Evaluation:

My production is a documentary on a national trust site called Cliveden. I chose this topic
because as a child I used to visit Cliveden a lot and I still do. I wanted to learn and
understand more about who used to live in the estate and what history it holds. I did some
research which involved looking and reading the national trust and Cliveden website and this
told me more about the gardens that surround the hotel and the hotel itself. My research also
involved watching a few different historical documentaries. I found some national trust
documentaries which I got some ideas from such as the tone of voice to use and how they
set out each scene to keep the viewers engaged. Watching the national trust documentaries
I felt gave me good inspiration. I screenshotted certain clips within the videos because I feel
that I could use those specific shots in my own production such as the close ups of flowers
and the interview style they chose to set up.

There are quite a few things that could have made my documentary better, first thing I would
say is the timing. I think my production could have been longer as most documentaries are, if
I filmed in a few more different places within the site or instead elaborate on the places I
already went to. However I felt if I did that then certain parts may end up dragging on when it
shouldn't. As my documentary was filmed outside I hoped that the weather would be decent,
however throughout the day the weather did change and there was rain and wind when I
was trying to film. I thought that since most of my documentary is voiceover it shouldn't affect
it too much. A section with me speaking on a balcony near the end of my production the
sound of my voice became muffled because of the weather issue. I could have tried to edit
out the wind sounds but I felt like I didn't have enough time. Another problem that I noticed
after I uploaded my production to youtube was that four around four seconds the screen
goes blank. I'm not sure what happened but to have fixed this I should have watched my
documentary over again before uploading then I would have noticed my mistakes. I was
genuinely happy with my production but there was definitely improvement I could have made
if I had more time. I do think that some of the shots I filmed were not all in focus and
sometimes were shaky. To fix these mistakes and create better camera movements for my
next production I could learn more about different camera movements and how to create
them.

I did like how my documentary turned out and there were good parts as well as the bad. I
believe that the music I used for my documentary perfectly fit the theme I wanted to create
and added to the historic effect. I used classical piano music and the music from Swan lake.
During my documentary I interviewed two volunteers that told me about what it is like to work
there and how Cliveden operates for the public to enjoy every day. The only bad thing about
this interview was that they didn't want to be on camera, which I did understand, however I
feel that if they were to be on camera it would have made my documentary longer and more
enjoyable. However I worked with what I had and took the shots I had already to show while
they were speaking. The voice overs I created I felt flowed well with the different shots of the
areas within Cliveden. I tried to take inspiration from documentaries I see on tv about ancient
buildings around England and tried to make that my own. Parts of the documentary where I
was speaking in front of different areas went well and the weather was not windy such as the
part where I am standing outside the hotel. Filming these scenes helped me learn more
about how important planning is and helped me to build up my confidence in speaking in
front of a camera and interviewing people.
Overall I was happy with how my production turned out but there are improvements that I
know I definitely could have made. However I did learn a lot from creating this documentary
and now I know what I need to improve on for my next project to make it better.