Description.

1. L3 Creative Media
Production & Technology
Year Two Evaluation Template

2. Evaluation Overview
This evaluation form is designed to assist you in the evaluation of your projects.
When using this form it is good practice to:
• Use appropriate terminology.
• Stay concise and focus on key points.
• Evaluate and analyse your statements.
• Focus on judgements about work rather than telling a story of how it was made.
Please find the grading matrix here to help you assess you are working at the right level.
Level 3 Extended Diploma Grading Matrix - https://bit.ly/2Jnqj3v

3. Project Overview
In this section you will outline the aim of the project/task and give an
overview of the activates you undertook to complete it.

4. What was the theme of your project and
what attracted you to it?
• The theme that I chose going into this project was Cinema. I focused on creating a tour guide that would fit the brief
provided by the client. Because I enjoy cinema and film, and it’s the industry that I want to work in in the future, I thought
it would be something that motivated me to create a final product for the client of a high standard, that also appeals to a
large target audience, to create a viable idea for a tour within the city. The fact that this project was based in the city that I
live in as well as being around a topic that I am interested in, I was attracted to it as it intrigued me to learn about parts of
cinema that were involved in the area that I live. From the get-go of the research stage of this project, I discovered many
different things about the city that I never knew. For example, the shambles was used as a massive inspiration for scenery
in the Harry Potter films. This project and theme also provided me chance to explore more of 3D that I have never
previously used. During this project I learnt many new skills within 3D software and used many different aspects of the
software that I had never previously used.

5. What research did you undertake and how
did it help develop your project?
• In the research stage of this project, I focused on outlining areas of the city that had been used in film or considered for
use in film. This led me to areas such as The Cocoa Works that used to be apart of Nestle and was considered for a
shooting location for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005, as well as The Shambles that was used for inspiration for
creating Diagon alley in the Harry Potter films.
• After researching areas of interest within York, I started to research production-based attributes for the project. I found
many different ways of presenting this project to the client that interested me, however, after a little while of researching,
I discovered that I could use 3D to create a replica of the city and present my tour path this way. This helped tremendously
to speed up and develop the production process for this project as I could spend time learning how to use this technique.
• For this project, I also felt it was important to develop research on the audience for this project as it is a project provided
by a client and therefore should be designed to fit a purpose provided by the client. From the brief, I knew that I needed to
design a product that interested a younger target audience, to research this, I started by looking at the statistics of tourists
currently visiting York and how I could use this to my advantage.

6. How did you develop and improve your ideas
throughout the project?
• Initially I started with the idea that I would just focus on importing this 3D replica of York and then animating the path and
camera to move through the city, showing the tour to the audience. I then realised that this would make it hard to
highlight the POI’s to the audience and they would therefore not know which parts of York were actually a part of the tour.
To improve upon this issue, I planned to 3D track text to the buildings that were a POI of the tour, providing the audience
with the name of the POI as well as a brief description. I also discovered that creating just a video highlight the tour and
the POI’s to audience may be a bit boring and lose the interest of my target audience for this project. Therefore, I decided
that I would format this video to be a part of a concept for an interactive app for the tour. My plan for this app was to use
the video that I had already started to create as a basic overview of the tour but then to develop upon this as the video
would transition into the real world, showing the app in action. I planned to capture some footage in front of one of the
tours POI’s then have the app displayed in front of the POI, showing the audience the functionalities of the app. It would
have been used to navigate the tour and guide the audience from one POI to another as well as provide the audience with
information about the POI’s that they were in front of.
• Unfortunately, I was unable to do this entire plan and execute these developed ideas as I planned for too much provided
the time that I had for this project. However, I do believe the concept itself is really solid.

