" Its Nice That" - Ski Slope Documentary Evaluation

At the start of this project we were given a brief. Included in this brief was the link to the infamous blog "Its Nice That" and we were asked to chose a piece of work that had been featured on the site that would  inspire us to create our own piece of work. I chose to use a small trailer for a film called "Colony" because it inspired me to create something that I was passionate about and wanted to share with an audience.

 From the start I was very sure that I wanted to create a documentary, to mirror the concept of 'Colony' but with a subject that was personal to me. I first thought about the things that were important to me, for example, my family; friends;snowboarding;pets;work etc. and after planning out a few ideas I realised that I could combine many of the personal aspects of my life together in one.
 I work at the Plymouth Ski Slope, which is in dire need of repair. The slope means alot to me and my friends and without it I would not be able to continue working and snowboarding. This brought me to the idea of an advert (much like the 'trailer' form of 'Colony') for the Ski Slope, asking the viewers to support it and visit to help raise some repair money.
 I started to look at some appeal adverts, such as the 'wateraid' adverts asking for donations. Although I found these helpful to get some techniques on appealing to the audience, I felt that they were too heart-rendering to take too much inspiration from as I wanted my advert to be slightly upbeat.
 I drew out a basic storyboard for the ad, and tried to include many parts of the slope that needed repair as well as the costumers and instructors having fun to show audiences why and who they needed help. I also wrote out a risk assessment because of the dangerous nature of snowboarding and skiing, I was considerate of the risk of having equipment out on the actual slope alongside people having lessons.
 I filmed the footage on an A1 camera, and used a tripod for most of the shots. I also decided to use a mini MuviGumBall camera to capture some onboard footage from some more advanced skiiers. It took around 3 days to take all of the footage as there was some issues with light and glare from the floodlights around the slope. I countered this problem by checking the sunset times to ensure I had plenty of time to film in the day.
 I uploaded the footage onto a computer, ready to start the edit. Unfortunately due to an error by a previous user, the camera had dirt inside of it and most of my footage hadn't been captured correctly. This meant that I was left with a small percentage of the footage I had filmed and had to create an ad using the remaining things I had left.
 I was able to create a fairly decent ad, and I feel like I conveyed the need of the slope and appealed to the audience. However I was dissapointed that piece wasnt as good as it could have been, I would have like to include the small interviews with instructors to convey the feeling of an appeal. I think that the lack of this personal insight restricted the connection that the audience made with the piece.
 If I could have used all of the footage I had captured, I feel that the ad would have been much more successful, due to lack of time however I was unable to re-shoot the footage that was lost.