MILLAN FMP: EVALUATION AND REFLECTION

EVALUATION

For my final major project, I wanted to create a well rounded documentary/commentary featuring my own footage and experience with gaming and its financial terrors. Along side this I also made a short magazine speaking about said topic featuring my own made up company: Respawn. The message I aimed to deliver Is to educate younger people about predatory practices performed on them which they may not even be aware of when it comes to fuelling a hobby such as gaming. I chose this audience as we all know gaming is widely known within the ages 11-17 almost worldwide so I kept that information closely when constructing the narrative for my documentary. I chose to specialise in gaming as its something I personally do often, quite knowledgeable on and incredibly passionate about. I have opportunities to study gaming and maybe even work in the field but it isn't something id pursue anytime soon

For my secondary research, I watched a multitude of commentary and review videos alongside articles on the web ranging from papers, Metacritic and IGN, one of the leading media companies focused on games and entertainment. I narrowed my scope onto the games of today as they are the ones that are receiving the most backlash from their poor financial decisions and quality. 3 out of the 4 games I chose had overwhelming feedback and countless reviews in the forms of videos and articles like I mentioned above. For my primary research, I aimed to look for a pattern in the games my friends enjoy to narrow down the issue with the gaming of today and to figure out what's causing it. I asked them for their most hated titles and their most loved and to my attention a pattern showed itself before me. Games that were favoured by the bunch tended to be older titles with no modern day monetisation practices in contrast to their disliked titles with the opposite. My audience research resulted in my final view aiming towards young people aged 11-17, I came to this age group by looking through statistics and asking my peers who were around the same age. Professional products I looked at were videos by a creator called asmongold who has an extensive history of game reviews and commentaries.

One person in particular inspired my documentary a great load, Gentle Dude is a commentary youtuber who has an off the wall style, unserious tone which I took as inspiration. The planning of my product was an extremely slow burn. There were weeks maybe two where I would be back and forth from the drawing board deciding on designs, ideas and topics. It was only until the last few weeks is when I finally decided my products and ideas. I think I managed my time well as I was able to recover from many failed project attempts in 3 days, recording with overnight rental equipment, an entire magazine overhaul completed and writeups.

As I stated before, my target audience landed between the ages of 11-17. My choice for the topic itself wasn't tailored around their demographic characteristics but their vulnerability. Companies implement predatory financial practices in ways that attracted a younger, more impressionable audience. The side of my products that were inspired by their characteristics however was the documentary and magazine. I know that younger audiences don't like to look at or watch anything boring so I kept that closely in the back of my mind and added some fun tones and colours to my products, an example of this is when I used the commonly known Super Mario jump effect for the intro to my interviews. The feedback from my peers and even my younger siblings turned out to be fairly positive, even the ones that don't involve themselves with gaming

My documentary didn't aim to make any changes with financial aspects of gaming in anyway shape or form, instead I wanted to inform and educate. I didn't face any problems. I had a plethora of software's at my disposal during the creation of my products however I had a natural affinity for Illustrator, Premiere pro and InDesign. The difficulty scale is relative to experience, someone coming in with none at all will find said software's harder to use in comparison to me who has had 2+ years experience who finds them easy to navigate and use. A few problems I had were to do with my recording equipment and software. My zoom recorder only picked up sound in one channel which resulted in sound only coming out of one speaker. I resolved this easily using the "Fill right with left" audio effect which copies sound from one channel to the other resulting in mono audio. Even though I am fairly comfortable with the software's I used, I still learned a bunch of new techniques and quality of life tricks along the way helping my production efficiency a great deal. Also another note, during a review of my work, I noticed that text intended for my interview section snuck its way into my B-roll for overwatch 2, this resulted in the text rolling up prematurely and awkwardly. When the opportunity arises, ill be sure to fix it.

Even though I had hitches and hiccups during the lengthy planning phase, it eventually matched up with my initial idea perfectly. The initial idea in question went through loads of changes but they all revolved around gaming ranging from genres of games downfall of games and many more until I narrowed it down to the financial and quality of gaming. I think the design and content of my final product proved to be successful in not only my eyes, but my family and friends. The only thing I found to be unsuccessful was the planning phase which if I had more time I would've been able to produce stress free. My audience has a common love for the humour and theme of my documentary and the simple yet effective design of my magazine spreads.

To conclude, my project went fairly well and I am proud of what I was able to achieve in such a short amount of time. It had its ups and downs but all in all I don't imagine it getting any better than how it turned out. :)

PEER FEEDBACK

Leon

Jayden

Joshua

What you see above is feedback from three of my friends which I asked for each of their honest opinion on my documentary and project as a whole. A common theme was a good taste for my topic and how I dived into it. I also asked a few of my teachers about my topic and they all shared the thought that it was a very interesting and perceptive topic. Going off of the feedback I got, if I had more time I would continue to tweak aspects of my post production meaning sound, edits and much more.

Tuesday 23RD April

A bit of a late start to my reflection as a lot of things have been finalised and decided during march which can be seen in my "planning" segment, however, recording and documenting my subject will be starting here. I aim to do a participatory style documentary with a heavy amount of editing using after effects. The style I was inspired by involves a lot of in front of the camera talking and incorporates a heavy amount of editing.

It took a while to pinpoint and figure out what I actually wanted to come up with in terms of how I want to shoot the documentary but I eventually came up with it.

From today, I'm not very familiar with after effects but ill take my time to understand it to make the most of this documentary.

Friday 26th April

I'm finalising all the documents I need for pre production like a location recce call sheet risk assessment and so on. After, I plan to write a script for my documentary which I will continue filming later on in the weekend. Overall the plan and schedule I have set out is very far left from the timetable seen on the proposal but it seems to be going well. For my location related documents, the description is very limited as the locations don't vary by much, two to be exact.

Thursday 2nd May

Today I will start my magazine and put my documentary on hold for now as I have to consider the amount of time a fully fledged magazine will take. Ill be using adobe illustrator at first for the front and back cover as I feel like posters covers and designs in general are easier to do with illustrator, plus its what mi accustomed to. For my front cover I was conflicted on the styles I wanted to go with whether that be minimalistic and simple to detailed and complex.

Friday 3RD May

I have made a start to my magazine coming up with a style and theme. It didn't feel difficult to execute but coming up with the style was a bit of a back and forth. I felt on track as I was designing and having more and more ideas come up as I went through. Alongside this, I created a script for my documentary which I would be filming soon.

MY FRONT COVER

Tuesday 7th May

I tidied up my script for my documentary and have recorded some more raw footage for me to edit next week. and I plan to finish my magazine this week. Update: I completed the design for my magazine which helped put a lot of things in place for the rest of the mag. it wasn't too difficult to piece together but watching each piece come together was satisfying.

Wednesday 8th of may

I've made a start on my documentary finally rounding up all the footage I need. Some was recorded on my PS5 and some was recorded from a camera. For now my documentary takes top priority and the rest of my magazine will follow soon after. The footage I was able to capture wasn't a lot as at the time I didn't have a lot of games installed that