Evaluation

Meeting the brief - How well did you meet the brief? Did it meet your standards of success?

The brief required me to produce a media product which explored one of the following themes: Lockdown, Black Lives Matter, Women’s right/gender rights or come up with my own theme that had to be signed off by my teacher. I do believe I met the brief successfully as I crafted an electronic press kit that represented my chosen theme memory, which was signed off by my supervisor.

I felt compelled to explore the theme of memory (particularly looking at memory-loss caused by Alzheimer’s), for my project as I hadn’t seen it commonly represented in the media and thought it was appropriate for me to try to shed light on the subject matter through an electronic press kit. I also wanted to make an electronic press kit specifically to expand upon my graphic design, through learning InDesign and expanding my Photoshop skills. I also wanted to expand upon my photography skills, and knew that by making this type of media product it would give me the opportunity to delve deeper into crafting visual designs in a way I hadn’t done before. As I had no previous experience in making a press kit or what it consisted of until I began my research.

To meet the brief’s requirements I had to ensure my media product was relevant towards my career aspirations. I believe I met this part of the brief well, as I am interested in pursuing a career in filmmaking, particularly cinematography and felt making a press kit which explored a film concept I wanted to represent, not only allowed me to develop my skills in storytelling and film marketing but also gave me the chance to vastly develop my hard skills in camera work, lighting etc. by crafting visual designs (posters, promo shots) for my EPK.

To meet the brief’s requirements I also had to produce a body of research, have developed my ideas and been realistic with my time. I feel I met these stages quite well because throughout my project I made timetables to document my progression and evaluated my time management by making a diary. In terms of my research and development of ideas, in my proposal I mapped out my initial concepts and weighed the pros/cons and feasibility of each of them. I then progressed onto gathering secondary research and looked at graphic designers, photographers etc. who inspire me and developed my concept designs by drawing from their work throughout my research. I also made a draft EPK in my research and tested camera and lighting techniques in preparation for production, all of which helped me progress towards creating my final press kit.

My representation of the theme memory (specifically memory-loss caused by Alzheimer’s) did somewhat meet my standards of success, as I feel the visual designs of my promo shots and poster designs in my press kit captured the emotional and mental weight Alzheimers put upons not only the person who suffers from the disease but also those around them. In the case of the film concept Hippocampus which I devised, it showed both a victim’s perspective of Alzheimer’s and also their carer’s point of view.

However, when reflecting upon my EPK as a whole body of work and not as singular elements, I feel it didn’t quite meet my standard of success. This is because I believe it lacked in complexity as I found looking back on my press kit, it was quite bland in the design layout of the pages and I feel I should have developed it by making it more aesthetically exciting e.g adding overlays or borders to the pages instead of making just a plain black background with white text. I also believe I should have filmed one scene pretending it was from the film and added it into my press kit, as this would have possibly made the press kit less dull and would have expanded the variety of content.

Effect - How effective were your effects? Did they fit in with the style of the EPK?

For this project, I feel the masking effect I made for my joint character poster featured in the ‘posters’ page of my EPK was effective in crafting an illusion that the characters were together in one photograph/setting, when in actual fact I shot the images separately in different locations and masked them together in post-production. By making this effect it fitted to the simplistic style of my EPK as the effect was subtle and almost unnoticeable, which makes it successful in its purpose. As I wanted the effects in my poster designs to look naturalistic and organic as this captures the tone I envision ‘Hippocampus’ would have if it were an actual film.

The blended mask effect I created for my Nic Alcott poster (featured in the ‘posters’ page of my EPK) I feel worked in its purpose to symbolise the protagonist’s dissociation and struggle to tear apart his past from his reality. This is because the effect made the two images merge into one another smoothly, reflecting the character’s mental deterioration. This effect fitted well with the style of my EPK because it made the poster as a whole have a naturalistic look which complimented the simple EPK layout.

The overlay mask effect I created for my Allen West poster (featured in the ‘posters’ page of my EPK) I believe was effective in its purpose to show the pressure and weight Allen feels through helping Nic completing his memoir. As Allen’s hands on the typewriter overlaid with the shot of ‘If only I could remember’ combine both Nic’s thoughts and Allen’s actions. This effect symbolises how lost Allen becomes caring and aiding Nic, both with his health and work. This overlay effect fitted well with the layout design of my EPK, as it looked nice on top of the black background and made it stand out more.

