Professional Practice: My Thoughts/Unit Review

This whole unit has been a wild experience for me. Being offered a chance to film a promotional video for a major event in Maidstone was amazing. From the start of the project it was very hard to get a hold of the organisers and I felt that we as students were left wondering what was going on, however this is an understandable point from their side. I can understand that if you're planning a big event in Maidstone that you have priorities such as artists and locations, and this doesn't take away from the fact that we were eventually given the information we needed and we were able to film the event.

Filming the event was probably the most organised part of my whole experience on this unit. Filming went really well, we were given the right support from the organisers such as places for us to charge our equipment, access all areas and we were treated very well by the crew. Because of this support I feel we got some amazing shots of the whole event and this can be shown in mine, Tory's and Jamie's videos. I felt that there was so many things going on so it was a joy to film, we were never short of things to shoot which meant it was very easy to put together in the edit.

After the event I feel that the same issue we had at the start came round again in the form of communication with our clients. At times I felt that we didn't know what was going on which meant that we really had to push people for answers like when they wanted these videos done by and if the videos were okay. We also came across the issue of not having enough output for the project meaning that me, Jamie and Tory each had to create separate videos. After the discussion we decided that Tory would create the actual promo video, Jamie would create a teaser and I would create a behind the scenes/interview video which Nic our client was surprisingly okay with.

During the editing process I felt that the issues in communication didn't improve. I had to push my client for an answer on whether or not an edit was good or not, and when I didn't get a reply I had to choose my second cut as my final one. However this is the consequence of dealing with a client which moves around alot. I do not blame my clients at all on the out come of this unit, they have jobs of their own to be dealing with and the videos were of good quality anyway. I believe that although communication was not as good as it could have been, the output of the project speaks for it self in the quality of the videos. I found it a pleasure working with Nic, Andy and the rest of the Social crew and wish the best for the Social next year. I found this unit to be a great learning experience and it gave me a great insight into how it is to be work with/for a professional company.