Client Brief Final Evaluation
Client Brief Final Evaluation
So, this is the end, what a journey this client brief topic has been! So, the way I think I am going to layout this final evaluation is to summarise the whole section from start to finish, making sure to reflect on the client brief thoroughly, but less on 42 films, as I have already uploaded a 42 films evaluation! In the end. I will reflect on how our screening went and the feedback we received as well as any changes I may make to the film in the future, inspired by the feedback, so here we go.
The Client brief section began with 42 films. This area in the programme was all about working with multiple clients and creating 24 filmed and edited 30-second videos of good quality for the Somerset Business Awards. Now I will not go into too much detail here as there is already another blog on 42 films, but what I can say was that I was involved in filming 5 of these films and I edited two. Both the videos I edited were of a decent standard, not one of my proudest achievements, as we could only film with the college x70 cameras. Overall this section was beneficial for me as it tested my stress levels as we were almost going out to shoot every other day during one week, this also I believe improved my confidence speaking to clients I had never met before, both in person and on the phone.
Another thing I just wanted to explain, is the presentation and professionalism for 42 films, so I will start. For all of the films I went out on, I always dressed smartly, mostly wearing black which is a good colour to wear, as it is harder to been seen in reflections, although not impossible. Next, we were always on time to all of the five shoots I was on, if not a touch early, that is good for presentation. I also have explained before, but I phoned each client before we arrived making sure to be polite and just to let them know that we were on time and would be arriving shortly. Finally, when interviewing the clients / were in their workplace, we made sure to control our language, not swearing at all to maintain a professional manner. For more information on the whole 42 films process, please check out my 42 films reflection post.
Now onto Client Brief, which has gone really fast. The first thing explained, was that I would be making a film, probably a short film on how to use the facilities at a place called ‘Mill Meadow’ who holiday let luxury lodges for various amounts of time, ranging from a night to a couple of weeks. I was thrilled that I received this post, as this work unleashed my creative potential and I thoroughly enjoyed working with this client.
It was not long before we had our first meeting with Chris the Managing Director of Mill Meadow in college where the task officially launched, which was after some refining and emails back and forth, about what we can do, we had to create a short film showing off the surrounding area around the where Mill Meadow is situated. I was so excited to get moving on this project. A few weeks later, we found ourselves at Mill Meadow with my drone for our first filming day, just capturing the landscape and the perimeter of the land Mill Meadow owns. More details on the first meeting and the filming days can be found in separate blogs.
Then more filming days popped up throughout October, November and December, where we made our last ever journey down to the Mill Meadow premises. I must say throughout the whole project, communication between the client (Chris) and Anna / Myself had been both professional and to the point, there were a few occasions where if Chris had not replied to either myself or Anna for a few days, I would pick up the phone and call him, a skill I had mastered (calling clients) from the 42 films project just before. Usually, I just had to call Chris, to either finalise filming dates or request something from him when we were filming, for example, we needed a fishing pole and some dog walkers for our last filming day, so I contacted Chris and we got what we needed, you can never expect anything to be done for you in this industry, this I am learning!
Other filming days went well; we captured, time-lapses over the lake on one day, footage of the local pub on another, as well as some interior shots, which after long emails back and forth from Chris and after putting together the final edit, we were told to take these shots out, as I did not know Chris already had professional footage of the interior of the properties already on the Mill Meadow website. Even when I said one day, we were filming inside, he did not advise us to stop, I would say this is the only miscommunication we suffered from in the whole project, which I do not believe to be too bad.
Our last filming day was purely planned to listen to feedback given to our group by Gina and Chris who wanted more wildlife as well as people in the video. So, we revisited Mill Meadow on one Sunday morning, of all times! Captured three drone shots as soon as we arrived with the phantom 4. Getting the drone shot involved a fast-flying shot, showing the fields behind Mill Meadow also the beautiful landscape around where the lodges stand. After this shot, I phoned Chris and asked if it would be possible to have a fishing rod and line, which we were successful in doing, I then spent around 45 minutes multitasking, which meant I was watching the Liverpool football match-game, while holding the gimble capturing a shot of Jed on a jetty pretending to fish for the shot (just joking). The shot we got was slow and revealed Jed fishing, after a good-looking pan of the lake; I was quite happy with that shot. We next walked around the lake to the opposite side to film a waterfall, while trying not to get my camera soaked with splashes from the beautiful looking waterfall. Then finally, after an hour of waiting around, Chris phone me and said that the walkers were ready and at the front entrance of Mill Meadow. We proceeded to meet and greet the man and his daughter and then swiftly captured some footage of them both walking near the lake just too emphasise that there are beautiful walks around the premises and it is not abandoned as it had looked in previous edits of the video. A brilliant day filming I thought, made better by finally being finished with filming.
