Individual Analysis
As the director of our production company it is my role that the style of documentary we decide on will be portrayed in the final piece. I will decide on how it will appear, the camera shots to use and what camera to use. I discussed with the D.O.P and the cameraman on what camera would be preferred and we decided on using the Canon 600d as me and the D.O.P have one each and it will create great depth of field when interviewing our primary. The only issue is that our documentary may involve a lot of movement, but our D.O.P has a Flycam 3000, which eliminates any camera shake and allows for quick movement.
My first decision was to use my business name as our production company as it was already an established brand name, with a Facebook and Twitter page and had a YouTube channel and the work we were to produce can boost this businesses awareness by putting all our work on these social network pages. The name had already been pre chosen by me earlier in the year JMUK Studios standing for John & Matt UK Studios as Matthew Fryer is the co-founder. I designed the logo as well with a director sat on the title with a camera behind him. This demonstrated what line of work we are in and it looks professional.
I also had to decide what documentary in my mind would be best to execute for our group. My first idea was the strange cults and religions around the world and we would travel to go and stay with them for a short period of time, but as this would be exceedingly costly we decided it would be a good back up idea and it is now our second idea. I researched the people in cults that would suit as our primary and I found different contact details and email addresses of leaders of cults and have them saved so we can book times to see them if need be.
I then came up with an idea after reading in a newspaper about the real life superheroes of the UK. This is the main idea for the group, I spent many weeks researching as many people who dress up as superheroes and attempt to fight crime in their towns. I found many different people and spent time trying to find contact information for them. As of far it has been very difficult trying to contact our primary as his is not listed on the directory phone list, I found his address and we sent letters to his house and found his Facebook page and we sent him messages, to no avail. So I have been researching more into other superheroes we could possibly contact. I also found groups dedicated to the superheroes and unions of people who dress up as superheroes; I messaged them regarding our documentary with no reply as of yet.
I decided to take the initiative in the group and I took over as producer to make sure the work got done. I revamped the entire website and made it look much more professional than to how it previously looked. I also signed our production company up to all the necessary sites such as, forums that relate to our project (SuperHeroHype forum), vimeo (Matt signed this one up), gettyimages, world photography organisation etc. I also pitched our idea to different media companies. I then decided to take it upon myself to organize the group and held many meetings and wrote down many lists of jobs for each person to do to improve their own personal pages and the overall site. I researched into previous sites to see what worked and what did not and I applied it to our own one and communicated this across my group. When certain jobs that I allocated were not being completed I constantly reminded the group and wrote lists of what jobs had to be done by a certain time limit. I also wrote out the entire web 2.0 promotion page and researched different ways in which we can promote ourselves online and offline as I have studied business and marketing for the past 3 years I am well aware how to sell and promote a product. I found some very interesting ways of marketing ourselves from marketing students and from online. I also wrote out a few further research and specific topic pages and wrote out half of the analysing the media, images and industry page and I wrote and updated professional practice page and kept it up to date with any changing rules and regulations.
The group worked professionally and well together except for one group member Toby as he was the producer and did not do anything under this role. I had to constantly tell him what needed to be done and what he needed to say to the group. I had to tell him who to contact (primary-wise) and to cut out the middle man I decided to take over as producer. He was then set with the task to produce the trailer which we all thought was was fantastic, he said it was all his own work so we were impressed. It was not until the day before our presentation that another student told us he had taken the entire trailer from some persons website and used it as his own. All the work he had produced for my businesses YouTube channel were also made by other people and he used their ideas, because of this I am in the process still of removing every video he has created for me because this could endanger my companies credibility. He also did not turn up smartly dressed to the presentation, I had told the group multiple times to dress smart and he turned up in a shirt and jeans. As a group we were not impressed as this is very unprofessional and showed the lack of communication he made with the group. He also constantly wanted to work from home so we could not keep an eye on his progress until the work was done. He did not act professionally and was not helpful in this group.
Other roles I took were to take the stills pictures for the Mediastorm trailer and edit them on Photoshop. I designed our own superhero idea and the costume for him and how we will utilise our own design to promote our project; I also designed a cinematic poster, a flyer and t-shirts for the trailer and for promotional use. One other role I took up at the beginning of the year was to be the minute keeper and so far I have kept a tab on every single meeting we have have per week, listing what was discussed from a general overview, down to what was actually said. Detailing how the group progressed.
My role in the presentation will be to talk about the promotion side of the project, even though I am not part of the promotion team I have listed all the ways of promoting ourselves and with my business background I can back this up with terminology and strong examples. I will be talking about the different techniques and tools we will use to gain awareness, I will talk about the different companies I have pitched our idea to and the different forums I signed us up to and also the different websites I registered our group onto. I will also be discussing how our group and our idea will stand out and how we will get ahead with our different tactics of promotion.
Overall I feel that I have played a very integral part in this group as I think I took the initiative to research how we can better our website and create the best work. I also organised my group well and decided what jobs they would have to do each and outlined what needed to be demonstrated in the work and what would get us good marks. I ran group meetings and took charge to make sure that what jobs I set out would get done. I produced a lot of high quality work and bonus material on my page that is not on the hand guide. I also did a lot of research that will benefit our group and I thought of the idea that we will pursue and thought of the ways in which we can promote ourselves. So I am pleased with the amount I have contributed to the group.
In the presentation I feel I did well talking about my slide, I was well presented and kept my points short yet filled with all necessary information. I discussed everything I needed to and I brought up some point that I feel makes us stand out from the crowd. As far as promotion is concerned I think I sold our project on how we were to advertise our campaign as I had so many various ways in which we will be able to promote ourselves.