The sepia colour grade I made was very effective in making my poster designs emulate a dramatic and slightly nostalgic emotional tone that I wanted the designs to depict. I believe it was mainly successful in its effect because the colouring has quite a harsh saturation and mature/old fashioned look which added an emotiveness to my poster visuals and fitted perfectly with the stripped back style I wanted my EPK to have.

Lastly, black and white colour grade I made was effective in making my promo shots emulate the depressive and dramatic tone I envisioned them to create. I also believe the classic black and white coloring of the promo shots fitted well against the EPK’s simple styled black background pages, as I feel this design layout is complementary to the eyes as it makes you focus on the promo shots.

Research - Describe your research process, how successful and useful was it? What would you do differently to improve your research?

To organise my research process I began by creating a schedule that broke down my research into the following: EPK and software, historical and cultural, inspirations/influences and camera/lighting techniques. By forming this schedule I was able to successfully complete my research on time and cover all the content I felt was necessary before approaching my pre-production and planning.

For my EPK research, I looked at secondary sources which consisted mainly of articles and example EPKs. I first began by reading sources which covered the basics of how to craft a press kit. I wrote up relevant notes from the articles and quoted from them when relating it to the different elements I could include in my EPK. I found analysing other peoples press kits gave me a blueprint to work from when constructing a draft of my own EPK as I was able to see a variety of approaches and styles. These sources were very successful and useful as they allowed me to gain a good knowledge in understanding the relevant and vital information a press kit needs e.g cast biography, crew/cast, synopsis etc. and helped me construct a draft press kit for my film concept. After I completed my EPK research I planned a rough draft of my own EPK and what it will include.

For my software research, I looked at one in depth tutorial that covered all the basics of using InDesign, such as changing text format, cropping images, scaling images etc. This was an incredibly useful and successful source to use in my research as it made me confident in understanding InDesign, by giving me hard skills that allowed me to craft my EPK. Using the knowledge I gained from the tutorial I made a draft press kit on InDesign, by doing this I was able to actively test my skills in using the software and the outcome was effective as I faced no issues or challenges as the steps in the tutorial gave me enough guidance.

For my historical and cultural research, I started off by reading an in depth essay into the evolution of graphic design and learnt about the different eras which have influenced the outcome of what we know graphic design to be in modern day. This research was relevant to my project because it helped give me a better scope of how I can apply contextual and theoretical knowledge into the visual designs featured in my EPK. This part of my research consisted of me quoting from the essay and breaking down the defining graphic design elements of each period and how they impacted one another. After I gained a good understanding of the styles in each era, I then selected the ‘swiss’ and ‘postmodern’ graphic styles to draw from as influences and made rough drafted posters on Photoshop using images online. Utilising the video essay as research and making these designs was very useful and successful in allowing me to be more thoughtful and creative in incorporating historical influence into my graphic design work whilst also intertwining it with my film concept Hippocampus.

I also attended the BFI Future Film Festival as part of my cultural research. This was relevant to my project because attending the festival allowed me to reflect and analyse the way in which the festival market their films to audiences virtually. As I was creating a press kit I felt it would be beneficial for me to gather feedback from some of my peers who also attended and see what they thought of the festival’s presentation. All of which came back with positive responses. Attending the festival and collecting this feedback was very useful because it reassured me that I should include as much visual content as possible in my press kit, to make it attractive in its presentation and representation of the film concept, e.g through including promo shots, posters etc.

