6C

i.  Make a critically objective assessment of their own achievement with detailed
reference to examples taken from your work. (Eunice)

Meeting the requirements of the brief, with detailed reference to examples from your work
When it comes to assessing our achievement with our idents, had to meet the requirements of the brief that was set out for us, so we ensured that the idents reflected school life, and set in environments such as science classrooms, etc. Our suite of idents meets the brief because we stuck to an appropriate theme and made a complete set of idents. Another point is that we successfully conveyed the theme and brand identity of CTK which is “Things come to life”. This is the idea that participating in enrichment activities adds to self-development as a student, and encourages students to explore all aspects of life.

We have chosen this theme because it is a theme that represents the college’s ethos, “Ut Vitam Habeant”. This is latin for “That they may have life”. This is going to be portrayed  through all of the 4 promotionals idents. We were able to successfully produce the final suite of idents, that met the specifications and terms of the brief. As i mentioned above, We were also able to portray the theme and visual style we wanted. For example all of the idents used stop-motion. This was something that we had planned to do during the ideas generation. The target audience was able to understand the theme of the idents. As you can see below, the results of our survey show this. The idents also showed creativity. For example, the art ident was very creative.

ii.  Make critical comparisons of your own work with other examples you looked at in your research

(Jordan & Ugo)

When it comes to existing example, we found an Ident made by a company called “Bindass” the ident was a stop-motion football ident which displayed a theme of unity due to one of the characters scoring and the keeper falling so the scoring character helped the goalie up, as and ident this displayed a sense of sportsmanship and sympathy for others which displays a positive message.so when it came to our ident we wanted to include the same values in our ident but also by altering the visual style of it. In order to master that this ident.During the shoots, i spent a lot of my time working with the DOP and the director, so when it came to trying to put our ideas to life i made sure that we spent a week getting familiar with stop motion due to it being very time consuming and very easy to bump into errors so during this week we experimented and we created mock ups, which really helped us gather the stop motion technique. So the production of these idents are similar to each other. From looking at the two idents i would say ours is the best because when it comes to strengths, our strengths were things such as the visual style for example we used stop motion with plasticine models which as a visual style looks a lot more professional than the “Bindass” advert however one of the weakness’ of the style of our idents was the visual because in order to produce stop motion it is a lot more time consuming, but overall i would say our ident was the strongest out of the other ones we looked at.

When looking at our suite of idents there is clear weak link. This was our science ident. The reason i would say that this is the weakest ident is because there are clear errors with the camera work and lighting. This is because while shooting there were difficulties executing stop motion. A big reason for this is that the camera we were using died whilst in the process of shooting.

Another negative thing about our ident is that i don’t think it was edited with enough care. For example there are visible jogs that can be seen. This could be down to the group being under pressure as we only had a hour to edit together the ident in order to meet the deadline. In comparison to our first ident which was our best ident. The camera was very steady and all the shots come together smoothly. This is due to the fact that the tripod we were using was much more secure. On the other hand compared to the bidmas ident which uses very smooth stop motion sequences. The camera is always in one fixed position. This proves that the science ident is the worst ident out of the three idents being shown.

Another negative factor of our ident is that the framing of our logo is not centred. In addition the logo is not in clear shot. This error occurred because we were in a rush, this cause our shoot to be a near disaster. In comparison to our best ident (which was the football ident). Where it was one of the first idents we decided to tackle as a group. This proves that the quality of work was stronger when we first started to make the idents.


iii. Evaluate their personal development in relation to justifying how you made a strong contribution to your role requirements in producing the idents.

(Jordan)

When it came to roles, as an individual i was an executive producer which as a role made me responsible for the process of forming ideas and making them into a product further more as the executive producer i would spend a lot of my time working alongside the director of photography and the director while working on the shoot. Also i was responsible for sourcing all permissions and all props needed for the shoot, As i worked in this role i found that you have to be very organised and you would have to collects ways of improving the shoot for example when it came to an issue we had regarding lighting as the executive producer i would have to be a step ahead and i would have to source a lighting kit. So as an individual i would say my leadership and organisational skills have improved majorly.

And as a team we all worked in unity and it made the whole process a lot longer. One of our strengths was our preparation because as a team and as an individual we were always hitting deadlines and prepared. When reviewing the pros and cons of my roles i would say a perk of my role was being able to have a lot of input into the creation of visual style and the look of the idents because i worked alongside the dop so i enjoyed having that control over how i wanted the idents to look. The only weakness of being an executive director was because i had to do alot for example my team made me responsible for sourcing all of the props and equipment.

iii. Evaluate their personal development in relation to justifying how you made a strong contribution to your role requirements in producing the idents. (Ese)

I made a lot of positive contributions towards this production. I was able to display some of my strengths in this production. One positive contribution was my technical knowledge and advanced animation skillset. I think this was a positive contribution to the production because i was able to bring more creativity to the final product. My technical knowledge and skillset allowed me to co-operate with other members of the production team, specifically the director of photography. This was important because me and the director of photography had to work together to edit the idents. We had to plan out which effects and transitions to use. As I've mentioned before, one of the weaknesses of our production team was post-production management and improvement.

