
footage to use for these. I was more than happy to record voice
notes but to actually film myself I couldn’t bare. This in result
became a challenge as I had loads of audio files to use but no
visual counterpart to use for it. The only other real challenge was
trying to get interviews, there were two more that I would have
liked to get but one of which I never received a reply and the
second I never heard from after sending over the questions

11. What did not go so well with
the project
My main issues were the fact I don’t think it completely felt like a documentary.
Due to the lack of any other interviews and the lack of a proper introduction
and outro, it didn’t feel very proper more like just an interview . This is one of
my biggest concerns with this and also one of my biggest disappointments.
Along with this one of my main issues is the colouring. I tried my best to be
able to match the warmth and brightness of the first clip to the others but it
just seemed impossible, the final outcome I had I think was the closest I was
going to get without just scrapping it and re-recording the entire piece.
Outside of the production one of my biggest issues has been the written work.
It is not something I enjoy and has caused me a lot of concern and fear
regarding my final result.

12. How would you rate your
project
With the risk of sounding full of myself I think a merit is fair grade for my project. Looking at the
grading especially for the actual production I think my work comes under the merit side of the
markings. I think it would be unfair and a lie to say it deserves a distinction when I compare my
work to those of classmates who have been able to rack up 50-60 slides for each section. However
I feel what my may lack in quantity by only doing 20-30 it makes up in quality. I think I produced a
very good video which would be able to attain the target audience while also producing some
good written work within my research and contextual. My only worry is that it is the written work
that lets me down as this has been something that has needed constant improvement all through
out school and college and it’s a side of my work that I have never been able to truly crack.

13. How well did your project cater
for your target audience
My only real target audience was football fans. So to interest
them I just had to make it about football as much as possbile
and I don’t think I could have done much more in order to do
this. I filmed my interview inside of a football stadium, I had
cutaways which were during a match and the entirety of the
intro was archived footage of football matches and interviews.
I think I catered for my intended audience very well, it was
especially helpful focusing on such a broad audience but I think
that is the correct audience for me to have been after

14. How did your skills develop
I think my main skill that has improved was my use of premiere yet
again. I feel although It wasn’t great I feel a lot more comfortable
playing around with the colouring of my videos and I feel like I can now
confidently attempt to match up the colours to something which looks
and feels natural or good. After Effects was something new I tried out
during my experiments and that is definitely a skill which has improved
as I had no idea how to use it before but now can quite confidently
animate on top of my videos even if it wasn’t something I used in the
final cut.

15. Feedback from peers
A lot of the feedback I received was during the production of my piece. I would ask classmates for their
opinion on my piece and what they would change. I would do this every time I reached a finishing point
in each section of my video. I would ask them how they felt about it, what they would change, if they
thought it was fitting, how the audio sounded and if the clips I have put into it at certain points was
fitting. After receiving this feedback I would change and sculpt my project until I got 2 or 3 people saying
they liked that section and their suggestions and improvements were not things I could change in post-
production, these would then become improvents for future projects and stuff to keep an eye out next
time I am filming a project.
Although on my social media account where I posted my final project asking for feedback from peers I
wasn’t able to get any. I decided if they were not willing to even give a sentence to help better my video
from a polite request on an instagram story, I figured I would send it directly to people who I thought
may be open to providing feedback and people who had not yet seen it so they don’t have any ideas of
already worked areas and it’s a fresh view and opinion on it.

16. Feedback from peers II
Aidan Carey 18M
Although its not the most in depth feedback it is still
incredibly useful. I asked him his opinion on it and refrained
from telling him I would be using his opinion as a form of
evaluation. He talked about the ending and how it feels it is
a very sudden ending and it just goes from a long section of
him to suddenly ending and credits. This is something I tried
to fix but due to not having much more footage and not
feeling comfortable with being on camera, the end piece of
this outro I wasn’t happy with and decided it made the final
piece worse if anything.

