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TV News: Reflections

On the final review of our film, we can see that there are some things that could have gone better, whether it be the way that the shots were filmed, or the way the subjects were acting. There is also the problem of not having enough shots to use as backups or cutaways, which would have helped during the edit.

What Didn't Go Well

In the live at the Hazlitt, we should've started in a space that was much better lit, because the beginning of our live piece suffers from not enough lighting.

We needed more cutaways for the Electric Palace news package, because there were a few things mentioned in the interviews that we didn't get appropriate cutaways for. We should've got cutaways of the seats, the audience, and the staff doing their respective jobs, to make sure there was more flow to the final product.

It would also be better to ask questions about the B-Movie Fan Club, because we found out afterwards that it is curated by an autistic 18 year old, and curating the club, and introducing the films to the audience on a monthly basis helps him cope with his autism.

Regarding the Fort Luton location, we really should've done a location recce before hand so we knew exactly what the location would look like and how we could film it properly and set up shots accordingly.

We should've paid more attention to the opening sequence of our news piece. None of us are very adept at using After Effects, but we could've made something better than what we did I feel, it feels too basic for a web news channel.

A massive issue throughout our entire project, was the lighting. Our first shoot of the presenter, had top down lighting, our live started in a very poorly lit section of a very big room (which we could've used more of to get in a better starting position), and the Electric Palace had very moody lighting, which isn't that bright at all and we didn't think to use our lights to create better lighting (we only had an hour to do our interviews and the cutaways, because the cinema opened an hour before the film started).

We had to re-shoot the presenting portion of the show, not only because of the lighting, but also because we didn't really direct him that well. He was a little bit too bouncy and loud for what we wanted, and his style didn't mesh well with Ollie's traditional approach to doing the live interview.


What Went Well

We shot some great footage with the new cameras.

Electric Palace was a fantastic find with a story worth telling about it, with it's volunteer program, and choice of films at the very least. Also made for some great shots.

We found our stories very quickly. We managed to reach out to several people and look in the right places as a group to find the appropriate stories for our thing.

We worked well as a team, and managed to work well under time restraints

What to change next time

The next time I do a project, I'm going to make sure that the lighting is correct, because bad lighting can ruin the scene. Because of it we had to cut out half of our live segment, and consequently an entire interview, which is not ideal.

I would make sure I knew exactly what cutaways to get whilst on location, in order to make the edit look nicer, but also easier.

I would make sure that we thoroughly research all of our contributors and interviewees before we turn up to shoot, because there could be some missed stories that would've been great to tell. Like Robin Knowles, the curator of the B-Movie Fan Club at the Electric Palace. We could've shown people a genuinely touching story that would've tied in nicely with the Hazlitt Youth Theatre helping teens by getting them into performing arts, except it would be the cinematic arts.




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