With regard to my ethics charter, I believe I learnt a lot when writing it. I think one of the main moral concepts I analysed was how a piece of media can twist an interview subject’s words. I believe the alterations I would make would be to do with the editing process and the context provided. Through editing this short documentary, I found out how easy it is to re-organise phrases of speech to better suit the narrative structure of the film. An updated statement in the ethics charter would say something like, ‘The subjects’ words will not be edited out of context, without their explicit permission, or intended meaning present’. In my ethics charter I believe I well outlined how I would transparently conduct interviews. This involved things like making sure the subject was aware of the interview question by asking them to repeat it and explaining how I can turn off the camera whenever they don’t feel comfortable. I learnt that breaking the trust between the media practitioner and the interview subject is never beneficial for the final product. 

I think one of the most important things to focus on as a solo media practitioner is your project timeline. When you are working in a group, not only do you have other people to hold you accountable, but you have set shooting dates and group meetings where everyone is available. You also have a wider arrangement of ideas from different people that you can bounce off. I believe I work well alone, because when I have a creative idea, I can go ahead and create it, without having to green light it with the other group members. However, this did limit me in this specific project, because as an individual I have limited skillsets. For example, cinematography is not one of my strongpoints and I had to pay extra attention in tutorials to create different camera shots. In a group project, you can harness other’s abilities to create a more diverse final product. With regard to the attributes required as a solo practitioner, organisation is key. I used Google Calendar and Notion to keep track of all my tasks which needed to be completed. I found the tasks we were given in class kept us on track to submit the final product on time. 

My chosen genre poetic documentary works together to form a narrative because it focuses in more detail on the use of symbolism and metatextuality. The typical three act structure was used in my media documentary, though not in its traditional form. I used Bill Nichol’s documentary modes because they are very flexible. One thing I learnt during the process of making this documentary is that you never know what information you must form the narrative structure, until all the interviews have been completed. Originally my documentary was focused on the concept of writer’s block with a variety of subjects being interviewed. After I interviewed my first subject, however, I decided instead to focus the entire narrative on them. This meant I had to combine my pre-existing clips to form a new narrative, one which was truer to the subject’s intention. 

I am pleased with the result of my final artefact. One of the main skills I learnt was how to animate over pre-existing videos. This was a technique I was completely unfamiliar with that I learnt about in a class tutorial. This was very difficult for me to implement due to my lack of experience with Premiere Pro software. I wanted to set myself a challenge in this assignment to achieve something I didn’t think I was able to. While my final product did not exactly replicate the one shown in the class tutorial, I learnt a lot of skills which I can better hone during later projects. If I was to create this project again, I would set myself a more achievable goal. This would look something like, only making a portion of the documentary an animation, instead of the entire thing. 

 One thing I found was that animation takes a lot more time than a non-animated project. Even when using filter techniques through After Effects, you have to tweak each individual frame to get it to convey your intended meaning. One other thing I would change if I started this project over again, is to make the interview conform more with the chosen topic. I changed the narrative of the film based on the interview I conducted. Although this was necessary at the time, in future projects this can be avoided by better streamlining my interview questions. There were also a few final touches that I couldn’t make. One of these was to add scrunched up paper in the background of the animation. In my tests I was able to successfully achieve this effect in a few frames, but wasn’t able to replicate this keep the film’s style and consistency.