Developing research and planning skills

Describe how you developed research and planning skills for your media production and evaluate how these skills contribute to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

From our opening sequence at Foundation level I developed how to create a good storyboard to create a clear outline of how the media product would look. The storyboard at this level had little detail and was only a short, rough showing of how the opening sequence would be. This had a positive effect as I had a rough guide even though it wasn't as detailed. Into Advanced Portfolio, I created a more detailed storyboard to get a better understanding of how the music video would turn out. It was a main guideline when setting up the camera and framing the shots and was vital to the production and gave a positive effect.

Shotlists were also created at foundation level to show what shots were needed and accompanied the storyboard. I relied more on the shotlist to get what shots were needed for the production of the opening sequence. At advanced level I made the shotlist more detailed and refereed to what picture it related to on the storyboard to help further understand what needed to be done and what was needed in the shot and what type. By having a more detailed shotlist and storyboard in A2, it made it easier and was more effective to know what needed to be shot whilst filming so this development had a positive effect on the production.

At foundation level I analysed existing media products to find what conventions were used to make it that genre. I looked at a wide range of genres and this helped to combine the thriller and horror genres together and I had knowledge of other conventions for the other genres so I knew what didn't need including. This was an analysis of the narrative and wasn't a close analysis. At advanced level I developed this by looking more specifically at the pop-rock genre of our given track. I did a textual analysis of the music videos of which the artist/artists were of a similar style as the artist on our track. By analysing these videos in more detail and not those of other genres, I clearly found the conventions of the pop-rock genre and included them in the production. Some conventions can be included in other genres but they are still part of the pop-rock genre. We also decided to further our research by looking at the existing media products of the artist of our track. This furthered our idea of what needed to be included and the conventions to keep it to our artists style. By developing a closer textual analysis of existing media products, it gave a positive effect on production as I knew the conventions well and what elements were needed to make it a pop-rock music video.

At foundation level I researched target audiences by using secondary sources on the Internet to find the statistics of what demographic visit the cinema most. I then furthered this by researching what genre they often watched. This helped us decided on our genre of thriller/horror. We also gave put questionnaires to our peers to further our research as they were of the demographic of those that visited the cinema most often and this would be our target audience. There feedback helped us further our ideas for the production. This research had a positive effect on our production as it enabled us to know our target audience well. At advanced level I didn't look closely at audiences, but analysed what demographic were likely to look at these videos by their style. This helped us target the video to those that enjoyed this genre and what age range to include in the video.