08/02/21 - Today I will be working on my first draft of my proposal. This morning I have ensured that I have completed the first section and I am now working on completing my Gantt chart to show my Action Plan for how I aim the project to go.
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09/02/21 - Today I have completed my Gantt chart along with the rest of my first draft of the proposal. The Gantt chart is really exciting as it is allowing me to know how long till the next exciting stage in the production of the short film. I will soon begin work on my final draft.
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11/02/21 - Today I will be revisiting my proposal after hearing some views and feedback on the first draft. I will go over the first draft and improve it in all areas in order to create my final proposal. Today I will be focusing on the rationale section to add more self reflection. I will look at how the course will help me with the project. I will add strengths and weaknesses and talk about some theory.
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12/02/21 - Today I went tidied up the pages and combined the initial ideas segment onto the same page as the proposal. In the process of doing this I also re-wrote some of the section.
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First Week Gibb Cycle Evaluation
Description
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This week started work on the final major project. What happened in this week was that I developed my initial ideas and start my proposal. I used a whiteboard to help me create a mind map of different ideas I had and how and where I could go with them. Alongside this I also had to decide what form my idea was going to be shown in - I ended up choosing short film. This part of the project (along with how most of it will be) took place with just me by myself. I worked in a mix of from both at home and in college as I am finding that working in college can prove to be harder for me due to getting distracted by talking to people.
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By the end of this week, my plan was not only to develop my initial idea but also to make a decent start on my proposal. I believe I did complete this aim.
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In this week I also had to tackle the problem that was lockdown restrictions in the UK. I had to work out how I was going to create a short film while these were still in place. Thankfully I did work out whole to deal with this problem by ensuring the script had minimal characters and locations. These are all factors that could be harder with larger numbers, in lockdown.
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Feelings
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The week started with me feeling confused. When I was given the assignment i was hit with the initial rush of confusion as I did not know where to start and what to do. As I progressed through the week I started to feel more confident about the project. I believe my confidence increased alongside with my understanding of what to do. At the current stage I feel confident in the fact I know what I am doing, however I still feel a little uneasy about the theme and idea I have chosen to do with, despite the fact I think it is a good idea. However, I am going to progress with the proposal and see how I feel.
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Evaluation/Analysis
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Looking over the first week of the project I can identify what went well, and what did not however I will take this information with a pinch of salt as I have only scraped the top of the project.
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I believe in the first week of the project, I successfully achieved what I wanted to and I believe my evidencing of my thought and thinking process on the blog was successful which lead me clearly seeing what I am yet to do or develop. I believe something which did not go well this week was my motivation to work. I feel like I can be better at time management if I motivate myself more, but because I kept thinking about how long it is till the deadline I was slacking on time a little bit. I need to improve this otherwise I can have rushed work. This is what happened when I wrote up the first bit of my proposal before I ended up re-writing it.
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Conclusion/Action Plan
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Looking back over the first week of this multi-month project I have been able to reflect over the mix of emotions I felt when I was not 100% sure what I was doing - when I was thrown in at the deep end. I can see that by the fact I just got on with what I could, I became more confident. This taught me never to let panic bother me, and I will keep this in mind throughout further stages of this project.
I believe the this first week had a little negative vibe for me as the only person involved on this project because, like previously mentioned, I wasn't set on a plan and didn't know exactly what I was doing straight away. In the coming weeks I will not let this 'unknown' daunt me as much and try and make the project work a more positive experience.
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Just looking at this first week, It is clear I need to manage my organisation/time management skills a little bit better as I was clearly not following the Gantt Chart I created and therefore getting a bit messed up. I will be making sure to keep on track to this in the coming weeks.
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14/02/21 - Today I am planning to attack the next section of my proposal. After listening to some peer feedback on what I wrote so far, I plan to add some theoretical context to help backup the idea. I will also talk about target audience and add some audience theory. I will ensure that I reference some evidence to backup the idea and show research.
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17/02/21 - Unfortunately I am falling a little bit behind where I had planned to be due to my job giving me lots of shifts on my week off, however this is only a little bit and I am still making good time on the project. Today I finished my next version of the proposal and will now begin working on the presentation part of this project. I am currently still deciding how I want to go about presenting the film idea. I have considered making a little informatic video, a powerpoint or even just guiding the person through the proposal page with discussion.
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19/02/21 - Due to my increased shifts at work over this week, I am a little bit behind where I should be, however this is not massive as I planned to be generally ahead of where I should be in case of falling behind. I have started work on my presentation today and looked at some other pitch decks to get inspiration for what to include.
