The third form of the first question asks about how our research and planning skills improved over time and how we were able to present our ideas. Here is the mind map for this question that can be turned into a draft essay.
Plan
- Research
-Similar Products – I watched a lot more short films in preparation for the A2 project because I wanted to be more aware of the structure of the form of film I was making, where I would have just put titles in where I felt looked good at AS, I researched when they should be for A2.
-Audience – Last year I created a survey and adapted my film opening to the responses I got, as a result I ended up with something different from what I had planned. This year I created the survey without the intention to adapt my film but to find an audience for what I already had planned. I also watched a lot of films from the genre for inspiration so that I was more aware of what my audience would expect to see from the film. - Preparation
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Explain how your research and planning skills developed over time and contributed to your media production outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer. [25 marks]
Version 1
I found it difficult to perfect the idea for my film opening because I kept finding faults in the storyline or things that I wouldn’t be able to film. Therefore in preparation for our short film we did a lot more pitching to the class, which helped us to get feedback and different ideas from others to improve on our original ideas. As a result the narrative worked really well and there were no gaps in what the audience understood from my film.
Once I had my finalised idea, the way that I carried out my research for my A2 project differed greatly from AS. I watched a lot more short films in preparation for my A2 project which I found on both Vimeo and YouTube, this was so that I was more aware of the structure and form of the media product that I was creating because I wasn’t as aware as I could have been that there were a few rules when making a film opening. For my AS project I placed the titles where I thought they looked good as opposed to finding out where they would commonly be shown, however for my short film I researched into when the title and credits would normally be shown. This has allowed my work to look more professional as it is structured correctly.
Both years I have carried out some form of audience research, mainly through surveys. For my film opening. ‘Blackhaven’, I felt that I needed to adapt my film to the responses that I got, as a result my work wasn’t how I initially planned. When we created our LAFTAs entry, ‘Uninvited’, we didn’t do any sort of audience research and the finished scene turned out really well despite not having an input from our target audience. This year I had a different approach and designed a survey without the intention to adapt my film depending on my results. I asked questions that would allow me to find an audience for my film and to make sure that it would meet their expectations of the genre. This meant that my idea was more unique and I executed it the way I first pictured it rather than changing characters and story lines to suit what my responses said they would like to see.
During the preparation of my short film, ‘Familiar’, I thought a lot more about mise-en-scene because in our LAFTAs production, we didn’t plan some aspects of the film too well, in particular the costumes. I therefore did a lot of research and preparation into what my characters should look like and what they would be wearing as I had such a short amount of time to establish character, I wanted the audience to straight away recognise my young girl as being innocent and the adult male in my film as being threatening. This has helped to improve the narrative of my work and how well the audience follows the storyline and empathises with the young girl.
I did the same with props and location, during our AS project and LAFTAs production, we often didn’t think about our location and making it look like it was supposed to on camera, I didn’t feel that our mental hospital in Blackhaven looked as cold as we first planned because we didn’t think about what the audience would be able to see in the whole frame. I decided that I needed to visit all of my locations in advance and plan how I was going to position the camera and often what I was going to move around and place in the background so that there was always something interesting in the frame even if it wasn’t the focus of the shot. This meant that my audience was able to identify my locations more easily which then allows them to follow the narrative more easily.
For my short film, I knew that I needed to prepare the sound design a lot earlier than I did for my other projects, as music is often difficult to find and is usually won’t match the pace of the filming and editing too well either. This year I found sound effects in advance so that I had a lot to work with right through the editing process. I also realised how many layers of sound there was in my AS production, this often became quite confusing and difficult to coordinate. Therefore this year I have written a blog post which tells me exactly when each of my sound effects and musical scores will be heard throughout my short film. This gave me more time to focus on key-framing my sound to make it fade in and out seamlessly without any silences.