7. What was the outcome of the project/task?
• The outcome of this project was just a short video showing the audience the tour path and the POI’s within the tour. I am
pretty disappointed with what I have create for this project as I wish I would have been able to fully develop my ideas.
Unfortunately render times and technical difficulties caused for me to have to compromise towards the end of production
for this project and consequently resulted in a final product that I am not too happy with, and I don’t believe this displayed
my skillset well.
• However, I do believe that I attempted something that was technically challenging and was a unique take to the task that I
was provided and I'm glad that I spent the time to learn this technique and discover new aspects of 3D software that I had
never previously explored.

8. Personal Response
This section will explore your thoughts and feelings about the
experience. This will help gain a understand of how your personal
feelings may have impacted the final outcome.

9. How did you feel about the project before
you started?
• Going into this project, initially I felt that this project and brief would be challenging to come up with an idea for. I toyed
with a range of different ideas for this project but desperately wanted a way to incorporate my specific skillset and
interested into this project. I felt that developing this project around cinema would be a good way to home in my interests
into this project as it’s a topic that I am both studying and want to work around in the future. I also wanted to do
something for this project developed within 3D software. I felt that this would provide my project with a technical
challenge and uniqueness that would set my production apart from others.
• I also knew that I would have limited time for production in this project and that would therefore make it extremely
challenging to create something large scale within 3D in the time frame that I had. However, I felt that I wanted to do 3D
regardless as it provides practice in the subject area I want to move into in the near future.

10. What do you think about your project development and
how did it help you to refine your idea?
• During the planning process for this project, I was able to initially identify the points of interests for my tour and give the
idea for my tour a basic outline. I was then able to identify the best path for this tour and discover how long the tour
would take to be walked. I was also able to start planning how I would create this idea and actually bring it to reality. I
started looking into how I could incorporate 3D software into this project as its something I’m needing to practice and
want to study at university and then move into a career in 3D, therefore I want to take as many opportunities as I can to
work within 3D software. I discovered that I could use Google’s 3D scans that they use for their mapping services by
importing those scans into blender to use for my own purpose. This really set my idea into place and set my idea in as I
could manipulate this 3D replica of the city to demonstrate my tour.

11. How did you feel when the project was
completed and why?
• After completing the project I was pretty disappointed with my final product, I felt that I definitely could have done better
in a number of different areas. For example, I should have looked sooner into the production process at how much
volumetrics (clouds) would effect my render times. If I had done this, I may have been able to save time towards the end
of production and reserve that just for rendering to ensure I had enough time to render the clouds with my project, or
alternatively, I could have spent time researching ways to reduce render times with volumetrics or how to create a cloud
effect without using volumetrics that wouldn’t effect my render times to heavily. I also felt that I could have done better in
post production by saving myself more time for the post production process, this would have allowed me to create a more
immersive video and better sounds design as my final product as its stands is pretty bare bones from Blender.
• Overall, I wish I had just utilized my time more efficiently to ensure that I would have been able to get everything done
that I wanted to get done to the high standard that I wanted to achieve for this project.

12. Evaluating the project
In the previous sections, you have been commenting upon the project development. The
evaluation may include some similar information but it will also include critical comment.
An evaluation must include information about the good and bad points of the project and it
is important to be honest. Finally, you should make a judgment about the effectiveness of
the success of the project

13. What were the good points about the project/task and what did you
learn from them? [try and think of at least 3, more if possible]
• I think that my idea for this project was really good and have I finished everything I wanted to have finished by the end of
production, I believe that I would have had a really great final product that fit the clients brief as well as provided a
technical challenge.
• I also think that my research was pretty good for this project, I went into planning and production knowing exactly what I
needed to do to fit the clients brief as well as what thing I could incorporate into my product to try and attract the younger
audience into York.
• I also think my idea of using Google Maps’ 3D scans of York to create a replica of the city within Blender was an extremely
good idea for this project. It allowed me to explore more of 3D and areas I had previously never explored, in a project the
generally isn’t done with any 3D aspects and provided me total create freedom to express the tour path anyone I wanted
to. It also gave my production a pretty high technical quality which provided me with a challenge I otherwise would have
had.
• Finally, I think that the clouds that I had created using volumetrics in
Blender were really solid and I was really happy with how they were
looking in my previews. Although they're not in my final product, I am
happy with how they looked and glad I explored into an area I had never
previously explored.