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20/02/21 - Today I briefly outlined the basic information into my pitch deck. My next steps will be to go back and make the presentation more 'presentable'.
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21/02/21 - Today I completed the first half of my presentation. I aim to complete this tomorrow.
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End of Second Week Gibb Cycle Evaluation
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Description
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This week was a good week. I successfully completed my main aim for this week which was my proposal. This has also allowed me to get ahead of where I had planned to be according to my Gantt chart (starting the presentation). Most of this week I was working from home as it was half term week. Once again this was all done by me, by myself.
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Overall my main aim for the week and what I wanted to happen was for my written proposal to be completed and finished. It is now the end of the week and I can say that I believe I have finished this to a standard I am very happy with.
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Feelings
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Currently at the end of this week, I am feeling very positive and in a very good place about this FMP because I am ahead of my schedule and have not developed my idea and theme to a stage where I can visualise it well.
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The week started a bit wobbly, as I logged last week but due to the motivation I had it lead to a general feeling of positivity throughout the project.
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Unfortunately, due to not being in college this week I have not had a chance to get anyone else's feelings on the work I have done so far - this will be one of my goals for next week.
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Evaluation/Analysis
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Reflecting on my work from the past week, the obvious main thing that went well is that I got ahead of schedule without rushing my work. This not only was good in itself but allowed me to be more motivated and showed me the benefits of sticking to my schedule. The one thing which I believe did not go well this week from the point of view of my mental health would be not giving myself much rest time. This is because I spent a lot of this week working my part-time job and then doing this FMP work around it. This caused me to be very tired which if I kept doing would cause the state of my work to not be as good as it could.
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I contributed a lot of work to the FMP this week which is very good for myself in the long-run as it leaves me on track with steady amounts of work to do each week.
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I would say the most important take-away I have from this week is that I need to make sure I am not doing too much in life on top of the work in order to maintain the best mental health and also have the best quality of work.
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Conclusion/Action Plan
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Following on from the above section, I know what I need to improve on after this following week and that is in what I mentioned when I was talking about the important takeaway. My action plan to ensure that I do this is to talk to my manager and ask for the number of shifts I have a week to decrease. This will make sure. this is not the same next week, or any week coming.
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22/02/21 - Today I am aiming to complete the last section of my presentation. I do not believe this should be a problem and I should finish this today with ease.
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22/02/21 - As I aimed for, I have completed my presentation. This will now allow me to move onto the the research and development stage of my project. I have also found out today that I will be presenting my work next Wednesday (The 3rd).
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23/02/21 - I started my day today by uploading my presentation slides to my FMP Site. Following this I successfully started my research, which is one of the biggest parts of the project in my opinion. I have decided to start my research with looking into structure and conventions of short film. In order to do this I will watch and analyze a series of short films before looking over all my analysis and seeing how it links together. I will also read into a wide variety of academic sources to back up my own research.
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25/02/21 - Today after listening to some advice on the presentation, I have decided I need to tweak it slightly in order for it to be as successful as possible. Thankfully there is not much to tweak, just the addition of a couple slides.
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26/02/21 - Today I uploaded the finish slides to the fmp site and have decided to carry on with my research. I decided to make a visual diagram of the structure I have identified in short film and then talk about my reasoning. Next, I will use some articles to prove or disprove my theory.
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26/02/21 - This afternoon I finished what I set out to do early and compared my ideas of short film structure to a relevant academic research source. My next stage will be to analyse another five shorts and primarily look at conventions within them. I will then gather my views at the end and present it in a similar way to my structure analysis after the viewing of four short films. I may start this over the weekend, just to ensure that I am ahead of where I need to be, however this depends on how up to it I feel with working two shifts.
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End of Month/Third Week Gibb Cycle Evaluation
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Description
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This week I had planned not only to finish of my presentation, ready to present as soon as possible but I was also looking to start my research. This was all ahead of schedule.
My plan of what I wanted to happen to what actually happen did not remain exactly the same, however it did in some part. This changed because I finally got a chance to get some feedback from others due to being back in college. This feedback allowed me to recognise some changes I needed to make in some earlier work so that is what I did. My supervisor/teacher was present and giving me the feedback which allowed me to recognise this.
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Feelings
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This week I felt motivated and happy. This feeling of motivation was here because of the fact that I have been envisioning the project more and more which makes me more excited to create the short film. This therefore makes me in a positive mood and happy!
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Throughout my week my feelings primarily stayed the same, however in the middle of the week, when I had the feedback I had a change in feelings. I was thankful for the feedback, however I felt a little annoyed as I had to go and change work I had already finished mentally.
