Research and Planning Questions

Organisation of Research:

Referencing all of the internet sites that I had visited to find the research was easy because I could just place a link from my blog to that website. Books could just be referenced on the blog by writing out the author and where I got the book from.

My organisational skills did develop over AS and A2 because I found the blog easier to use as I went along and because all of the posts were in chronological order so if I needed to refer back then I could easily find it. Also, I included a ‘Search Posts’ feature on my A2 blog because that made it even easier for me to find previous posts, keeping it organised and easy to access each post.

Planning (Pre-Production):
For the pre-production stage of my coursework pieces (planning), I researched into a more variety of different planning methods in order to help with the organisation on the day of the shooting. For example, in my AS coursework for my film opening, I produced a script and researched about call sheets that were used in the real film productions in order to make sure that the cast knew where they were at the correct date. It also helped for preparations with props and the locations (especially when I needed to use make-up for the witch character).
Drafting was extremely important because it allowed for audience feedback to be more precise and teacher feedback was more appropriate/direct towards certain aspects of my text. I collated audience feedback by keeping ‘feedback sheets’ with audience members’ feedback on it. For AS, I used a simple questionnaire to evaluate whether or not the film opening was appealing to them and how they think it could be improved (which helped point out that the inside shots were too dark and should be re-filmed).

Organisation of Time, Personnel and Equipment/Working as an Individual:

Communication and organisation of personnel (the cast in my case because I was working on my own) was improved because of the use of planning (call sheet for example) and the storyboarding allowed me to know what cast member would be in which shot (and so when producing a music video with many shots it made it easier to organise the people into the right places and pre-tell them the next shots that we were going to film). What I did learn through organisation of personnel was that sometimes cast members sometimes do not get along as planned to (for the music video the musician and the female character were supposed to be in the same shot but didn’t get along so I filmed them separately to try and get around that). What I could have done better with the situation was tried to get them to meet before the day of shooting and so I knew for definite on whether it would work or not.
I learnt that there are advantages and disadvantages of working on my own (such as being able to be more creative and not having conflicting ideas with others) but also having the disadvantage of having more work to complete on my own instead of sharing it out with a group.

Organisation/Presentation of Research and Planning Materials:

In order to make it easier to read (because I was working with children for my AS), I made sure that the script and call sheet were Word Processed so that they were easily readable and also I could print out several copies of each document to give to each cast member in advance so that they knew what they were saying/doing. I also gave them a ‘brief’ before filming telling them exactly how it would work and what I overall had in mind for them to do when acting. This made it a lot easier to move quickly through the production stage and they knew what I wanted them to do.
I posted ‘diaries’ of how each shooting day went and this helped to reflect back onto what I had done previously and compare on what I should re-film (especially with my A2 music video). To enhance with the presentation of my planning/research I used digital technologies and a variety of software (such as Animoto and Prezi) in order to show my creativity through presentation.