14. What challenges did you face and how did you
respond to them? Try and think of at least 3...
• A major challenge I faced during this project was moving work from one computer to another. This made certain things
extremely tricky as I moved from the college computer to my home computer or vice-versa. I found the best way for me to
get around this was to do all my animation on the computers at college as this was quite a large workload and I spent
more time doing work on this project at college. I would then copy over the keyframes from that project file into the
project file I had on my home computer. I then did texturing and lighting at home, combining the two project files into one
with limited technical issues. This also allowed me to render on my home computer which is significantly quicker.
• Another challenge I faced towards the end of the production process was render times. This was due to the fact that I had
used volumetric clouds in my project which heavily increased my render times. Responding to this issue, I messed around
with a whole bunch of settings within Blender and did some research to try and cut down these render times, I had some
success but nothing significant enough to allow me to keep the clouds in the final render.
• Finally, I also faced a challenge at the very beginning of this project. From the brief and the additional information I was
provided at the very beginning of this project, I was unsure how I would go about addressing the brief, especially what
genre I would use to grab young peoples attention. I decide to use Cinema and incorporate 3D into this project as they are
both subjects I am extremely interested in and provided me a motivated and further interest in the project.

15. What were the negative points about the
experience, and what could you have done to
improve them?
• Towards the end of the project, I had a few negative points, for one the render times. To improve this issue, I could either
plan better to ensure that I have time to render everything I need to render, or I could do some research and find a way to
create clouds that don’t have as much of an impact on render times.
• Another negative part of this project for me was animation. My plan for this project involved a lot of animation and prior
to starting this project I have only done very basic animation so create a smooth animation for this project was extremely
challenging for me. I am not disappointed with what I have made in terms of animation, but it definitely could be a lot
better. To improve this, I will keep learning animation in Blender, but I noticed from this project that my camera was too
close to the subject a lot of the time and it often made it challenging to follow, so I will work on improving this in the
future.

16. How would you rate the final piece? [think along the lines of
poor, satisfactory, good or excellent...justify your rating]
• I would rate my final product for this project satisfactory. I only rate it at satisfactory as the technical qualities bring it up to
that. I think in terms of addressing the brief and creating an appealing video I have failed in all those areas and would
therefore rate those aspects at poor.
• Although I'm not too happy with the final result, I’m still glad that I chose to do what I chose to do, regardless of the
outcome as it allowed me to explore areas I had never previously explored, and I took a unique style and approach to this
project. I wouldn’t change the idea I had going into this project, but I would change some of my time planning in hindsight,
knowing the issues I faced. However, I'm glad that I experimented with the things I experimented with, and I’ve learnt
from the experience, and I feel if I were to take on this project again, I would produce a much higher quality final product
that I would be significantly happier with.

17. What is your opinion of your final piece? What
elements do you think are successful and why?
• Overall, I'm not too happy with my final piece for this project but do I think I couple areas I have succeeded in. Firstly, I
think I have provided this project with a high technical quality and therefore provided myself with a challenge for this
project by using 3D software to present my tour. Secondly, I think that the camera animation that I created within Blender
is good but definitely could have been improved upon had I had more time. However, I haven’t had too much experience
with animation and dove deeper into animation in this project than I previously had, and therefore discovered the graph
editor which allowed me to manipulate the animation closer to how I wanted it, and provided me with a much finer level
of control opposed to Blender’s dope sheet.