17. What would you do differently
in the future
One of the main things I would love to try in the future is to create my own graphics
and intermission screens. Although my artistic capabilities are not great I think being
able to add graphics to it such as titles and extra pieces would really up the quality of
my work. I saw some fellow classmates use intermission screens in their work and
although I did not feel it was entirely appropriate for what I was creating, it could be for
a future project and to be able to create my own rather than use one that I found
online, again would really up my level of working and bring another sense of
professionalism to what I create.
I would also spend more time on my written side of the work and not rush into filming,
if id spent an extra week or two before I had filmed ( although the timescale for filming
was slightly out of my control this time) I think my final piece could have been a lot
better.

18. How would you develop your
skills more for the future
The main way I think you are able to develop your skills is through practice. No matter how
much time and effort you put into researching and watching tutorials for certain skills the
only way you will be able to develop and perfect what you are wanting to create is through
trying it and finding your own way to work around things. Especially with skills revolving
around editing and filming, the best thing you can do to improve is to experiment and
practice. A lot of the time you will find ways of doing certain tasks differently to what your
watching. I definitely found this out while trying my rotoscope experiment. I found several
ways of creating the effect which I wanted in multiple soft wares; like photoshop and adobe
after effects

19. What personal skills could you
develop to make sure your work
is professional
I think one of the personal skills I could develop the most is confidence. Had this been better I
think I would have been able to create a much better and much more professional piece. With
more confidence I would have been able to and felt comfortable reaching out to more people
for interviews and if they would be open to contributing to my documentary. Not only this but
being able to reach out and ask a lot more people for feedback on the project would have
helped me to progress and develop my video even more. Another way confidence would help
to improve my piece is that I would feel more comfortable on camera. Although I filmed
introductions and outros with me in them talking about what has happened or what we were
going to be doing / talking about, these were changed to just using the audio, this made it a
lot less complex as I didn’t have enough b roll to be able to include a 2 minute long only audio
intro and outro so a lot of it was cut due to this. In the future I would like to be more
confident on camera as I think it will heavily increase my standard of work.

20. Context
My contextual powerpoint is possibly one of my strongest out of the selection, I did a large
amount of research into three existing documentaries which I wanted to draw ideas from and
three that were trying to attract a similar target audience to mine. Aswell as this I did research
into the different variables of documentary to help me decide which one would be best for
me to create. Media theories surrounding documentaries are also something I looked into and
this helped to better my understanding of the different types of documentaries there are,
compared to before hand where I thought there was no real difference and documentaries
were a genre in themselves.

21. Research
My research powerpoint had a rather large issue in that my survey I sent out to be the backing
of my research received very few replies. Although put in the class group chat, teams chat and
my social media I received less than 10. This made it challenging to know what areas I should
research into from an audience perspective. Other than this with feedback I received from
Scott I think I was able to get my research into a good place, I looked into music options,
logistics and restrictions I had while filming at barnsley as well as different options for virtual
interviews and live interviews.

22. Problem Solving
My problem solving powerpoint wasn’t as in depth as I would have perhaps liked it to be. This
is due to only needing a single shoot, this limits the risk of issues and potential problems
occurring. Aswell as this there werent many techniques I wanted to try out as an experiment
other than rotoscoping, everything else I felt I would be using were skills I had already learnt
how to use and were fairly confident with; we were advised to steer away from using things
we already know as experiments as it wasn’t needed. Even so I created risk assessments and
talked about what I had created as my experiment, rotoscoping is definitely something I want
to look more into in the future just when it is more fitting in the project I am making.

23. Planning
My planning powerpoint is potentially my weakest link. The first feedback I received was that
it was heading in the correct direction but lacked the detail It needed. I think this was because
I had already filmed what I needed before I had finished my planning. This made it difficult to
come up with a plan of what I would want to have due to me already having what id got. So it
was easier to simplify what id filmed and put it in to the document, this made it seemed
rushed and without thought. Since then I have added more detail to certain areas and spoke
about how I reached out to people for their virtual interviews. I am still concerned that it is
not enough but I am not sure what else to add at this point.