2. Research.
For my research I focused on what I saw as some of the most simple, yet impactful
examples of web-series that I was aware of. While I don’t regret my decision, I feel that I
should’ve maybe found examples that were easier to research. Seeing as all of the series I
used were made exclusively for YouTube, as such there isn’t much in the way of publicly
available information on their production aside from obscure podcast episodes and tweets
that were outside of the range of this research project. This lack of concrete lead to some
sparse information for some sections, with informed guesswork and possibly outdated
information for others. In terms of the successes, I feel that this research gave me a new
perspective of what I can control in order to make my product as quality as it can be. For
instance: I can write a compelling script but I can’t increase the resolution that my camera
will film in. The sources I researched, I feel, represent a more realistically achievable and
successful style of web-series than some other, more heavily produced, series that would
be an impossible prospect for my resources and timescale. I feel that my research also gave
me priorities for my final piece: an engaging script, clean audio, and an interesting premise
all take priority over flashy visuals, camera movement, and other indulgences that would’ve
taken a lot of time for, what would likely be, an underwhelming end product.
Ultimately, I’m happy with my research. Some entries are slightly sparse and shallow but I
would still much rather have slightly underwhelming research that’s relevant to my
situation, over a overlong, collection of research inapplicable to my work. I also had passion
and prior knowledge for the sources I choose, which gave the research an element of
authenticity and made my analysis easier to perform.
3. Planning and
Development.
This particular section of pre-production work was a victim of the enormous ball of
chaos that consumed substantial and valuable work time. As this is the case, I don’t
feel entirely bad about this piece. With this being said, it would be dishonest to say
it’s an exceptional, or even acceptable, example of the work. The main issue was
partly self-inflicted; at the time of writing I’d decided on a concept that would be
extremely malleable, due to the uncertainty surrounding the project. Originally I
planned on including interviews and footage of post-flood houses but with stricter
lockdown rules every week and people, with perfectly understandable explanations,
pulling out of the project, these elements had to be scrapped and the project as a
whole was stripped back. My development was mainly internal; I would come up
with a nice shot that couldn’t go forward or a cool line in the script that didn’t flow
with the rest of it. Most of these elements were created and cut without being
written down which doesn’t bode well for my grades, let alone my ability to create a
piece.
In one sense, I’m not happy with my planning and development; the work is vague,
meagre and much of my development, in particular, just isn’t there. I do, however,
forgive myself for these missteps, as most issues were unavoidable and those that
weren’t are pretty understandable.
4. Audience Research.
My audience research was comprised of two sections: secondary
and primary. My secondary research included a case study
written to examine the expectations and wants of documentary
audiences. The other part of my secondary research was made
up of analysing existing works to ascertain their audiences and
then examining the works again for common themes that this
potential audience would likely be drawn to. The primary section
of my research was focused entirely around the results of a
survey that I created with the intention of probing the
participants’ for their opinions about the themes I hoped to
explore with my piece as well as the style and tone that I would
write, film and edit it.
5. Audience Research
(Secondary)
The first piece that I researched for the secondary section was: “Seeing, Feeling, Knowing: A Case
Study of Audience Perspectives on Screen Documentary” which followed 36 participants responses
to a questionnaire following a screening of a French documentary. As I was making a non-fiction
web-series over a big-screen documentary I had to carefully choose the aspects of the paper that
would remain relevant though the change of medium and passage of time. The main points that can
be extracted from the paper that are still applicable to this project are: people will generally expect a
documentary to act as either a fairly dry stating of facts, à la textbooks in film form or an
entertainment piece that is made up from real world footage. This is a slight oversimplification but in
the case of a video that would only end up being less than two minuets long, it’s just practical to use
my research in broad, thematic strokes rather than the minute when you have so little time in which
to use what you’ve learned. In the end I chose to mainly lean on storytelling for a few reasons: firstly
I just didn’t have the time to spend combing through obscure websites, books and conflicting
hearsay to make a accurate assessment of the event, an event that I lived through and had a excess
of thoughts on; obviously it wouldn’t be worth my while to make a product that would appeal to the
other half of a non-existent audience. The second reason was that the flooding of Snaith in dull, and I
would argue less informative, when told as objectively as possible. I know this for a fact as during the
event I had watched the clinical coverage of the flooding’s made by news sources like the BBC and
felt a disconnect between that coverage and the mood and attitudes on the ground. This is not to
discredit the coverage or the organizations that created it, for the majority of people: “Snaith’s
flooded, people have been forced out of their homes, the trains are down.” is all the information
they need about the floods. But I increasingly felt a need to get the emotions of the people in Snaith
out even if I don’t feel like I’ve really done them justice by any means with what is ultimately 2
minutes of stock footage, a lacklustre script and a shaky voice over. Regardless I don’t regret this
research and the choices I made as a result of it.