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When I showed this work to others and got feedback, I got to learn peoples opinions and feelings about the project. It seems that people are excited about it.
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Evaluation/Analysis
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This week something that went well in my project was getting other people to hear what I had done so far. This allowed me to understand what might need changing and then acting on it. I think this was done well and without it I potentially could not have spotted a certain error or potential change to help me achieve the best cut I could.
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This week something that did not go well was me sticking to my original schedule. This however, was only broken because I went back to correct work. I do not believe this will affect me in the long-term. in the future I will ensure that I account for time to edit earlier work in a project into the schedule. This again probably fits under time-management.
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Overall what I make from this week is that I worked well to schedule, other than when that got interrupted by editing some previous work based on peer review, which was inevitable.
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Conclusion/Action Plan
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This week I was taught the value of getting other peoples opinions on your work. This is because other people may spot something you have not, or may suggest something you have not thought of. However, I learnt that if you do this you should account for time to edit the work they review.
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I would suggest that remembering to get peers to review work is a bit of a skill to improving the work - this is the skill I think I need to improve.
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Like I mentioned, If I was doing this week again I would account for time to edit work after getting it peer reviewed into the schedule/action plan.
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01/03/21 - Unfortunately over the weekend I was too tired from my shifts to get any work done, however this is not a problem and I am still working ontime to my personal schedule. Today I successfully watched three more short films before going on to analyse short film conventions. Next, I wrote about how I will include my structural and conventional research into my short film. Later on today I plan to start the next stage of my research, where I plan to look into two or three different media influencers who influence my work.
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01/03/21 - This afternoon I started looking at influences to my work. I started by talking about Wes Anderson and his short Bottle Rocket. I talked about how the short was praised and the feature was flopped. I talk about his ability to carry on making films after a flop like that. The next stage under Wes Anderson I will talk about is his style and distinctive mise-en-scene.
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02/03/21 - Today I finished my research section on Wes Anderson, and begun the very basics of the Walter Murch section.
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03/03/21 - Today I completed more of the Walter murch section on my research, I will aim to complete this tomorrow.
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04/03/21 - Today I did presented my work. I believe this went well and I believe I accurately presented what my project is about.
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05/03/21 - Today I will start to research into my pre-production process and the process from start to finish.
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06/03/21 - I have started looking into research on script and screenplay formatting and writing today. This will help me in the duration of the production process in order to keep on top of what I am meant to be doing etc.
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08/03/21 - Today I have completed the screenplay/script section of my research in the pre-production process. I also got the the chance to start the production process of the film production project section. This section looks at the shooting stage of the short film. I also referred to the mark scheme for the project and realised that I can integrate my practical research into this section of the project. I also began looking into a possible shooting location and contacted the person via text to find a rate of £9 an hour.
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09/03/21 - I am now at the stage where I believe I am close to finishing my research and getting ready to start my screenplay. This means I am on track with to my schedule. I also had more back and forth with the owner of the venue I intend to book in order to build my set in.
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10/03/21 - This morning I have finished all of my research for the project. All I have left to do is the camera practical research section which I will be completing at home soon. Today, I will start to write my screenplay.
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End of Research Gibb Cycle Evaluation
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Description
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So far in this project I have completed the research for my short film. It has allowed me to develop my knowledge of short film and learn new skills. In order for me to complete the research I compiled all my findings onto this blog page. This gives me easy access to constantly refer back and use what I learnt in the production of my film. During this stage I worked with just myself to ensure the research was done to the level I wanted. I believe I did what I set out to achieve at the start of the research, and that was to help develop my short film making skills to help me make the best short possible.
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Feelings
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At the start of the research, I felt a little daunted as I did not really know exactly what to do. However, I thought carefully and referred to the mark scheme which allowed me to develop a direction of travel for my research. During the research my feelings at points were calm and I felt happy, and then at other times when I realised there was something major I needed to add I would suddenly feel worried and like my research was bad due to the fact I thought I would be tight for time. Once I finished the research however, I feel quite happy and quite proud of it. When I allowed others to look at it, they said it was really insightful research.
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Evaluation/Analysis
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The research is good because it develops my skills, I found myself taking away a lot of ideas and developments which I did. I think the bad bits of this research is that there were times I found it so incredibly boring and it was really hard to motivate myself to continue the research.
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I think that this research went well for a few reasons. One of these reasons is the fact I used a large range of sources including academic articles and journals. There were parts of the research that probably didn't go so well compared to others, and I believe this happened when I couldn't find enough sources on the subject but still wanted to include it. I searched through a lot of sources which gave me clarity on a lot of the topics.
