Research and Planning Prompt Questions

How did your research into genre contribute to your production work?
For Foundation Portfolio, researching the different types of film genres helped us to determine what genre we wanted to use for our opening sequence. We decided on the horror/thriller gerne and researched further into the conventions of an opening sequence of this genre. We then included many of these conventions into our production of the opening sequence, such as the death in the narrative and sense of mystery.
For the Advanced Portfolio, we first had to establish what genre our chosen track was. This was simply listening to the track and deciding what genre it was from general knowledge. We then researched into the pop/rock genre. we searched the definition and then watched videos on youtube of artists we knew were of the pop/rock genre. We noted what elements were common throughout these videos thereby finding the conventions of the genre. An example of these conventions is the narrative is usually fragmented which we used in our music video.
Throughtout both portfolios we used real media products to find the conventions of each genre and included them in each production.

How did your research into audience contribute to your production work?
For the Foundation Portfolio we researched what type of audience watched films and went to the cinema the most to find what sort of an audience demographic we wanted to market our production to. We also gave out questionnaires to our peers to further our audience research. We founf the main cinema aidence was 12-25, so we decided to market out production to this audience. we found this audience enjoyed the horror genre so furthered our decision to do this genre.
For the Advanced Portfolio we researhced our genres audience and gave out questions to find what our audience thought of our music video and the results showed we were following the conventions of the pop/rock genre as the audience thought it looked like it was of the pop/rock genre.

What pre-production planning techniques did you employ (scripting, storyboarding, shot-lists etc)? how effective was your planning, how did it help you in the production phase?
Foundation Portfolio we used scripting so the actors knew what they were saying so time wasn't wasted when filming. This helped gieve a better vision of how the sequence would look. We used a storyboard so all involved knew the storyline and look of how the opening sequence would initialy look. The group worked together to produce it so further understood the idea. We knew what shots needed to be taken when out filming and how they would look. We used shotlists so we knew what shots needed to be taken when out filming, threre were slight alterations but was a guideline of what we needed. We made a risk assessment to assess what could be hazardous so we were more consious of this during filming.
For Advanced Porfolio, scripting wasn't used as it was a music video, but the lyrics were printed off so our actor knew the words to lip sync to the song. Storyboards, shotlists and risk assessments were all used like at foundation portfolio. We didn't produce as detailed a storyboard as we did at foundation level, we relied more on a detailed shot list we compiled. We again made alterations to this shotlist wilst out filming and added shots that we didn't think about doing such as shots of the sun and the reflection in the water. Our shot list allowed for changes like this and we could then add them into our production, this would have been harder to fit in if we had used a detailed storyboard. Again the risk assessment made us more aware of potential dangers and accidents whilst filming so we knew to try and avoid this.

What did you learn from planning your first production that helped you to improve your planning for the second?
From our first production we knew it was very important to have good planning so that we were well organised. We didn't use call sheets for our second production and this caused problems with one of our actors deciding to not turn up so we learnt this was important to have. Having a detailed storyboard was more important at foundation level and we learnt that having a more detailed shot list helped us more with the advanced portfolio production as it allowed more freedom to change things around when shooting. By having a stricter storyboard for foundation level we learnt it would aid our creativity more if we used a more detailed shotlist, although a good storyboard helped give us a good picture of how the product would look. Having a good risk assessment made for our first production helped us improve our planning for the second production as we knew what sort of risks there were and we could apply the risks we found at AS to our A2.

How did you use audience feedback to influence your production work whilst it was in progress?
We showed the rough cut to our teacher and peers in both Foundation Portfolio and Advanced, by doing this we learnt where we could improve, what wasn't working etc, so we then changed or added elements to improve the overall final cut. We used this more at advanced portfolio and our final product was of a better standard, so audience feedback was crucial to maing our video good. in advanced portflio we gave a presentation of our research and initial ideas which we recieved audeince feedbcak from our peers and teacger and this helped us to improve our written work.