6. Audience Research
(Secondary)
My other two pieces of secondary research where far less in depth and more based on my
own speculation. This was necessary because I was researching online content that would be
the closest analogue to my final project and these forms of content have very little publicly
available research into their audiences and the view sources that do exist are so mind-
numbingly broad as to make them useless for this project. Instead of making tenuous links
based off of practically useless data, I decided that I would take the risk of analysing these
pieces with their potential audience in mind and arriving at my own conclusions about their
wants and needs.
The pieces I chose to analyse were made up of various edutainment channels from YouTube.
I chose these not only because they were closest in production value, tone and aims to what
I wanted to produce but because I was familiar with them prior to even hearing the brief for
this project and felt that this experience would make my analysis more accurate.
The main takeaways from this research were that most of these videos would have an
intriguing and enticing title or thumbnail and that most videos have a wider message or
would include other aspects other than their informational value. This told me that the
potential audience for these pieces would likely fall under the reformer or explorer
personality types due to them finding storytelling, novelty, presentation and meaning more
appealing than purely informative content.
7. Audience Research.
(Primary)
To me, my primary audience research was useful in as much as having some statistics
to back-up the decisions that I made throughout my production process. But I highly
doubt that my project would’ve changed much, if at all, if I hadn’t created my survey
and collected the results I did. The other issue with this research was the vision that I
had for the project at the time of making the survey verses my vision during
production. At the time of writing the survey I wanted to focus on the political, social
and environmental side of the event; I ultimately wanted my video to have a strong
message against the policies and attitudes that resulted in the floods. After writing
my first draft of the script I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t have the time or
resources to make something of that ilk. Something like that would require at least
10 minutes worth of footage and voice over, far more research into key figures and
events and a really tight, concise script that would need quite a bit of time to write.
The end result is extremely different from my original idea and so quite a lot of this
survey is obsolete and the few parts that aren’t, are fairly obvious (e.g. age group,
political standing, etc.) given that the survey group was entirely comprised of
students and staff on a creative media course.
8. Experiments.
My experiments turned out about as good as could
be expected when I consider how rushed they were.
The techniques that I was demonstrating came across
clearly enough in the piece I produced and the write
up was decently meaty in it’s explanation. My
experiments didn’t really come in handy that much
when producing my final piece because I already had
a good grasp on the techniques I used. My only real
regret with my experiments is how little of it there
actually was but considering the situation at the time
of producing it I’m just glad to have it finished.
9. Final Piece &
Conclusion.
This project was fraught with difficulties from the start and, even if I’m not entirely
happy with the final product, it’s satisfying enough to have a finished product in
the first place. The final piece was a mish-mash of stock footage, my own footage
and a voice-over of the script that I’d recorded as a back-up for my original “piece
to camera” plan. The whole thing was edited within the space of a day and when
that’s taken into consideration I don’t think it came out too badly. My main gripe is
with the audio, I wasn’t in a great environment for audio production and I wasn’t
using the best sound equipment for the edit. The result is some slightly sus mixing
on my part particularly when I would fade the natural audio of a shot with my
voiceover, it breaks up the intentional quiet spots with the voiceover nicely at
points but at others it sounds like a bad attempt at sound-scaping. If I was to
remake this project from the beginning I would try and consider the ramifications
of any style or tone and think ahead a bit more. This fairly lacking final piece is a
direct result of my messy pre-production; the chances of a project that reinvented
itself multiple times at multiple point in the production process is unlikely to come
out perfect and this project is a testament to that.
