WEEKLY JOURNALS

This is where you think about your FMP learning journey and development.
Don’t simply describe what you did - consider what you have learnt and how this has benefitted
your project. What do you need to improve?

THIS IS JUST GUIDANCE THAT YOU NEED TO ADAPT TO YOUR OWN PROJECT. YOU HAVE CREATED YOUR
OWN PRODUCTION SCHEDULES AND YOUR WEEKLY BLOGS SHOULD REFELCT THAT.

THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ADDRESSED IN THE WEEKS YOU COMPLETED THEM. DO NOT JUST SUBMIT THIS
FORM FILLED IN FOR YOUR WEEKLY BLOGS. THERE SHOULD BE 11 WEEKLY BLOG ENTRIES (INCLUDING
EASTER).

Week Ten – Final production

EDITING

Did you finish your production on Fortunately I managed to finish on time due to the fact that I
time? kept to my production schedule for the most part, although I
did not fully stick to my production schedule due to some work
taking longer than expected I still managed to get all work
done whether it was by catch-up or in lesson. I tried to make
sure that my work was done on time to the college deadlines
and my own personal deadlines for the more specific pieces
of work as there was a lot of smaller documents to complete
as well as the larger documents so by setting my own
deadlines I was able to complete all of my work on time and
before the final dead line allowing me time to check over my
work and made sure everything is completed.

How did you gain feedback? Was this
process effective/valuable?
Throughout the production process I received some feedback
from my teachers, I received about three chunks of feedback
through the 10 weeks through my google one drive as the
teacher marking my work would go through the work
submitted on my website and then submit official feedback
online, this was fairly effective however I found verbal
feedback easier to implement as I could get direct answers to
any questions I had when receiving verbal feedback, the
official feedback helped however I also spent a good amount
of time asking teachers to help with verbal feedback so that
when working on my project I could get quick active help with
my content, research, pre-planning and production.
I also gained feedback through surveys by using Survey
Monkey, this meant that I could send out surveys to anyone by
email with relevant questions to gain valuable feedback. This
was useful as I was able to send my surveys out to a variety of
people to get answers, the surveys were useful however they
had a couple of issues, the first one being that people can
generally be very short in their answers even when you ask
them to explain their answer making it harder to get critical
feedback, the other issue was that most people I sent the
survey to did not bother to answer the questions however I did
reach out to friends and family as they are much more reliable
and general give better feedback which helped make the
surveys more effective at getting feedback from people
without having to put aside time to go to them to show them
and get feedback, it also helped me get a lot of different
answers which overall means that I can make my production
better as the more answers the better. I also did focus groups
to get feedback as I could easily get people from my class to
be a part of my focus group, this helped as like myself, they
are media students so they know in better detail what to say in
terms of giving critical feedback on my work, such as when I
explained my answer, explaining my answer and getting
verbal feedback from them gave me ideas to develop my
production and improve on it.
What have you learned from your
feedback?
From my feedback I have learned a variety of things. The most
important part I learned from my feedback was how to
improve, develop and avoid mistakes in my production, this
was very useful as I wanted to make my production the best
possible piece of work I could have possibly made while
avoiding mistakes, which I still unfortunately made a few small
mistakes however due to what I learned in my feedback I
avoided some bigger costly mistakes that would degrade my
work overall. Something else important that I learned from my
feedback was what I should do or change to make sure
viewers understand the production, for example; when filming
a focus group someone said to make sure I don’t get so
ambitious that it becomes over complicated and to make
sure that others can understand it as it is easy for the person
making the production to understand their own idea but it
may be confusing to others, from this I decided to stick to my
complex storyline while making the structure and style fairly
simple so that viewers an focus on the narrative and pay

How did your work compare to
professional productions?
attention to that so that they do not get confused by a
complex structure as it would be easy to confuse viewers by
making the production too complex. I also learned about
what viewers want to see which was one of the most
important parts of my feedback as I made to make sure that
the viewers were watching something they actually wanted to
see and so that they recognise certain things in my production
that they would expect in a professional short film.
My work is evidently not fully professional as I was limited in
budget and have only had one year studying the course
however I believe was I have successfully taken professional
standards from other productions and applied to my own
production very well, although my production is not 100%
professional standard, I can see from feedback and the
reactions of people I have shown it to, they thought the
production was very good and turned out well. For example
showing my production to a friend of mine who is very critical,
he said that he was amazed by how good it was for
something made by a student and he also said that he was
watching it as if it was a professional production so this is just
one bit of evidence that tells me I have managed to achieve
a level of professional standard in my production. I think that
to make my production closer to professional standard I would
have had a better supporting actor, higher standard lighting
and better special effects however I believe that my use of
shots, scripting, characters, scenes and music was very good
and I definitely displayed a lot of professionalism in my
production which is good as that was what I was aiming for. I
found in my surveys that a lot of people thought that my
production was a very high standard which I also agree with
as a lot of hard work went into this production and I managed
to pull it off. Another main difference between my production
and professional productions was the audio, although I
believe I did really well with my audio, and I am very proud of
my use of music, sound effects and background audio,
professional productions actually record all dialogue and most
sound effects separately and implement them in post-
production/editing which I did not do for everything. All
dialogue was diegetic however all music and most sound
effects were non-diegetic however quite a sound sounds were
diegetic as they worked really well in the scenes.
Have you completed your final
evaluation?
Are you on track this week? If not,
how far behind are you?
What work do you need to complete
outside of lessons to stay on track?
High Grade Tips
I have completed my final evaluation and I have probably
done too much for some parts of it as I saw when comparing it
to a distinction level evaluation however I believe that I did
very well to get it completed and I did well to get all of the
tasks completed to a high standard, although I may have
over done the final evaluation I am hoping to get the best
possible grade so that should help and you can never do too
much. When doing my final evaluation I did not compromise
time doing it as I had completed all other work apart from this
weekly blog so I had a lot to time to get it done meaning that I
was not rushing it or losing time to complete other pieces of
work that had not been previously completed.
I am all on track this week as I had fully caught up before
starting my final evaluation and I have essentially completed
all work that I have to complete up to this point and I am
going to check over all work before the deadline as
fortunately I have completed everything.
I have no work to complete outside of lessons and I am fully
on track meaning I able to check over all work before my
deadline to make everything is ready and completed.
Evaluation & Reflection
● ‘reasoned decisions and inform the development of ideas’ – both your evaluation and the
weekly reflections above will clearly show both how and why your ideas developed throughout
the project
● ‘demonstrating clarity in thinking’ – all of the above plus very clear links between your research,
planning, idea development and the production of your poster and film trailer