18. How did you design appeal to your target
audience?
• I feel if I were able to complete my whole plan, my project would have done a good job of appealing to my young target
audience due to the fluid camera movement and interactive app. I feel that using an interactive app for this project was a
really good idea as it definitely fits the brief and would have done an excellent job of appealing to a younger target
audience as it could be something extremely easy for the audience to use as well as super accessible as it would be on
mobile phones. I also feel my project would have appealed to the younger target audience through the use of cinema as
my theme. I know this from research into cinema, I found that the majority of people that go to the cinema and enjoy
cinema as a genre are young people ranging from the ages of 15-25.

19. Analysis
In this section, you will focus on the details of the project and make
sense of what happened in the project. You should demonstrate how
your decisions informed the project development and the success of the
outcome.

20. What elements did not go well and why?
• I think that time management was a pretty big flaw for me during production in this project. I think this is purely because I
had never worked with volumetrics on this scale before and therefore had no idea of how much they effect render times.
In future I want to plan out exactly what I need to do each week in order to stay on track for the deadline, but I also need
to ensure that I incorporate preview renders into schedule so that I can identify issue with rendering earlier on in the
production stage.
• I also think that planning was a slight issue for me in this project. For one, better planning would have consequently made
my time management slightly better but also if I had better planning, especially for production techniques, I could have
found better ways to go about making certain things for this project to both increase quality and decrease time spent on
particular aspects.

21. What would you do differently in the future
and why?
• In the future I would ensure that I make a detailed schedule for production so that I leave myself enough time towards the
end of production to do everything I need to do such as post production, sound design and rendering when working with
3D software. I also need to ensure that I plan for preview renders to identify any issues with rendering earlier on during
the production process to ensure that I have time to fix any issues that I find during these preview renders.
• I also need to ensure that I do some more research into production techniques before starting the production stage of the
project. This way I would have more much knowledge surrounding the technique allowing me to be much quicker in the
production stage as well as having more knowledge to troubleshoot any issues I may run into during production,
surrounding these techniques.

22. What knowledge have you gained that would help you in the
future to improve your project? Also, what knowledge from
academic literature and professionals has helped and why?
• During this project I got the chance to experiment with areas of 3D software that I had never previously used. For
example, I got chance to use and experiment with volumetrics I blender as well as importing Google’s 3D scans.
Volumetrics will be a super useful technique to know going forward as there are a lot of different things that you can use
volumetrics for and are used frequently in profession work to provide a scene with atmosphere. Importing from Google’s
3D scans is a much more niche technique that I probably won't use many times again but if I ever need to use this
technique again, I have a good understanding of how to do so, may any project ever require it.

23. Action Plan
This section will identify what you would do differently in the future and
identify ways you could develop.

24. If you were making a similar project in the
future, what would you do differently?
• If I were making a similar project to this in the future, I would make sure to spend a little more time and effort creating a
detailed production schedule for the project. This way I would plan for more errors in the production process which would
increase my chance of tackling these challenges earlier on in the process. I would also make sure to spend more time
doing research for the project before starting production, and I would spend some of this research time looking into
production techniques that I might use during the production process. I would do this as I found myself running into a lot
of issues regarding specific techniques in blende that I haven’t done before such as volumetrics and importing information
from Google’s 3D scans. I feel if I had done some more research into these techniques before starting production, I would
have had a much better idea of how they work meaning I could have done them quicker and also would have had more
knowledge to troubleshoot any issues I ran into regarding these production techniques.

25. What personal attributes could you develop to
ensure you are working at a professional level?
• I think that resilience is an attribute that I could definitely develop and it's something that I noticed the closer I got to
deadlines with this project. For example, towards the end of production when I started getting a lot of issues with things
not working out how I wanted them to, I found myself very demotivated and didn’t spend much time trying to find a way
to make the best of this new situation because of the issues I encountered. I think that if I work on resilience and train
myself to work through these challenges and stay motivated throughout, the overall quality in my work in the future will
be much greater. I also think this is something extremely noticeable in the outcome of this project as my ideas and test
renders seem really impressive for this project but then you come to the final piece and it's nowhere near expectations,
this is purely because of the fact that I became so unmotivated once encountering these issues towards the end of
production.