Overall I really liked working on this project even though there were some stressful parts with trying to find people in the area I would like to document about, it was quite easy for me to find other interviewees as I had a back up plan, if I didn't get any emails back then some people volunteered to help with my documentary and were happy to be interviewed. I started this project with thinking of any ideas for my documentary and I came up with two and it was diffcult to decide which idea to use.

After that, I researched documentary types and decided what type of documentary I would like to do. Then we looked at writing treatments for our documentary which I did two, for the two ideas I have as I was still on the fence about the two. I found the treatments quite hard to write up as of the word amount and I felt as though I was repeating myself through a lot of the write up. The class were taught about TV title after learning about treatments. We then played with the effects on After Effects with the help of some walk-through videos given to us. I found making these opening title quite fun and it gave me more of an idea on how to approach my documentary and what idea to choose.

With my pitch I made one for each idea just in case one didn't work out, which did happen. I used google slides which was recommended to us so we could edit it at home, as well as college. I found writing these pitches easier than writing the treatments because the class were given some documents that explain what to include in my pitch. I didn't find presenting my pitch easy as for one point, there were technology problems when I tried to present it the first time and the second point was that I was quite nervous when presenting that I fumbled a few times.

After the pitches we watched a few documentaries to analyse later on, these documentaries are; Fyre Festival, Super Size Me, one related to your documentary. I wrote some analyse for the first two but I was told to use a help sheet that gave me some questions to anwser to help analyse each documentary I had. My third documentary was an episode on Fred Astaire who was a magnificent dancer and I analysed that because it related to my documentary and its a very interesting documentary.

We then learnt about archived footage and mis-en scene which included what they are and how I could use them in my documentary. I used the archived footage and accompanied it with voiceover from the interviewees who were talking about a specific film. I found this part of the documentary fun when I started editing and the keyframe animation went well and it gave me for insight in animation on after effects as I wanted to know more. What went well with the keyframe animation was how informative the walkthrough video was which helped me when I got confused on where to go next. I learnt overall how to use keyframes in different ways and I would pick a different picture if I was to do it again.

After the animation I had my primary and secondary research which I felt good about doing as the primary research was very interesting to read over and see other peoples opinion on old films and the lengths of them. It was a surprise to me that some people in my class had watched some Golden Age of Hollywood films as not many people around my age haven't watched those films.

When doing the pre-production I felt calm about it as I knew what i was doing with my documentary and planned out everything using a checklist. I liked making the production schedule as I knew what days I was planning on doing everything and it helped me meet deadline on time. I didn't particularly like the location reconnaissance because I found it hard describing the good and bad qualities of the location. 

With the production side I made two different opening titles showing some different text animations that I learnt as I wanted to try challeneg myself with learning more about After Effects. What went well was the backgrounds to the texts as I was quite worried about the colours and if they took the focus off the text but they didn't and I was quite happy with the way they both came out. Even though the second opening title wasn't in the era's of films I was basing my documentary around but I still liked having it as my opening title as it was another era of film and related to my topic in the sense that it's to do with film.

With my documentary itself I am quite happy with it and what I thought went well with my documentary was the film clips within the interviewees talking. What I think went wrong was one of the interviewees interviews had bad lighting and I tried to fix it with a brightness and contrast effect on Premiere Pro which brought some light to the video but I didn't look right so next time I would leave it the way it was or try another day to film when its lighter.

The equipment I used were two DSLR cameras, one Fujifilm and Canon. I used the Fuji for a side camera angle and the Canon for a medium shot with sometimes a medium close-up shot for the front perspective. I filmed the interviews on two different days,  two on one day and another one on another day and I did have lavailers but there were some technocal problems with them so i had to got to plan B so i used a microphone that attached to the camera which was alright but I would have prefered to have lavaliers just for the better sound quality.

During recording one of the interviews I did have challenges with lighting so I tried a light that attaches to the top of the camera but it make any difference so I decided to use an effect on Premier Pro to increase the brightness and contrast. The editing process was quite busy but I focused on one video at a time just so its not confusing and i have every video in the correct order. Where I wanted to add a video snippet I would just leave a space clear and indicate where I wanted that snippet with just a text saying what video i needed and how long it will need to be.

In conclusion, I've learnt new techniques in After Effects which really helped with my documentary as it gave me many ideas on what I can do for my documentary. I have also learnt how to improve on pitches and what to put in them to create a successful one. The document that gave us a checklist on key things to add in our pitched definitley helped when I started writing the pitch as I was stuck on how to start the pitch. If I was to do the documentary again I would plan a two months before to get the people I would like in my docuemntary so it gives them time to see if they are able to be interviewed.