For my inspirations and influences research, I looked at an art director called Steve Reeves, a photographer called Alfred Stieglitz, a graphic designer called Saul Bass and lastly a graphic designer/illustrator called Akiko Stehrenberger. For each of the artists’ I created mock up posters which used some of their signature techniques seen in their work. I also reflected upon the historical and cultural eras that each of the artists' work was influenced by to help me expand my theoretical theory. For example, when looking at Steve Reeves work, specifically his ‘Manchester By The Sea’ poster, I wanted to create a mock up poster that used a similar naturalistic colour grade and simple font seen in his work. I combined my film concept using Reeves graphic design style as inspiration and created a mockup design by photographing my father as the main character, Nic Alcott, I then edited on Photoshop a naturalistic colour grade by following a youtube tutorial and added the same font Reeves used in his ‘Manchester By The Sea’ poster. For each of the different artists I followed the same procedure, e.g I used one of their designs as inspiration, followed a youtube tutorial to create a similar effect and then made a drafted poster design which represented the Hippocampus film concept. Overall, I found my inspirations and influences research was very useful and successful as it helped me expand upon not only my graphic design skills by crafting my own designs using artists as inspiration but I was also able to develop my hard skills in using Photoshop and Illustrator as I learnt new effects, such as colour grading, paint brush effect, typography designing etc. which allowed me to be more skilled and prepared in approaching towards my final visual designs for my EPK.

The final stage of my research was learning and testing camera and lighting techniques. For this part of my research I looked at two secondary sources one was a video essay which covered the importance of composition within a photograph such as, blurring your eyes in order to see more abstract colour, watch for edges of the frame to prevent cut off etc. The second source was an in depth article on types of cinematic lighting such as, practical, natural and hard lighting. Through this research source I learnt how to use the ‘three point lighting’ technique. Once I had a detailed understanding of lighting setups, I tested them myself out using loaned equipment from my college (LED lights). I tried out the three point lighting which I created using light bulbs and a small LED. For the hard lighting test, I shot in the dark using only a large LED light. Overall, I believe my camera and lighting research was incredibly useful and successful as it helped me broaden both my knowledge and experience in using a camera and lighting equipment. It also helped prepare me for the pre-production as I was able to decide what lighting setup I felt would work best for the shots used in my visual designs for my EPK.

Lastly, I also tested out four fonts on Photoshop. I typed each font out using the film title ‘Hippocampus’ to see which fonts complimented the text best and chose two which had a formal appearance that I felt looked dramatic which helps represent the drama genre that the film concept fits into. Doing this font test was very useful because it allowed me to explore my options in terms of the text design and the test was also successful as I was able to decide on two which I felt captured the style I was looking for.

If I were to do anything differently to improve my research I wish I had researched more into Alzheimer’s disease and educated myself on the specific effects it has upon the sufferer, not just memory loss. As I feel I could have made my representation of the disease more accurate and reflected that both in the written synopsis of my EPK, but also in the visual designs.

The effectiveness of your workflow - What did you do well? How would you change it?

I believe my research I completed went quite well as I made sure to cover the topics I wanted to by creating a schedule and following through with all my tasks on time. By both gaining theoretical knowledge, expanding my hard skills and generally developing my graphic design abilities it allowed my workflow of my planning to go very smoothly as I was able to have a clearer understanding of what ideas I had and how to execute them in production/post-production.

In my planning stage, I feel my workflow went very well, mainly because I completed my legal documents early within my schedule plan and it allowed me to progress and spend more time on developing the narrative of the film concept (Hippocampus) represented in my EPK. I also had extra time to test out camera equipment, planned props, costumes, casting etc. The workflow of this planning also went well and was all completed within the deadline.

In terms of production, my workflow decreased slightly, this was mainly due to motivation as I had to work around my models/actors schedules and due to changes with their availability it made me anxious and overwhelmed as I felt I would end up being behind schedule. Thankfully this was not the case, as I made sure to take extra shots for my visuals in preparation for redrafts. The editing process of my project was the slowest stage when reflecting upon my workflow and caused me to be two days behind schedule, as I did not plan within my time frame for redrafts even though I was aware I would have to develop my designs.

If I were to change anything about my workflow it would be to make more time for the production in order to prevent me from falling behind on my schedule. Due to my lack of thought in not making time for redrafts which were a vital part of production they ended up being slightly rushed and not as developed as they could have been if I had planned my time better.

Scope of the project - Did you feel challenged? Did you stretch yourself?

This project was one of the most challenging projects I have faced since starting sixth form. This is due to many reasons, initially it was down to the fact that I had to create a media product that was adaptable to any circumstance, as due to the pandemic I was unsure as to whether we would be in another lockdown etc. However, once I crafted a narrative that was feasible to represent in my electronic press kit, no matter the restrictions, I felt relieved and as though I had ‘conquered’ the challenge the pandemic put upon my FMP. Making this project during the pandemic also allowed me to prove to myself that I can cope even in pressured and unprecedented environments.

