Exploring the dieting industry has been an exiting experience and has definitely taught me a lot that I was previously un- aware of. As an adolescent, I'm constantly surrounded by celebrities and people with the perfect bodies that follow such healthy lifestyles in order to maintain their aesthetic. From a personal experience, I have tried diets such as the egg diet and simply starving myself. From creating our documentaries, I know know that by not eating you are not loosing weight, but just loosing muscle. We investigated aspects such as this throughout our radio show which as young girls, is vital advice to help them avoid going down a potentially dangerous route in the hope to shed the pounds.

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At the beginning of the project, Rebecca and I both dove into secondary research in order to boost our knowledge. Moreover, I discovered so much which allowed us to look at dieting from different perspectives. When I initially thought of dieting, I assumed it was just overweight people going to clubs such as Slimming World to loose weight. I didn't think of other aspects such as slimming pills, orthorexia and the yo-yo side. I thought people went on diets and lost the weight and that was it, but didn't realise that 95% of people actually regain the weight within one to three years, with two thirds of Brits being on a diet most of the time. I also discovered that dieting could have much more of a deeper meaning. To some, the reason why they obessively diet is due to their past, and childhood experiences which has therefore resulted in them being so body concious. I really wanted to interview my mum's friend Jane about this as she obsessively exercises and diets due from a young age, however, it proved to be a sensitive subject which she struggled to speak about. As a result, Rebecca and I had to re- consider who we were to interview.

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This was the beginning of our primary research. We documented both recorded interviews and created questionnaires for people to answer to get a better understanding of why people diet, did it work, would they return to this form of weight loss and finally to generate our own statistics in comparison to utlising that from the Internet. The questionnaire was a great method for conducting primary research as it was quite in- depth, however, this allowed us to cover all bases of dieting and we asked a multitude of people of various ages who have experience which gave us a reliable outcome.

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From this, we began filming. I wouldn't say we explicitly stuck to our filming schedule, but that was good to refer back to so we could ensure we were on track and shooting what we needed to without wasting time. Additionally, I began by shooting my mum's first interview at home. Unfortunately as I discussed in my research booklet, the lighting and sound was of a poor quality, therefore meaning I had to re- shoot. This was annoying as I was quite happy with some of the takes, in relation to the image's composition and use of a tripod. I also tried shooting cutaway shots of my mum chopping healthy food which I could switch to and from while she was speaking so it wasn't just a close up shot of her the whole 2 or so minutes which Jill said would prove to be boring. During the filming, I created a sort of continuity list to criticism my shots and how I could improve them, and have used this method throughout all filming which I found really helpful.

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On Kathy (my mum's) second shoot, I created a location reece and evaluated other potential places to film. From this I thought my nan's house would be most suitable as the kitchen area is spacious, well- light as well as the whole house being a generally quiet environment in comparison to my house. I didn't rent a tripod this time as I felt it would be easier to film hand- held, plus this would create a more home- made feel which some of the other dieting documentaries I watched on TV including Channel 4's 'How To Loose Weight Well'. I did however ensure to use a microphone and this improved the sound quality drastically. I followed a similar concept to last time's shoot, including the cutaway shots, but this time filmed a medium close up as Kathy didn't feel as comfy when the camera was in her face! I asked my mum to talk about anything which related to dieting to create more of a natural, conversation vibe in comparison to it looking like she was just answering questions which can look quite rehearsed.

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Following this, Rebecca and I then shot our joint parts at her house. Fortunately her friend had a DSLR with a great lens and a microphone which captured sound really well. Although it can be quite difficult to film with a friend, we still managed and after quite a few takes, was happy with what we had. At the end of our experience, we returned to Rebecca's to shoot our end conversation highlighting whether the fad won, or the high- carb, high exercise.

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I have worked with Rebecca a couple of times prior to this assessment and I feel we always do work well together. This time, I felt we did especially as where I'm more comfty writing scripts and doing all the radio work, and Rebecca prefers the filming side it worked out well. Where we were experimenting on two different diets, we didn't have to meet up much which was handy as we could film our own vlogs, I would edit mine, then send it to Rebecca for it to be put into the documentary.

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The vlogs, coined by Rebecca was a great way to document us trying out the diets. I simply used my IPhone to do this, when meant I didn't have to worry about a tripod and microphone or lighting.

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In relation to our radio documentary, this was quite straight- forward, but I did struggle at times as writing a script is quite time consuming and it's very easy to loose concentration. Plus, I often experienced technical difficulties on the macs, including the application crashing and having to force quit it which is probably one of the most stressful things when you've worked so hard! Luckily, my work did back up, nevertheless this has taught me to save work regularly. One thing I feel the radio lacks are soundtracks. However, when working on Adobe's Audition at times the macs once again crashed resulting in us having to re-record parts due to them being deleted. This can get very frustrating, nonetheless, we persevered but I didn't manage to put music in the background as I really wasn't sure what would be appropriate. This is definitely something I would modify if I got the chance to improve the project.

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Aspects I was most proud of included the edited version of my mum's interview and my blogs. It's no secret that I HATE filming and didn't know how to use Final Cut, but I manged to put together little sequences to be included in the documentary which I liked as I included graphics and varied my transitions using things such as a 'fade in', which I felt made the footage look quite professional. Secondly, I was also quite fond of my Fitspo segment which involved extreme close ups of me searching on Google and then scrolling through the photos I found on Pinterest and also on my phone screen. It might sound silly, but I really believe this looked quite professional and the depth of field was really blurred which I loved.

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Of course our documentaries aren't perfect, although I feel we put our best in and am proud of the outcome. The radio by far could be much better in relation to the audio quality which I did try to modify on Audition but for a student whose worst subjects are film and radio, I feel we smashed this and am super happy. Unfortunately our radio isn't 40 minutes. The reason for this is, I feel I covered all aspects in what we had and honestly believe that if we were to speak for that long, it would be chucking in everything and the kitchen sink, which is not what you want as repeating yourself and waffling on simply creates something that is boring which will

loose listener's interest.