1. Documentary Evaluation: Reflecting on
my project
 I would say that the development of my
project has had a wide range of high points
and low points.
 The high points of my project was the editing
stage, as it was a lot of fun to edit the project.
 On the other hand, aligning my schedule with
other schedules was the lowest point of the
project, as it was hard to interview the college
students due to their busy schedules.

2. Documentary Evaluation:
Research
 Researching for this project was crucial, this is because my
documentary was going to be very fact and statistic based.
 The things that I researched were facts regarding social
media platforms, specifically tiktok. This research of tiktok
then led to research on the effects that addiction or
extended use of these platforms can entail to the everyday
person.
 To make the documentary more dramatic and interesting, I
also researched news articles and news stories regarding
the matter, this was important as I wanted a small news
segment of the documentary to keep the extended
informative segment more interesting.

3. Documentary Evaluation:
Research
 Researching the audience that would be watching
my documentary was important to how I was
going to edit the documentary and which style it
was going to be.
 Because of this, I created an audience profile
which would go on to aid me greatly in knowing
which way to direct the creation of the
documentary.
 I also questionaired the audience to get an even
more detailed outlook on what my audience is
going to be like. The audience of the BBC was in
the ages of 16-21.

4. Creating the documentary: Writing the
script
 When starting the production process of the
documentary, I started with writing the script. I
wrote the script just like a screenplay, as this
was what I was most experienced with and it
turned out to be the best way I could write and
direct my documentary.
 The writing process consisted of splitting the
documentary in to different acts, I did this to
make the editing process more simple and less
confusing. All writing on the script was done on
the celtX script writer.

5. Creating the documentary:
Shooting
 Shooting the documentary was done with an iPhone 14 camera. I
chose to do this because it allowed for 4K filming and provided
the most consistent image quality in the scenes that I was
shooting. I did not want the documentary to look different in
every scene due to the camera changing on different shooting
days, this is also one of the main reasons why I chose to shoot on
this camera.
 Another thing I wanted to remain consistent throughout the
entirety of the documentary was the Mise En Scene, the
documentary is an expository piece however, since it contained a
lot of educational information, I wanted to reduce the amount of
distractions in the documentary as much as I could.
 This is why I chose to use a tripod and to use a static, dark
backdrop to the interview stages of the documentary.

6. Creating the documentary: Shooting
 Shooting on the iPhone 14 had additional benefits in that it had a very
large and clear viewfinder to allow me to adjust the shot in Realtime
without as much hassle.
 However, by far the most useful tool that I took advantage of with the
iPhone was the rule of thirds feature, this was perfect for shooting the
interview segment of my documentary as it allowed me to centre the
college students in the frame. In the end the result was very satisfying with
having the talking head shot well centred into the frame.
 Another feature that the iPhone had was an option to adjust the depth of
field on the image, this feature was less used for my purpose as I decided
that it was not needed to get the image that I wanted.

7. Creating the documentary: Shooting
 This shows a clear progression over my earlier work, where I was very
inexperienced in using a digital camera and the equipment that is used
with it such as a tripod.
 I have developed in the choices I make before shooting my footage, I now
take in to account what I am going to want my production to look like
such as the sharpness of the image and the amount of light that is going
to be in it on average.
 In my earlier work I also did not use the rule of thirds technique to
correctly align my shots to make them appear more professional and
satisfying.

8. Creating the documentary: Shooting
 All shooting that I done was done on the same
location, this is because the shooting schedules were
very tight. This meant that I had to interview all of the
college students on campus as they were very busy
with their own projects for their college coursework.
 The students being busy was one problem, but I also
had to shoot very quickly on campus as I had only had
hours at a time booked on a single day. To make the
shooting process faster and more efficient, I took
pictures of the setup that I was using, this is so I could
memorise the lighting placement and where the seat
was. The fact I did this was important to keep the mise
en scene as consistent as possible throughout the
documentary.

9. Creating the
documentary: Editing
 For my documentary, editing was by far the most
important and fun part of production. In my research for
the documentary I had mapped out the codes and
conventions for a BBC documentary, one of the things that
I had noticed was in the a lot of other documentaries was a
dramatic and almost overwhelming beginning. This is done
to instantly pull in the audience to the documentary and
give them an idea on what it is going to be about.
 All types of editing was done on Adobe Premiere Pro 2023,
including the audio editing that I performed. Thanks to my
past projects I already had a fair amount of experience with
using the adobe suite, especially Premiere Pro.

10. Creating the documentary: Editing
 My main goal was to make the editing of the documentary as seamless as
possible. This involved extending shots to make cuts less apparent while
watching, along with extending shots, I also extended transitions such as
fades to black and cross fades to make the transition between two shots
more smooth and less distracting.
 With the transitions I also ensured that nothing was cut off in the cuts, this
is to further reinforce the no distractions goal that I had set for myself
during the shooting process of my production.

11. Creating the documentary: Editing
 After I had arranged the was satisfied with it and cut it to the
point I was satisfied with it, I started to adjust the Colour
Balance and Exposure of the footage that I had shot. I done
this to further make it look even more consistent between
shots and to generally make it more visually appealing.
 The footage that the iPhone 14 had shot was already good,
however I thought that the documentary would suit a more
saturated and contrasty look which is what I added in the
editing process. I ensured that I didn’t’ overdo the colour
and contrast adjustments as it can have a negative effect if
done so.

12. Creating the documentary: Editing
 Along with adjusting the image quality of the documentary in editing, I also
adjusted the audio quality of it.
 This was done because all audio that was shot was using just the built-in
iPhone microphone, I did not use an external microphone due to the ones
available not being compatible with the iPhone and for scheduling reasons.
 Due to using the iPhone microphone, there was a lot of background noise and
reverb in the raw audio produced by the iPhone. To remedy this problem I use
audio filters in Premiere Pro. I mainly used 3 filters in the editing: DeReverb,
DeNoise and Compression.
 The compression allowed for the overall audio to be louder and more audible,
the DeReverb removed most of the echo from the room that the interviews
were shot in, (some parts did not require this) and the Denoiser removed the
background footsteps and other unwanted sounds from the audio.

13. Documentary
Feedback
 I received a lot of positive feedback from
people who have watched my
documentary. My classmates watched
my documentary and this is there
response to it:

14. Documentary
Production Summary
 Overall, I would say that I have learned a lot over the
month it took to produce this documentary. I
learned a lot specifically in the ways I edit my
footage, it has been very useful in gaining
experience in Adobe Premiere Pro which is a very
powerful piece of software for creating these
projects.
 I would also say that I have learned a lot about
officially shooting a piece of media and the
paperwork that it entails such as release forms and
location scouts. Relating to this, the project has
helped me to deal with many different people’s
schedules and handling unexpected problems that
may come up in production.

15. Documentary Summary
 Working for the BBC to create and direct my own documentary has been
very fun and it has been a very positive learning experience for me, this
will definitely help in the future to help me create my own productions.
 Completing this project for the BBC has been very inspirational and I look
forward to further opportunities to create my own films and
documentaries with different styles it has definitely been my favourite
project thus far.