Another challenge I faced was keeping track of my progress, as every week I would reflect upon my work in my diary page. However, some weeks I forgot to write up my progress due to lack of motivation and time. To solve this issue I had to extend the dates of my diary entries and write them up a few weeks after I completed the work. Another challenge I faced in this project was learning a new software, being InDesign. I had never used this software before and through my research I was able to understand the basics skills needed to create my EPK.

A challenge I also faced during this project was having to come up with a conceptual idea for a film and then present it in an press kit format. I wanted to try exploring storytelling in a way I had never done before, although I was aware for that exact reason it would be my biggest challenge. I found forming the narrative concept came surprisingly quickly to me. However, the hard part was deciding what ways I could represent it in visual forms for my EPK. The thing that helped me overcome this challenge was looking at people's EPKs published online and seeing what ways they conveyed the narrative of their projects. This is where I learnt that posters and promo shots were the key visual forms of reference and knew I had to create my own for my press kit.

Overall, I do believe I have stretched myself on this project as I persevered through my challenges and completed everything within given my deadline. I also made a media product (EPK) which was very new to me and I knew setting myself that challenge would benefit me in the long run, as I have been able to broaden my graphic design knowledge, experience and technique.I also stretched myself when it came to the constant redrafting of both my visual designs and EPK as a whole. As I made sure to constantly receive feedback and pushed to make my project to as high a standard as I could within the time frame I had set for myself.

Management - How well managed was your time? How did this impact your final piece?

I believe I managed my time quite well as I made a timetable/schedule which was broken down into weeks for each stage of my project. I feel without these timetables I would not have been anywhere near as organised or focused on my project, as they allowed me to stay on track with my tasks and deadlines. My final piece had a better outcome because of my schedules as I was able to constantly reflect upon my progress and look at my development through the tasks I needed to complete each week.

I do believe I could have managed my time better as I was two days behind schedule when in production due to me not making time for my redrafts of my visual designs and EPK. This impacted my final piece because I had to slightly rush through my redrafts in order for me to complete all my work within my deadline. I feel my final EPK may have been more developed if I hadn’t been two days behind schedule, although I do not feel it would have drastically changed the outcome as my feedback concluded only small improvements.

Overall, I have learnt through my time management that schedules and timetables are vital in staying on track and organising the different stages of a project. I will now in future always use a plan to order my time and tasks as it is key when approaching deadlines and evaluating progress.

Autonomous learning - How did you cope with being self-dependent? What did you learn about yourself? Where do you need to improve? When were you tested? How did you overcome issues by yourself?

I feel I coped quite well with being self-dependent. I was able to follow through with each stage of my research and planning with very little assistance needed besides receiving feedback from my supervisor. Production did require me to collaborate with models/actors, however I had to direct them and develop the shots I took of them into posters designs/promo shots independently.

The main thing I struggled with working alone was being motivated and trusting in my ideas. One of the things this project made me realise by working alone is that I have a lot of self-doubt and this causes me to be very indecisive and have a lack of confidence in making decisions. I feel this is a huge issue I need to work through and improve upon as it is vital that in the media sector, particularly filmmaking, to have confidence in your choices when working on a project and as I want a career in these industries I will have to focus on improving my self-confidence within my work.

I believe a point where I was tested in this project was in the beginning when I had to devise a narrative concept to present in my EPK. I found creating the characters difficult and at times I felt quite lost in the direction I wanted to follow. However, I overcame this issue after watching the trailer for the film ‘The Father’, as I found myself drawn to the representation of memory loss caused by disease that the film explored. I also watched a film called ‘Mank’ which followed the perspective of a writer. This inspired me to have the protagonist of my film concept be someone who is passionate about literature, which led me wanting them to be a struggling writer. After I overcame this ‘test’ and had solidified a protagonist I was able to begin crafting my EPK around my initial narrative ideas. I do believe if I had conversed with my peers and teachers on the plot and character ideas for the narrative my EPK represented, it would have helped me improve and complexify the Hippocampus narrative I devised as I feel it was quite bland and overly depressive in its scope.

