Production Reflection.

1. Production
Reflection
Thomas Dickinson

2. Process
Poster
The first thing I did was find a wide shot of Loch
Ness that I thought was cinematic. The image I
chose was initially landscape whereas posters
tend to be portrait, so I had to condense it down
in a way that looked the best. After that, I looked
at other movie and documentary front covers to
see what elements they included (title, release
date, etc). Using a textbox, I wrote the
documentary's name in capital letters to make it
stand out I also made it white as it fits the theme.
The font I used for the title was "Cambria Math"
and I think it looks like the type of font you'd see
in big budget documentary posters. Initially I was
going to put the title at the top, but the white
writing blended in with the background and other
colours didn’t look as good.

3. Process
Poster
In this screenshot, the first thing I did was look at
the common elements of movie and
documentary front covers for inspiration. Almost
all the front covers and posters had release dates
and the name/s of the person/people that made
the film. So, I included them too but at first, I
couldn't decide where to put them, what colour
and what font. I didn’t want to make all the
writing white, so I decided to make it dark blue to
fit within the theme/colour scheme. I decided to
use the font "Cambria Math" again as I wanted it
to match, and I thought it looked professional. I
was going to put it at the top as a lot of the
posters did, but in the end, I decided to put it
underneath the title. I did this because it looked
neat, and I didn’t want it to overshadow the
background too much. Overall, I think it's a great
poster because it's simple yet looks good.

4. Process
DVD Front Cover
I had the idea of a set of binoculars facing.
Water with the Loch Ness Monster in each of
the lenses. So, the first thing I did was find an
image of a front facing set of binoculars which
I could easily cut the eyeholes out of. I used
the eraser tool and the magic wand but I
found the eraser easier, as you could just set
the size to 430 and do one clean circle in the
middle. I then located the famous surgeon
photo and an image of a mythical depiction of
the Loch Ness Monster. After that I moved
both layers behind the binoculars, and then I
used the eraser tool again to make them into
rough circle which was hidden behind the
binoculars. Then, I merged all three layers
together and added the background behind
it. The reason I chose this specific background
is both pictures had a greyscale look; I wanted
to match it with the background.

5. Process
DVD Front Cover
I added a title and a coming soon tab
at the bottom. For the writing I used a
font called “Myriad Pro” Which I
thought fit the documentaries poster
really well. I used black writing at the
top because the background behind it
was white and I used the white
writing because the background
behind that was black. In the bottom
left I put a “PG” logo as my
documentary doesn’t contain
anything explicit like violence, drugs,
etc. Overall, I like the concept and the
execution and I am quite proud of it.

6. Process
Documentary
When getting the narration for the documentary, I did it all in one take and
left gaps between my mistakes so it would be easier to edit compared to
going through loads of files. This meant I’d have a lot of editing in Premiere
Pro. To cut out the mistakes I made, I used the razor tool and occasionally I
dragged on either the left or right side if I cut out too much. When looking at
my script afterwards I realised I missed a small paragraph about a film the
Loch Ness Monster was in. Other than that, this is my full narration including
the intro and outro I also left a gap near the end for the interviews.

7. Process
Documentary
The blue blocks are the visual and audio elements of my interviews. I didn’t use many
tools in this one as they were all good takes; I did each take individually and if it was
wrong I’d restart for convenience while editing. Although on a couple I shortened the
beginning or end because if there was a huge pause it would’ve ruined the flow. I
interviewed seven people by asking the same questions five times, so I edited it into
blocks of seven five times therefore they wouldn’t get mixed up. Each question I started
with me asking one person and then cutting to everyone's answers because asking the
same question 7 times would’ve become repetitive. I also kept the interviewees in the
same order in each question to keep rhythm/routine. The two blue blocks on the left
were accidental and were deleted shortly after the screenshot was taken. The last thing I
did was move the outro to the right as I didn’t want to lose it.

8. Process
Documentary
In this screenshot, I’d just started adding footage over my narration so it wouldn’t be a boring
black screen. Sadly, I couldn’t find much royalty free footage of Loch Ness specifically so I had
to settle for images of the Loch mixed with footage of water and places similar to Loch Ness.
In the bottom left of the screenshot is a green block below the narration which is water noises
and bubbling because in this part, I used footage coming from a camera underwater. I used
the razor tool to shorten the footage and I grabbed the left or right edge of the block to make
the images last longer. Also, I decreased the speed of some of the footage by right clicking the
block scrolling down to speed/duration and making the number below 100% speed. I edited
the narration before editing the footage as the images match up to what I’m talking about in
the narration. Overall, I think the blending of images and footage don’t look too bad it just
would’ve looked better with drone footage of Loch Ness.

9. Process
Documentary
This is the final screenshot of my finished product. In this screenshot, I’d finished adding my footage,
added an intro title and some roll credits. I used the razor tool and grabbed the edges of the block again
to make the footage fit where I needed it to go. The next thing I did was add a title card that bounces on
screen which I found under the essential graphics tab on the right side of the screen. Originally I was
going to make my own title card, but this one was pre-made and I was running out of production time. In
hindsight, it looks a bit goofy as it almost bounces on and off the screen but I don’t think it’s terrible for
my first ever documentary. The rolling credits was something I’d made for an experiment, because I
thought it would look good so I decided to include them at the end and also it was easy to do. I made the
credits by selecting a new layer and the new text option, then to make the text roll I wrote who narrated,
edited, directed and starred in it. After that, I went down to responsive design and selected an option
called roll. I could’ve made the credits longer, shorter or angled but I left it as normal as I think it looks
much better. I originally was going to make the “directed by”, “narrated by” and “starring” parts bold and
leave the names as normal but I didn’t know how too and was running out of time so I left it.