The reason behind mainly reflecting on the last filming day in this evaluation was because there was not really enough content to make its own blog, so I thought it would be pleasant to have one of my filming day reviews in the final evaluation.
Next came the editing stage, which is thoroughly explained in my editing reflection post, much better than I will explain here, this blog also contains back and forth communication between Chris and myself just refining the edit bit by bit, making sure we could make Mill Meadow, the best film possible during the time we had. After all the edits we finished on number 5 or 6, but I would like to produce another edit, simply to take on board all the feedback from the last screening. This, I will move onto now.
The screening, I would say there is not a lot to talk about, as we are yet to receive official feedback from Chris of the whole project, so what I will be writing about is the student and tutor feedback. After our film was played, we received reasonably loud applause, which is always a good sign that the audience liked what they watched, and it turns out they did. The first feedback we received was “that was annoyingly good”, so I humbly said, thank you, and then we got comments about how professional the titling looked compared to the other client films, ours had a subtle animation which added to the quotes we were showing.
Then the cinematography comment was brought up which praised the fact it looked like a professional video that a client would actually use. Then the smoothness was spoken about, which I was proud of, as I think I have now just about conquered the RONIN-SC gimble, after filming with it so many times on this project and the drone shots were crisp and added to the video. Lastly, unlike other videos where the text was either really fast or not viewable, ours was on the screen for just the right amount of time, which was nice to hear. I have to admit this was probably the best-received film I had made in college so far, better than the music video mistakes, which I will talk about now.
The only two criticisms we received, were not having enough people in the shots and the “private fishing” quote was a bit depthless compared to the other quotes we had used in the video. I think the footage lacked wildlife, which would have been a massive bonus, if we could have captured some ducks, for example, like the visit Somerset video I worked on. Now onto the people in shots, in short if I was told by Chris / Gina in November, we probably could have inserted maybe four people shots in the video, however, as this was first mentioned to me on December the 9th we did not have time to make this happen, as well as the wildlife shots, where we tried to film ducks and squirrels but we had no luck trying to capture them. The squirrels were not viewable on camera and we never saw any ducks on the lake, probably because it was December and the lake must have been freezing! The people we had in the video, which was the dog walkers and Jed were adequate, and at least we had people, as we initially had not even thought of putting people in until it until the December 9th! Then the quote comment on the “private fishing” is simple enough; however, I will edit a new quote to Chris in the video, as I agree with the rest of the class in the screening, the “private fishing” quote, does need to be changed to something along the lines of “I loved the private fishing”.
Finally, just some other things I would like to make a quick mention about, that we also received criticised on, there were too many drone shots, which I explained that, Chris wanted loads of drone shots so that is what we did and he really liked them. The next criticism was, why did we not have any indoor shots, I have already explained we did spend a whole day filming the inside of lodges, but we were told by Chris not to use the footage as he already has professional videos inside of each lodge, and our video was to be purely of the landscape. Finally, the fact we had so many quotes this was because, Chris mentioned he wanted a quote on every other shot, which was a lot of quotes, so that is why there is so many, I hope this explains all of our constructive criticisms.
I have actually really enjoyed this ever so much, it has been perfect training for dealing with a client in the industry where we might actually be making videos for money. I would also like to thank our tutors for organising all of the clients, I also think they have done a fantastic job of organising the whole section and I can imagine it is not easy and must be frustrating at times, but it was worth it as I have learnt so much, and also learning to keep patient with Chris deciding to make change after change when It came to editing! But anyway, I am really proud of all of my Client Brief films, Mill Meadow and 42 films. It has been a great time.