When creating my storyboards, it helped that from experience I was more aware of what I could achieve using the different pieces of equipment and Final Cut Pro X. Therefore this allowed me to be more creative with the shots that I planned to do, the shots I used in Blackhaven were all still but we incorporated movement into our LAFTAs entry. The shots with movement looked a lot better and were a lot smoother than static shots, therefore I drew out my storyboards knowing that I wanted to use the mini dolly. This meant that my finished short film looked smoother and the cuts in between shots looked a lot better.
Version 2
I found it difficult to perfect the idea for my film opening at AS because I kept finding faults in the storyline or things that I wouldn’t be able to film. Therefore in preparation for my short film ‘Familiar’ at A2 I did more pitching to the class, which helped me to get feedback and different ideas from others to improve on my original ideas. As a result the narrative worked really well and there were no gaps in what the audience understood from my film and my storyline worked a lot better than it did at AS.
Once I had my finalised idea, the way that I carried out my research for my A2 project differed greatly from AS. I watched a lot more short films in preparation for my A2 project which I found on both Vimeo and YouTube, this was so that I was more aware of the structure and form of the media product that I was creating because I wasn’t as aware as I could have been that there were a few rules when making a film opening. For my AS project I placed the titles where I thought they looked good as opposed to finding out where they would commonly be shown, however for my short film I researched into when the title and credits would normally be shown, what they would contain and how they would normally look like. This has allowed my work to look more professional as it is structured correctly.
Both years I have carried out some form of audience research, mainly through surveys. For my film opening. ‘Blackhaven’, I felt that I needed to adapt my film to the responses that I got, as a result my work wasn’t how I initially planned. When we created our LAFTAs entry, ‘Uninvited’, we didn’t do any sort of audience research and the finished scene turned out really well despite not having an input from our target audience. This year I had a different approach and designed a survey without the intention to adapt my film depending on my results. I asked questions that would allow me to find an audience for my film and to make sure that it would meet their expectations of the genre. This meant that my idea was more unique and I executed it the way I first pictured it rather than changing characters and story lines to suit what my responses said they would like to see.
During the preparation of my short film, ‘Familiar’, I thought a lot more about mise-en-scene because in our LAFTAs production of ‘Uninvited’ after AS, we didn’t plan some aspects of the film too well, in particular the costumes. I therefore did a lot of research and preparation into what my characters should look like and what they would be wearing as I had such a short amount of time to establish character, I wanted the audience to straight away recognise my young girl as being innocent and the adult male in my film as being threatening. This has helped to improve the narrative of my work and how well the audience follows the storyline and empathises with the young girl.
I did the same with props and location, during my AS project and LAFTAs production, I often didn’t think about the location and making it look like it was supposed to on camera, I didn’t feel that our mental hospital in Blackhaven looked as cold as we first planned because we didn’t think about what the audience would be able to see in the whole frame. I decided that I needed to visit all of my locations in advance and plan how I was going to position the camera and often what I was going to move around and place in the background so that there was always something interesting in the frame even if it wasn’t the focus of the shot. This meant that my audience was able to identify my locations more easily which then allows them to follow the narrative more easily and therefore my A2 production looked more visually interesting and more like a real location.
For my short film, I knew that I needed to prepare the sound design a lot earlier than I did for my other projects, as music is often difficult to find and is usually won’t match the pace of the filming and editing too well either. This year I found sound effects in advance so that I had a lot to work with right through the editing process. I also realised how many layers of sound there was in my AS production, this often became quite confusing and difficult to coordinate. Therefore this year I have written a blog post which tells me exactly when each of my sound effects and musical scores will be heard throughout my short film. This gave me more time to focus on key-framing my sound to make it fade in and out seamlessly without any silences.
When creating my storyboards, it helped that from experience I was more aware of what I could achieve using the different pieces of equipment and Final Cut Pro X. Therefore this allowed me to be more creative with the shots that I planned to do, the shots I used in Blackhaven were all still but we incorporated movement into our LAFTAs entry. The shots with movement looked a lot better and were a lot smoother than static shots, therefore I drew out my storyboards knowing that I wanted to use the mini dolly. This meant that my finished short film looked smoother and the cuts in between shots looked a lot better.
Jess Marshall's A2 Media Studies Blog 