Evaluation

For this final project I have made a short advert style promotional video for the Cornwall based housing company, Ocean Housing. The video features their show home and other properties at their new housing development in Bodmin from the development stage up to examples of families living in the homes. I made the video for Ocean Housing as they wanted to advertise their new properties, inform the public about the shared ownership and boost their online branding and presence. I also wanted the experience of working for and producing content for a company to help improve my work and communication skills.

Ocean Housing's target audience for this video are young families who are looking to buy their first home and families who are currently renting who don't realise they could potentially save money with the shared ownership scheme. Ocean Housing will be showing this video on their Youtube.com channel as well as their website and other social media accounts, i.e. Facebook, Twitter. They will also potentially send the video via email to potential customers. I personally think this is the best course of action as this way the video can reach as many people as possible and will give them the opportunity to interact with the company online.

If this advert were being shown professionally on TV I think the best channels for it would be on ITV and Channel 4 during the evening or alternatively as an advert on Facebook/Twitter, these channels and websites are used frequently by Ocean Housings target audience (young families) as they provide a range of content and are used by a wide range of ages. The time slot is also important as these families are likely to be working class and so would be more likely to watch TV in the evening after work.

The research I have completed for this project hasn't dramatically influenced my decisions within this project as it has been mainly influenced by what the representatives at Ocean Housing wanted in the video and how they wanted it to look. However, my research has influenced the types of shots I used, how I framed the rooms and the editing process. I felt this was the best way to approach this project as the video isn't for me and I'm ultimately not in charge of this project, Ocean Housing has employed me to make this video and it's important that they get what they wanted from this video.

I think this project has gone really well, it has taken a lot longer than I initially expected mainly due to delays in the building process. However, I think this extra time has helped me improve the overall quality of the video and include more features in the video that they wanted. I believe the filming and editing went particularly well as the shots look really nice and during filming I ensured it went quickly and efficiently as the Ocean Housing representatives had taken time out of their day to make sure that I could film everything. I also made sure to finish each edit quickly so that Ocean Housing could see what the video was looking like at each stage and to keep them updated on my progress. I think the communications between myself and Ocean Housing has also been very professional and effective, they emailed and called me with any questions or updates and I made sure to respond in an equally professional manner.

I managed to keep to my time planner for this project which was quite easy as there were only a few weeks to plan and the majority of those weeks were editing and blog work. I didn't really overcome any major issues at this stage in the project, however, I did have issues at the start of the project with finalising the plans for the video with Ocean Housing. I would try and improve this in future projects by communicating my ideas more effectively by using more examples and possibly filming a short video showing the types of shots I will use and the story line of the video. It would also be beneficial if I were closer to the company as it was much easier to communicate my ideas in person, however, the long distance between myself and the company's main offices meant that I only went down occasionally.

If I were to make this video again I would ensure to have someone with me every time I went down to Bodmin to film as It was much quicker and better quality when I did have someone as we worked together to make sure each shot is useful. Before I started this project I was quite apprehensive of doing freelance work as I thought it was very difficult to pull off a professional video own my own. However I've learnt that it is possible to do this as long as I have good equipment and someone to help me film and bounce ideas off.