One of the ways in which I overcame issues independently was reverting back to the internet and learning from secondary sources to solve any technical problems I faced. For example, when I was editing in Photoshop I kept having a constant ‘full disk cache’ alert. This problem disabled the actions I tried to make to my Photoshop project. At first to try to overcome this issue I watched a Youtube tutorial which showed me how to ‘purge’ my history actions on Photoshop and save storage, however, this only worked temporarily and the alert continued to show up. As my final solution, I tried deleting my inactive Dropbox files and other junk taking up space on my laptop, and this fixed thankfully solved this issue. Overcoming this challenge was a combination of me using my initiative whilst also searching for advice via the internet.

Lastly, another issue I overcame by myself was organising my time management around my actors/models. For instance, in production I planned to shoot with my father (who modelled the character of Nic Alcott) for roughly four days. However, due to unfortunate circumstances on his part he became caught up in work and I had only two days to photograph him. I overcame this issue independently by making sure I captured a lot more shots during the two days as having more content would make up for the other two days we lost.

Ideas - How did you develop your ideas as you progressed?

For my project, one of the ways I developed my ideas for the film concept my EPK represented, was to have the two characters featured in my visual designs be the protagonist, Nic Alcott and the carer, Allen West. I developed this idea by adapting to my circumstances, as I decided to prioritise having the carer character be featured in the EPK visual designs instead of a younger version of the protagonist. This was due to the fact I only had two people (Paul Putwain and Dutch Loverdige) to model as the characters and Paul was already set to model as the main character, so I decided to have Dutch play the carer instead of the young protagonist.

Another way I developed my ideas as I progressed was during the research stage of my project. Once I decided I was going to create visual designs for my EPK, I began to look at graphic designers as influences and create effects inspired by their work. I expanded upon my ideas for my poster designs through watching tutorials on how to make certain colour grades, text effects, paintbrush effects etc. that I edited into my mockups. By making and testing these effects I was able to develop my Photoshop and Illustrator skills which gave me more conceptual ideas I incorporated into my visual designs. For example, I was inspired by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s sepia colour grade. I then found a tutorial online which showed me how to make my own sepia colour grade on Photoshop and I ended up continuing to include that colouring into the final production of my visual designs.

Lastly, another way I developed my design ideas during the planning stage of my project was completing a font test in preparation for the production of my poster designs. I initially chose four fonts and tried out each one by typing the film title ‘Hippocampus’ then chose two that I felt looked best with the wording. This font test allowed me to progress my planning, as I knew which fonts I wanted to use before I began the editing process of poster designs.

Decision making - Did you make informed decisions as you went along? Did you change your mind at all? What affected the decisions you made? Were they the right decisions, or in retrospect would you amend what you decided?

One of the big decisions I made in this project was to create my EPK using InDesign. I feel this was the right decision as I was able to learn and use a new software which helped expand my graphic design skills. My reasoning for choosing InDesign was mainly due to the recommendation from my teacher, as he said it was an effective and useful software to use when doing graphic design work. I had also previously heard good things about InDesign and that many graphic designers used it too, which helped aid my interest in using the software.

A decision I made during the planning stage of my project was deciding to only use Photoshop as the software to edit my poster designs and promo shots on. I feel this may have not been the right decision as I now believe I should have been less narrow minded in reasoning with myself that I could ‘create all the effects I wanted on Photoshop’. I feel this is quite a lazy decision I made and believe making my poster designs on Illustrator as well as Photoshop would have allowed me to develop my graphic design skills even further. Another decision I made that impacted my project was my choice to focus strongly on developing my hard skills in my research. I felt this was the right decision as I wanted my EPK to be visual based and thought it was important for me to prioritise developing my graphic design skills on Photoshop.

Lastly, a decision I made which I felt was the most beneficial to the production of my project was sketching my poster designs, promo shots and EPK out on paper. I feel this really helped me express the layout I envisioned for the visual designs and EPK. The sketches also acted like a blueprint and foundation for me to follow when in production and post-production of my project.

Pride - are you proud of your work? What will you do with your work now?