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Conclusion/Action Plan
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If I were to do this research again I would consider adding another influence to research - possibly a director of several short films. This would allow me to take someone else's experience and use it in my own work in a way that relates more topically. In order to develop my skills in research I think that one of the most sensible paths would be to read other peoples research for their own short films or feature films. In order to make sure I act differently next time I will constantly reflect on my research after every section to make sure if is different from this, time and the best it can be.
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11/03/21 - Referring to my Gantt Chart, I could see that the next stage for me to work on was sorting the set and script. I am already in talks with the owner of a hall about location, however I am yet to start the script. This is what I will start today.
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12/03/21 - Yesterday I made a good start on my script, and today I made more progress. The script it now 2 pages long, however If I am going off the minute per page rule I will need to think about not making it too much longer.
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13/03/21 - Today is Saturday and I this morning before I went to work I viewed the hall I have been in talks about. I decided this hall was a perfect base for what I needed.
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14/03/21 - After viewing the hall yesterday, I managed to confirm a time and a discounted price with the woman who owns the hall today. I have now booked it for Wednesday 7th of April.
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15/03/21 - Today I progressed through the majority of the script. I should finish this tomorrow.
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16/03/21 - This morning I was very productive! I started the day by completing my script. I am happy with the script. Next I did a section in the problem solving page about lockdown and my solution. Following this I completed a detailed reflection of my research on the research page. Finally I linked the script on the pre-production page. My plan for this afternoon is to complete the practical research section of my research page to make sure the research is truly finished. At this stage I will move on to pre production documents. I plan on starting with the Storyboard.
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18/03/21 - Today I completed my storyboard which I started yesterday. Now I am currently working on the shot list which will then allow me to make a shooting script.
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19/03/21 - This morning I heard some peer feedback on my research. Hearing this was beneficial as it allowed me to understand that there were a couple of essential elements missing from my research - this included me talking about short film history, target audience theory and post production software. I have spent the morning since then ensuring that I have added these to the research page and cited all sources into my bibliography.
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22/03/21 - After completing the research updates on friday, my sole priority today is to ensure that I get a good chunk of the shot list complete. This is one of the longer pieces of my pre production paperwork that I have to complete.
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23/03/21 - I am slowly but surely progressing through the shot list, and believe that I should finish this either today or tomorrow. On the side of doing the shot list, I have started to become increasingly aware I still need to find actors. I have contacted and posted about the roles in order to find some people.
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24/03/21 - This morning I completed my shot list! On top of completing the shot list I also have found two actors, and one of which will play my main role. The next stage in my pre-production work will be for me to sort out my shot list.
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25/03/21 - This morning I completed my shooting script. After doing so I uploaded all my current pre-production work to the blog. My plan for this afternoon is to complete the Legal and Ethical sheet. I would have started progress on the reccee's however I would like to get photos for the reccee's and I can not get these until Sunday therefore, I will complete this on Sunday.
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26/03/21 - Today I have started the legal and ethical sheet for the production. I have also acquired some actors.
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29/03/21 - After completing the legal and ethical sheet today, I next went onto start my costume sheet. Yesterday, I met with some people to help me build and design the set I will be filming on.
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2/04/21 - Today I finished the costume sheet and have started the risk assessment. This sheet is my last major sheet in the pre-production process.
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5/04/21 - With today being the first day of shoot week. I will be shooting my short film on Wednesday 7th April. Today I plan to finish my risk assessment and ensure I have the actor release form for all actors to sign.
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6/04/21 - Yesterday I completed the risk assessment, today I have completed my actor release form.
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End of Pre-Production Gibb Cycle Evaluation
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Description
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This Pre-production stage of work was one of the biggest pieces of work I had to do. In this section I knew from the start I had to complete a variety of planning and paperwork with everything from scripting and storyboarding to reccees and risk assessments.
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Thankfully, having just completed this section of the project I can say that everything went well and pretty much stayed on track and I completed everything that I expected to complete in good time.
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Feelings
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At the start of the post-production stage I felt a bit unmotivated to work due to the large amount of paperwork that I knew was ahead of me. This kind of continued into the work and during the the stage I felt a bit 'deflated' and pretty much bored of the paperwork, however I knew had to get through it and stop procrastinating.
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Evaluation/Analysis
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Looking at the pre-production process, it is clear to me that one thing that went not so well was my procrastination. I felt I often got bored of the paperwork, so would easily get distracted or procrastinate and not focus on the work.
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This section however had a positive that came along with it, which was that there was not disruptions to the timetable.
