It was in the first lecture that my role as Producer was decided, because I had worked with some group members before and they nominated me, but I also put my name forward for the role. However, I did not have a lot of background knowledge of what a Producer would do during the production, but from last year’s projects and the way I act naturally, I knew that I could organise a group efficiently to a good standard. Because my role had been assigned so quickly, it was then my responsibility, along with the group’s vote, to assign the other roles for our production company to other group members. This went fairly well, because I knew what the majority of my group members were good at and what role they would suit best.

After the allocation of specific roles within the group, however, there seemed to still be some confusion about what each role had to do towards our production. We had a few meetings to discuss these issues, and during these we looked through and talked about the outlining files that were issued to us. These proved extremely helpful and I feel that group dynamics were properly formed during mid-semester. This may have seemed a bit late but I feel it was right for the group.

My ideas towards the production were not used, but I felt like they could have made a good documentary if followed up. My first idea was around the subject of ‘free runners’, following them as they view a city in a totally different mindset than those of the general public, and the second idea was around the subject of female sports that are predominantly played by men, specifically rugby. I would have focused on my sister’s rugby team, but the idea did not have much substance and I was not convinced the whole of the group would be as excited as I was about the idea to form a 30 minute documentary on it.

During the pre-production stages, as well as organising the group to the best of my ability, which took more planning and communication than I first thought, I also dipped into Marketing. I designed our flyers and signed the production group up to various promotional websites, including Wix, our main supporting promotional website, Facebook, Twitter, Withoutabox, IMDB, The Smalls and Zoomerang, a website where you can create and distribute surveys and polls. I feel I maintained these websites well, including updating Twitter feeds, keeping our Facebook fan page flowing and uploading the trailer to all of the websites as soon as I had a copy. I felt it was necessary to do this as Producer, because it is within this role that the overall documentary is seen, which includes promotional material as well as the documentary film. I compiled the survey on Zoomerang with Chris, one of the Marketing team, to gather information on not only our potential audience demographic but also our main documentary idea, and whether or not people had heard of the real life superhero phenomenon and if they were interested further. I feel that the survey went extremely well, with varying results, some of which I did not expect. This has therefore given the production group something to aim for, and we can now narrow down our audience to a specific age range and to some extent, lifestyle.

Along with keeping the Yola research website up to date, we also had to undertake a small Photo Essay. I think this proved very useful to not only me but the whole of the group, because it gave us practise on some fairly new technology that some of us had not even used before. However, even though I think my Photo Essay went to plan, I feel that it did not really stick to the guidelines given, and was not event or people-driven enough. On the other hand, the one thing that I thought went exceptionally better than the rest in regards to my Photo Essay was my editing and my forward-planning into what I wanted the images to convey. It was the first time I had used the RAW editing in Photoshop, so it took a while to get to grips with the new editing software, but drawing up on the First Year’s practise and my own knowledge of editing, I quickly got used to the new software and experimented with it. I feel that my Photo Essay came out better than I had planned during the edit, but the subject of my Photo Essay itself could have been better.

Moving on, I think that one of my major flaws as Producer for a group that I am also friends with is the fact that I am friends with the group. This made it hard at the beginning to distinguish between being Producer and being friends with group members. However, as the semester went on and the group members took their production roles more seriously, I felt that I could take my role more seriously and therefore be an appropriate and suitable Producer for the group.

Furthermore, I contacted one of our possible primaries, The Dark Spartan, and successfully got a reply. However, I only felt the need to do this because primaries had not been contacted earlier, and I felt like it was my responsibility at this stage to finally contact him. This may have been because I was not forceful enough to group members who said they would contact primaries in the first place, but I am happy to have contacted them because it would be me who would keep relationships with the group and the primaries together during production anyway.

It was during mid-semester that Alex, now the Line Producer and Marketing team, joined the group. I feel that his joining of the group was put on quite forcefully by Paul, the Producer for Drama Production, and at first I was a bit apprehensive that his arrival to the group would cause a major difference in group dynamic. However, Alex has proved himself to be a very good member of the group and I am glad to have accepted him into the team.

Before our pitching session to the lecturers and the rest of the class to try and ‘sell’ our documentary, I felt that it was my responsibility to start, edit and finish our group presentation, along with adding in each group member’s individual research on specific topics. For this, then, I looked through the outline given to us beforehand and assigned each production role with questions and research they should undertake. This split the group up into their specific roles, but it also made group members work together, such as the Art Department and Marketing Department, to come up with a result, such as poster concepts and ideas. I felt that the planning of the pitch went extremely well, as we looked through the presentation numerous times as well as rehearsing it solidly during the week leading up to the presentation, but we soon found out it was the content and substance of the presentation that was majorly lacking. I put too much emphasis on the promotional and marketing side of the documentary rather than the documentary idea itself during the presentation, which ultimately made it hard for the lecturers and class to grasp the concept of our idea. This was a major flaw in our presentation that could cost the group valuable marks.

However, even though our presentation did not go as well as I planned, I feel that throughout the semester I have grasped the concept of documentary research and analysis and put in a lot of effort to keep not only my individual research page up to date and in sync with the outline, but also kept the group members’ research pages together, and it is because I signed up to Yola and have an almost obsessive impulse to make sure everything looks the same that the research website was edited in regards to the layout during the final weeks, because I felt that the current layout was more professional, and I even go to the extent of changing font sizes and type for other people’s individual pages to keep everything aesthetically synced.

I would say then, that the first semester has been a complete success, and we have achieved more than I would have thought we could! The group dynamic is solidly in place and I feel that I can be a Producer for the group whilst also maintaining friendships within the group, which if anything, is a positive and will help us during the production and post-production stages of our documentary.