One of the weaknesses we had as a production team, was leaving sufficient amount of time to refine our final product. We were able to finish the final product before the deadline. This shows that our time management skills were good. We were able to successfully create a suite of idents, that meet the specifications of the brief.However, i felt like we should have left some time to evaluate our idents. We could have planned a period of time to improve our idents more. For example, the science ident needed improving. The lighting was inconsistent and some shots were out of focus. Had we left time to address this issue, our suite of idents would have looked much better.

iii. Evaluate their personal development in relation to justifying how you made a strong contribution to your role requirements in producing the idents. (Ugo)

My role director controls the artistic and dramatic aspects of the idents, and visualizes the script while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. As a director i have a key role in choosing the cast members and production design. I have to make sure that the production team understands my creative vision.On one hand i feel like i was able to brainstorm and portray my ideas clearly to my group. Also i made a valid effort to communicate with my group with weekly updates.However on the other hand i feel like i could've improved on executing my the ideas while filming for example one of the new skills i was getting used to was stop motion. Sometimes during filming i would need to stop filming to re do the shoot because of minor mistakes.

As a result i have personally developed in the area of making sure the camera. Stop motion is now a skill i can use in future pieces of work. Another personal development that i can see which is notable is relying on other team mates. I feel this is a role requirement for producing a suite of idents. This is because without delegating workload to certain team members it makes getting the work done takes more time an example of this is when our group was suppose to construct a production plan. Each section was taken up by a team member. For example i took up the role of handling designs , Jordan handled the production schedule and also Kenny took on the AV script. This made it easier as we separated the workload.

iii. Evaluate their personal development in relation to justifying how you made a strong contribution to your role requirements in producing the idents.

(Eunice)

I had the role of a producer. As a producer, I made sure that the pre production documents were all completed before the deadline we were given. As a producer I also have to be organised and make sure everyone is doing their assigned job. I was responsible for the budget, risk assessments, recces, booking out the equipment (such as the camera, tripods). In my opinion I think that I was very strong at my role because I have increased skills such as communicating, budgeting, time management and also listening. Another skill could be stop motion, as I didn’t know how to do it before. Lastly, I had the ability to successfully fulfill the role as a producer because I was able to make sure everyone was on track with what needed to be done and also meet our intended deadlines. However, I have also gained a new skill which is stop motion, as at times I helped with taking the pictures for our idents.

In my opinion I think that there were a number of positives and also weaknesses as a production team. An advantage of this is that we were able to successfully complete the suite of idents before the deadline date, and also had enough time to amend or tweak anything in the idents. Another advantage is that as a production team, we worked really well because as a group, we were able to solve all of the problems we encountered together.

One weakness we had was with the art ident, where there were red dots which made the ident look quite messy, but we didn’t have any time to re-shoot or try to find a way to cover the red dots to make it look more professional.

As a whole, I feel that that everyone in the production team successfully followed their roles. Ugo was the director, he was able to brainstorm strong ideas for the suite of idents, as he also led the group. Jordan, the executive producer had a very artistic eye and hand because he crafted the plasticine models, and he also helped Kenny, the DOP and editor with the production of the idents, where they were behind the camera. However we were all practically involved when it came to shooting the idents. Lastly I think that when it came to editing the idents, Ese and Kenny had a very creative eye as we were able to successfully complete the suite of idents.

iii. Evaluate their personal development in relation to justifying how you made a strong contribution to your role requirements in producing the idents.

(Kenny)

In this production i was placed under the role of Camera Operator/Director of photography in which i was responsible for how the footage will look and turn out, my role i would say is the most important role as i am trying to capture the best appreciated side of what the director wants to see on screen. I also helped the editor with the editing as two hands working on the editing was more effect as it saved us more time and allowed us to go back and treat those idents that were not shot and needed improvements. I also did the storyboards and animatic which helps the group, audiences  and client to understand what the suit of idents will be about and to also give them an idea on what the finished product will look like.

However, it’s also used to point us in the right direction when we go off task. From looking at what we have achieved via our production my strongest contributions was when i was recording the te footage for the suit of idents, which was mixed with live footage and stop motion in which we incorporated play-doh with the stop motion to make sure that we do not target a specific target audience ensuring that no audiences are alienated (promoting ethnic equality). As a team i can strongly say that we were very prepared with our timing and teamwork as we finished our pre production stages on time in which allowed us to jump straight into the production, making the real suit of idents. Our team work was also very good as we were multi-skilled allowing the whole group to be able to take on any roles if any group members were absent during production for personal reasons or exams.