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In order to help me to complete this section I used the knowledge of others online to understand how certain sheets and documents needed to be filled out.
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Conclusion/Action Plan
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This section of the project taught me that, no matter how fun the project is as a whole, there may still be boring parts and I just have to get through them and not get distracted.
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I need to develop my focusing skills in order to focus on paperwork and get it all done so it does not all pile up at the end . This is something i found myself doing and it was a problem.
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7/04/21 - Today I completed the shoot. It was a very stressful and overall full day of shooting. I had to ensure the set was decorated and built in a certain time, however I let this overrun. Because of this I was getting stressed as I had actors waiting around and I began to feel increasingly bad. However, I soon calmed down and got on with the shoot. Unfortunately I had mic problems and made the decision to not use the boom mic.
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11/04/21 - After taking some days off after the stress of shoot day, I decided to get back working on the project. Today I looked through all the footage in order to work out if I should make any reshoots. I decided that I needed change some of the footage so a reshoot on the 13th is required.
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12/04/21 - Today I started shot logging the footage.
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13/04/21 - Today I successfully reshot the footage which I needed to reshoot. I am happy with the footage I now have and will continue to work on my shot logging.
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14/04/21 - My aim today is to get through a large chunk of the shot logging. I am in a good position according to my gantt chart, so I am in no rush to finish it all today.
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16/04/21 - Over the past week I have spent nearly all of my time shot logging. I have finally completed this which will now enable me to be able to begin the edit. I will start this editing stage on Monday.
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19/04/21 - Today is Monday. Today I plan to start my initial work on the first cut of my short film. However, this morning I spent some time looking at the work I had done and checking it was all ok and uploaded onto the blog. I plan to start the edit soon.
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20/04/21 - Today I have started piecing together all the footage for the basic cut. I am about a quarter of the way through this and am making progress. Today I found this easy due to my time spent shot logging.
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21/04/21 - Today I finished putting all of the footage into the timelines in its first very rough state. Tomorrow I will trim footage down to evaluate what I need to do with my edit.
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22/04/21 - Today I have essentially finished my rough cut and now understand what I have left to do with my main edit.
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26/04/21 - Today I have been working on the first non rough cut of phubbed. I spent today looking at the first quarter of the timeline. This included adding music, sound effects, transitions and more.
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27/04/21 - Today I finished the audio for this cut of the short film. Tomorrow I will start on the visual effects.
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28/04/21 - Today I have been working in after effects to make sure that the visual effects of the till screen are completed for my final cut. My last stage is to work on colour.\
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29/04/21 Today I have spent more time polishing over the VFX.
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3/05/21 - After a long weekend rest, today I got back to the edit and completed the first section of colour. I should complete this tomorrow and then be able to complete my production page.
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4/05/21 - In the end I ended up completing the entirety of the colour for the short film yesterday. This morning I got some feedback on the edit which I had created so far. This has allowed me to recognise what needs changing in the edit and thats that I have worked on.
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5/05/21 - Today I uploaded my final piece to the blog, along with lots of other work to ensure it was all there.
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6/05/21 - Today I sent out a survey to a random selection of people asking them some questions about the short film.
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7/05/21 - Today I have finished the evaluation in its entirety and therefore all of my work.
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End of Project Gibb Cycle Evaluation
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Description​
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Throughout this project I have been working tirelessly to ensure that I completed the best project I could. Since the last Gibb Cycle I shot the footage, edited the footage and finished my evaluation. Thankfully this all went to plan. It was a lot to do in a small period of time with each of these three sections having more layers to it.
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Feelings
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On shoot day my feelings were solidified into stress. The whole day I was stressed that was I was getting was not good enough or there was not enough of it. This probably did not help with the state of the footage, however I did not understand this at the time.
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Moving into the post-production stage I was quite excited and confident. This is because editing is my strongest skill in the production of a short film. It is also the part that I enjoy the most.
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As I was writing my evaluation my feelings were boredom. Reflecting on my work needs to be done but at the same time my brain was thinking there is so much better stuff to be doing.
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Evaluation/Analysis
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Looking at all three of these sections, I am able to take away a big idea. How you feel about a piece of work or project, greatly impacts the quality of that said work. This means that in the future to make sure I achieve higher quality work at all times I must try to make a way to make it fun.
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During these sections there was a sense of positivity due to the fact I knew I was nearing the end.
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Conclusion/Action Plan
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Following on from above, in future I will try to make boring pieces of work more enjoyable to ensure higher quality work. This all once again links back to that skill of focusing. The focusing skill is one I need to work on and develop on as I can loose focus very easily if I become bored.