CRITERION D

Evaluation of Product

As stated in my design specifications, the purpose of my product was to educate the TMS community about the impacts of deforestation on the Amazon rainforest (as part of my main theme) and what deforestation is, how deforestation has affected humans and ecosystems, and how we, as a society, are able to help the situation, in a way that is entertaining and engaging to the audience. My documentary dedicated to showcasing deforestation in the Amazon was able to do exactly this, and I can support this with data collected during our in-class screening and survey. For instance, out of 13 responses, 100% of people said that they learned that "there is a significant problem with deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and it is crucial we act now to combat this issue." This tells us that people were effectively able to learn the important information from our documentary. In terms of how the information was presented, when asked to describe the style of editing of my documentary, 70% of people stated that my documentary was "serious but effective in informing about the Amazon." This tells us that my documentary was fairly engaging because it was able to set a general theme of being informative/educational. The fact that my audience was able to communicate this to me proves that my documentary was generally very engaging for the majority of my audience. To improve so that 100% of people could have given me this response, I could use more entertaining ways of communicating information as opposed to a simple green screen background with a wide shot of the speaker being in the front and center of the screen. Therefore, in terms of overall product, our documentary was very successful.

Needed Improvements

In order to improve my documentary (in terms of my role as the editor), I could have presented the information in a way that is more visually appealing and engaging to my audience. To further explain this, the major points of my information (particularly, what deforestation is and how it is affecting the Amazon rainforest) were presented through the speaker being shown in a wide shot in front of the background of the Amazon rainforest (done through the use of a green screen). This method of presentation may not be as effective in capturing the interest/attention of my audience because there are no outstanding visuals (as there were in the montages, which likely captured the attention of more of my audience) or interesting songs played in the background (also in the montages), which thus makes the information appear more boring or less fascinating to my audience. To improve this, I could, instead of simply using a wide shot to present the information with the same/very similar backgrounds, present the information from a variety of camera angles and use a variety of different backgrounds. As well, I could have perhaps only used the audio of these recordings in some parts of the information section of my video to switch between two different methods of presentation, thus making it more appealing to my viewers. My viewers (as shown in my responses in the Google Form as well as my interview with Jerry) thought that my audio was not clear enough and that the lighting was too bright. During editing, the audio became distorted, and thus harder to understand, and the lighting became too light once the video was exported. To improve on this, we could change our filming location to somewhere that has less echo (to improve audio quality) and darker lighting (to prevent the increased exposure when the video is rendered). 

Impact on Audience

In terms of the impact of my product, when asked what they learned from my documentary, 100% of my responses (all 13 people) stated that they learned that "there is a significant problem with deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and it is crucial we act now to combat this issue." Therefore, it can be concluded that my product was very informative to my audience, seeing as they were all able to restate the main point of our documentary. This also tells us that my product increased the general awareness of the significance of this issue of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest within our design class community. My documentary fulfilled its purpose very effectively, as my audience learned exactly what I had planned for them to. 

Reflecting on my interview with Jerry, it is evident that the main reasons my documentary had this impact are the use of titles and the style of editing that was used. According to Jerry, "the titles on the screen helped him get the critical information of the video and made the video more easy to understand," and "the transitions were natural and help create a tense atmosphere that matches the tone of the video."