My weakness was working with time at the beginning of this production as i was always doubting that we will finish the task as we were doing stop-motion as i felt it was a longer and harder process that needs a lot of time and attention. That was until we negotiated with the client to set a time into which how long our ident can be as because of the visual style we were approaching as we wanted to keep audiences interested and entwined with our product instead of alienated other audiences with thought to appeal to a wider audience share.

I conclude, by stating that the team was very strong when it came to time, the production of the suit of idents and how we came together to plan what roles we were going to take on each tasks.

iv. Seek out the views of your Target Audience (parents, staff, students and applicants) by showing their product to likely members of the intended audience (Kenny)

After taking a look at the feedback from the target audience i can strongly say that our suit of idents was a success as the feedback received was very positive and expressive. The research received was very good as we got answers from different age groups and ethnic backgrounds which  means that we achieved our theme which is promoting diversity and how things come to life. Audiences expressed that our idents were recognisable and creative. Most of our target audience said that they recognized our idents and were able to recognise the continuity with in the suit of idents. In conclusion it means that our idents were very successful and appealed to more than one target audience. In addition, through the research undertaken to gather results on our product we have also found out that the suit of idents showed it was recognisable to audiences consuming the product as we got 100% feedback portraying that each ident had a consistent visual style and also branded the idents showing it’s recognisable and who its representing “CTK tv Channel”.

However, they also stressed that all the idents used the same the same colour (purple) when branding the college as it is already known and recognised as people know CTK house colours. We also asked audiences if the they could recognise the theme of our suit of idents in which again we got 100% feedback expressing that audiences thought our theme was creativity or things coming to life. In which both answers were right but it was mainly ‘things coming to life’ these results made pleased me and my group as the stop-motion aided the visual style helping audiences to grasp what we were trying to achieve, which was a clear and recognisable theme across the suit. In conclusion I conclude by stating that the results achieved from the survey we did proved very good as we got 100% feedback that was all good in which explained what our suit of idents achieved.

The 100% feedback we got states that the idents appeal to the mixed audience in which we shared our survey to (teachers, parents, and students) as some even shared that they loved the style in which we chose to represent the suit and how it was creative and playful at the same time but most importantly it didn’t alienate any audiences as this was shown from the positive feedback taken from our survey.

The feedback from the client was also positive as he liked how we used our own creativity in deciding to discard the idea of doing a seasonal suit of idents, in which we replaced it with practices that the college already endorses as we thought it was more applicable and that it will allow us to relate ideas to things the college already practices for example: fashion show, oscars, art & media expedition and dancing. Furthermore, I am pleased with the results we achieved from our audiences but i feel there was still room for improvement on some of the idents due to minor issues made such as colour grading and editing as that was a huge weakness for us when we were recording footage and taking pictures as the lighting was ever-changing. This could be fixed if we used an environment in which we could control the lighting in which i feel that would've helped more. But, in the end we were still able to achieve what we wanted.

v.  Explain the impact of professional and legal constraints upon your work.

(Ese)

We were following a brief, so we had to take into consideration legal and ethical constraints. We also had to work to professional standards. The reason for this is to make sure that all media products that are distributed are not breaking the law. Another reason is to make sure that products are suitable for its intended audience. Although we had to consider these things, our production was not impacted as much by legal constraints. This was because we did not use actual actors in the production of our idents. However there were a few things we had to take into consideration. For example, copyright. We as a production team had to be aware of the copyright law when using content which was not our own. To avoid any copyright issues with our idents, we used royalty free music. We also made sure that we created our on-screen graphics instead of downloading someone else’s. There are many laws and regulations set by regulators to ensure that media companies and organisations do not offend people. Regarding Ethical issues and constraints, we as a group made sure that our ideas and themes did not offend people's ethnic backgrounds, gender or religious beliefs. We also had to make sure that we did not discriminate against minority groups. Using plasticine instead of real actors, helped us deal with this potential issue. In terms of professional constraints, we had to refine our idents, so they looked professional.


As assistant director and editor, i think i was successfully able to complete the necessary tasks in which these roles entail. I felt like i conducted myself well in these roles. As editor and assistant director, it was responsibility to assist in the completion of the suite of idents. It was my job to create the final product to professional standards. I was also in charge of some pre-production tasks, such as the selection of technical and performance crew along with the producer. I made a lot of positive contributions towards this production. One positive contribution was my technical knowledge and advanced animation skillset. I think this was a positive contribution to the production because i was able to bring more creativity to the final product. My technical knowledge and skillset allowed me to co-operate with other members of the production team, specifically the director of photography. This was important because me and the director of photography had to work together to edit the idents. We had to plan out which effects and transitions to use.