Overall, I am quite proud of my work considering I have never made an electronic press kit before. I’m very glad I met the deadline and was able to be organised throughout my project. However, I feel the final piece is still missing something in terms of visuals. I would be more proud of my work if I devised more visual content for my press kit, such as creating a scene of the characters as if it were from the ‘film’. As I feel this would make the EPK more entertaining and feel as though the film was real.

One of the things I am proud of in terms of my EPK is the poster designs. I really liked how they turned out as they were even better than I envisioned in my initial sketches. I believe they improved from my sketches due to the fact I asked for constant feedback and continuously redrafted them throughout production. I am also proud of the fact that I was able to interpret my own visual designs for my EPK by drawing from my graphic design artists and eras. As this made me prove to myself that my research was useful and benefited me greatly in developing my creative ideas for my project. For now I feel confident enough with the outcome of my electronic press kit to include it in my media portfolio. The main benefit of adding it to my portfolio is that it helps evidence my skill set in graphic design, film marketing and cinematography.

Skills - What soft skills have you developed? What hard skills have you developed?

During this project I developed soft skills in problem solving, self motivation and my ability to work under pressure. My problem solving skills developed through my ability to adapt to issues and reconstruct certain ideas around my circumstances. An example of this was when I made the decision to make an EPK for this project, as I devised a media product that I would be able to create both in college or from home, incase of another lockdown due to the pandemic. Another example of my problem solving skills developing was through my decision to change the character representation in the visual designs of my press kit. As initially I wanted to use my friend Dutch Loverdige to model as the young version of the protagonist Nic Alcott. However, I decided to prioritise the appearance of the carer character due to my shortage of actors and I had to make Dutch model for the carer character instead.

My self motivation skills developed throughout this project as I learnt to manage my expectations and not overthink my ideas too much and focus on staying productive by reminding myself that after each stage I will be one step towards completing the final piece. Another way I developed my self motivation skills was through getting feedback from my supervisor and understanding the improvements I can make to my project in order to increase the standard of my work, particularly my visual designs.

My ability to work under pressure also developed as I began the project by making it adaptable incase of another lockdown. This helped me prove to myself that I am capable of being insightful in my planning to prevent future anxieties. Another way I was able to develop my ability to work under pressure was through my creation of structured targets in my timetable/schedule, as this allowed me to be organised throughout each stage of my project and meet my deadlines.

In terms of my hard skills I learnt how to first use the basics of InDesign, such as adding pages, text formats, cropping images, creating editing tables etc. which allowed me to craft the design of my press kit. I also learnt hard skills in lighting techniques such as being able to make practical lighting, hard lighting and the three point lighting setup using light bulbs and LEDs. Another hard skill I learnt was how to make different colour grades on Photshop using the ‘hue and saturation’ layer and the ‘black and white’ layer. These hard skills were useful in allowing me to colour grade my promo shots and poster designs in the post-production stage of my project. I also learnt how to make a blended text effect on the software Illustrator. Although I did not utilise this in the final designs of my film posters, I still was able to expand my skill set in typography using Illustrator.

Future – What is the next stage, what are your future plans, how has this project altered or affected what you want to do next or in the future?

Reflecting upon this project, I believe it has made me even more motivated to pursue cinematography as a career, as in this project the part I enjoyed most was being able to research and test different lighting and camera techniques whilst also photographing my chosen actors/models.

By deciding to do more graphic design based work for this project I do feel less fixated on just filmmaking for my future and am now more open to exploring and incorporating graphic design into future projects and collaborations as I did really like the process of crafting still visuals, editing them in post-production and then constantly developing into a final product.

One of the key things this project has made me realise about myself is that I am very pessimistic of both myself and my work. I am aware it will take time for me to build upon my confidence, however I am determined to work on my perception of myself because I know how important it is to trust in my ideas and decision making when working in a collaborative industry like film. I also found in doing this project that I become quite demotivated easily and feel this maybe due to the fact my project was so self-dependent, as when I work with others I like to bounce off other people's energies and discuss our ideas/development of a project. I feel now that I lacked motivation due to the very little collaboration I had on this project.

In terms of my future plans I am going to take a gap year after sixth form to hopefully gain some work experience at production companies doing runner jobs and save money, then I’m off to venturing into university to study filmmaking.