evaluation

 For Unit 9, We had the freedom to create what ever we wanted, My original idea was to create  a ten minuite pilot for a mockumentary television show called employees. This show would've featured a part human and part puppet cast. I would've had a lot of roles in this pilot including director, writer and puppeteer, performing two of the characters, Blu the Monkey and Reggie The Dog. I got quite far into the process of making ths project afer I had written 4 scripts and had done all my pre production documents so that I was ready to begin filming immediatley after the summer. 

However during the summer holidays, I decided to scrap the project. I came to this decision after a lot of thought but ultimatley thought that it was going to be too much of a challenge for me. Having to direct puppeteerscand actors and crew while also having to perform myself seemed to be too big of a task for me at this stage and seemed to be too stressful. And the coronavirus pandemic did not help matters,so I decided to put this project to one side and start again. 

My new idea, was to do a sketch that pardodied Superhero films called The  Man Of Steel: Behind the Scenes. The premise of the project was a beind the scenes look at the new low budget Superman movie where unkown actor Clint Fleetwood, takes on the role of the man of steel.  I was hoping to shoot the project in the style of a mockumentary. Because I decided kept it in the mockumentary, it meant that all the research I had done for my previous idea could carry on across to my new idea. 

I decided to research into mockumentary televison shows such as The  Office (US), Parks And Recreation and The Muppets (2015). I researched these shows in order to get a better understanding of how a mockumentary works, how the camera moves, and what tropes they have used. I did all this to get a better understanding of mockumentarys, to gain inspiration for my own project and to better my project overall and I feel that is was succesfully achieved in final project as I used many of the troupes and conventions used in these shows such as talking heads in my own project and it helped me improve my project as a mockumentary 

I also looked into examples of how these shows used the Micro-elements and the conventions of a documentary/mocumentary to further develop my understanding of this film making process. I feel all my research really helped me to develop my ideas and I feel my final piece shows that I understand the process behind aking a mockumentary.

As i began the script writing and planning process, I wanted to include lots of references and digs  to other superhero films, such as Snyder Cut, Justice League, an over saturation of Cgi as well as  some more obscue references such Edward Norton writing the Incredible Hulk under a fake name. However a lot of these things that I potentially wanted to include had to be cut or changed due to the lack of time I had given myself. Because I changd my idea very late into the process, I had given myself less time to write a script that I could encoorparateall my ideas into in a way that they could all work and be funny. In future I will give myself a lot more time to make the decision to change my idea in order to make sure that is a fleshed out and as developed as possible.

However all of my other pre prouduction documents such as my Treatment Risk Assessment and Location Reece, where completed in plenty of time without any problems, however in future, I need to allow myself more time.

I feel the same about my production process, As pleased as I am with my final edit, I feel that the production process was slightly rushed. And this is completley my fault because I held off on ordering the Superman costume because I was udecided on what costume I wanted to buy and without the costume, I was unable to film so it really pushed me back for time. So when I eventually decided on which costume I would use, I had just under a two weeks to finish the project so again like with the script writing process, I decided certain elements in the script had to be cut because of the restraights I had given myself. For example, there was a reference to the infamous Henry Cavil CGI moustache in the script however I had to ultimatley cut it because I was not able to get a fake moustache in time which was a shame. 

I knew from the very begginning of the project that I wanted to include some completely improvised elements into my script. This was to make the mockumentary feel more authentic like a real documentary which can be bery unpredictabl depending on what the subject is. I decided that I wanted all my cutaways in Kings Lynn to be improvised and I did many alternative takes in my talking heads which were improvised and I feel that this is where some of the funniest moments in the sketch came from, and after getting auidence feedback, this was definatley the case as the majortiy of positive commetns regarding humour came from these improvised moments. So in future I hope to able to focus on improvisation again because it was definatley one of the strongest factors of making this project successful 

Due to the lack time, there was no room for error when shooting and thankfully we encountered no problems with production. I was very lucky that Springboard studio was available on the days i required,everything we shot was good quality, the audio was good and everything was in focus so overall I was incredibly happy with how the production and editing  process went. 

In conclusion, I am very happy with how this project went, The goal of the project was to make people laugh and I feel from the feedback I recieved, I have achieved that so I a very satisfied with the outcome of the project.