Evaluation

Our brief was to produce a breaking news report in school. The purpose of a breaking news report 

is to address sudden incidents that have taken place. This often means that it will interrupt a 

scheduled show on tv in order to report the details that have been recently attained in order to 

make viewers immediately aware of the issue. The purpose of the task was to complete our first 

full production. One key skill we focused on was effective shot types e.g. vox pops needed talking 

space within the shot and making sure it was a shot that included the member of public’s whole 

head into the frame. We also focused on our editing skills which included importing the footage into 

iMovie and then edited to fit the criteria and how we wanted the final project. We asked the teacher 

involved in our news report what happened from her point of view, what injuries she sustained and 

how she felt about the incident. We asked the student accused why he thought people were 

accusing him and we asked the people involved in vox pops what they had seen and whether they 

thought the student did actually do what he was accused of.

As we had a short period of time in order to finish our project, our planning and organising had to 

be rushed into a short space of time. This meant that planning things such as our storyboards and 

our mise en scene for each frame also had to be rushed in order to make sure we got enough 

footage to create our final piece. We also face quite a lot of technical difficulties such as the 

camera not working, due to a locked memory card, and the editing equipment, in this case iMovie, 

running slowly or not working at all. This meant that our time was cut even further and our space to finish became even more limited. As we had to film vox pops this meant that we had to get random students, often sixth formers, to try and participate in the filming which meant that often people we asked didn’t want to be filmed or were confused about what they had to say unless directly told along the with the plot line to get an idea of the story. Even people within our own group didn’t want to participate in being filmed which meant we had less footage to use in case our other footage 

wasn’t good enough. Another problem we face with the footage was that often the camera would 

be out of focus due to it being on the incorrect setting and so the shot wouldn’t be as effective. Due 

to footage we filmed not having time at the end of each shot it meant that transitions between 

different shots ended up overlapping and so the editing was not able to be as effective and the 

overall production didn’t flow as smoothly as it could have done.

I had never used a camera to film a production before this so I improved my skills in using 

technology such as tripods to steady the camera itself because I had never used these before. 

However, I managed to grasp these aspects quite quickly and was able to get quite good footage 

with these new skills. I had also never used editing software, in this instance iMovie, before so that 

was also a new skill that I learnt and gained practiced in. I have also gained media skills due to 

learning about camera skills and the planning that goes into a production. I have learnt what 

frames work best depending on the type of scene you are trying to film and I have learnt how to 

use cut aways to add more depth to the production and to give it more detail. For example in my 

news report we filmed a cut away of the banana and a classroom in the school to get real life 

footage to add depth to the reality of the incident and where it took place. When we were asking 

people to participate and be filmed for vox pops or interviews we would give them the scenario of 

what the incident was, then we’d tell them what questions we were going to ask when filming and 

roughly how they should answer them. In the vox pops people tended to just say exactly what we 

told them to but when it came to the interviews we gave them the scenario and suggested to them 

things to say but they went ahead and got into the character and developed it further. Considering 

the time we had and the technical difficulties we faced, I think my group was quite good at meeting 

the given deadline with a finished piece and working together to get last minute footage while we 

were editing and helping each other when we were having trouble using the editing software.

If I were to improve this production and do it again one thing I would change would be the sound 

quality. I could either just do voiceovers to make sure it’s not silent at any point during my 

production or I would also use better lighting as I feel that it wasn’t up to standard in all of the shots 

and so I would make sure to plan better before hand on where to film my scenes to get the most 

relatable lighting to the scene. Also, I would film someone speaking the questions rather than 

having lots of title pages saying what questions were asked, this would make it seem more realistic 

and like a news report.