Skateboarding Culture n the North East - Finished Product

Here is the finished documentary: https://youtu.be/l540kITUpTA

Evaluation:

This is my evaluation for the project I have worked on for the past year, it has parts to itself, one being specifically skateboarding questions, and the second part about mental health.

Research for my project:

My initial research for the project was to find ant documentaries or videos made revolving around skateboarding in the North East. I found a short documentary on YouTube that revolved around skateboarders in Newcastle where they spoke about the community and outsiders opinions on what they do. This video is what gave me the initial idea to make my project follow the same sort of pattern, asking people about their experience with the community, while also giving them a opportunity to say something to people who don't fully understand the community.

I also looked into the company to see the type of things they do in Sunderland. Realising they wanted a video with a target audience of 16 to 25, It made me want to only have people of that age range in the documentary.

Pre-Production:

Since I had already decided while researching that the project would be revolved around skateboarding, I wanted to gather some outsider opinions on the culture. So, I made a short survey for people to answer with responses being more or less positive. One response saying that skateboarding was underrated in the North East, this response made me even more set on making the documentary about skateboarding.

As mentioned, I found a short video about skateboarding in the North East, I watched the video over a couple of times to gather a basic idea of how to set my own video out.

Before I did any form of recording, I made a script to plan out how I wanted the video to be set out. Afterwards, I wrote my idea down, as well as other aspects of my idea and how it would be carried out. This including filming locations, videos I planned on using, those who I wanted to be involved, interview questions as well as some websites and numbers for mental health awareness as I wanted to have a mental health aspect in my video. Another reason as to why I wanted mental health to be a part of my video, Is because in the community it is not spoken about enough, and only more in recent years after the tragic deaths of two prominent professionals in the community, Ben Raemers and Henry Gartland. Plus, I wanted this to be the last part of the documentary, which would be the most prominent thing for viewers to remember after they finish viewing the video.

I gathered the videos of which I was going to use in my video as well as some royalty free music to use as background music.

Production:

Before filming any of the interviews, I made a rough edit of some footage with Seb, using old questions I had before changing them for the proper interviews. I did this rough edit to gage a basic idea of how I wanted the video to be laid out.

The first interviews I did were with Seb and Jake, which were filmed in person in college. But, the interviews with Jay and David, were done individually in their homes, in which they sent me the interviews via email. Each interview varied in length with each answer to the questions, the question I was most happy with answer wise, was the mental health question.

Beginning with putting together the documentary, I did a short interview with Robert Andrews asking about his thoughts on skateboarding. I did this as I did not have a good enough idea for a opening, until I thought of having a outsider opinion to open up the video would be a great idea. Then, while the interview plays, background music would build up as it begins to play, cutting out after the final clip of the opening is played. Also, adding videos that were provided to me by David which were filmed across the past year to include over the interview as it plays to add more depth to the opening.

For the interviews, I did not want each persons answers to play one by one, through each question, so instead I showed the viewers the question then played each persons answer for that specific question.. Personally I preferred this idea as I felt like it gave the video more depth instead of the questions being repeated for everyones questions. 

After I had laid out each interview correctly how I wanted for the video, I made sure to have my mental health question at the very end followed up with some websites and numbers for people to go to or contact if they are suffering with any mental health issues themselves.

I used more royalty free music which I looped for the entirety of the interviews aside from the final clip of the video, which was from the end of David's interview that I thought would be a funny way to finish off the video.

Post-Production:

After finishing my video, I then uploaded it to YouTube and made a Google Form to gather some feedback on the video. The feedback I gathered was overall positive with not many complaints towards the video, with the only improvements that were mentioned being making parts of the interviews louder.

Personally, while editing the video, I think that by doing the rough edit beforehand, it helped me gage how It should be layered out better and how I wanted it to be layered out.

Overall, I believe that my finished product meets the criteria of the original brief  with Sunderland Culture and that it went very well in the overall process. I was able to make a product with all the necessary information that was provided, making the sole idea of the video around skateboarding culture. I believe I was able to capture the views and opinions of those involved and not involved with the culture while also shedding light on the culture and showing people that skateboarders in the north east don't fit the stereotypes based around them. I was given a lot of creative freedom with this project which I personally think helped in the making of it.