Research and Planning Essay

In your experience how has your research and planning developed through creating your productions?

Over the two year course of AS and A2, our tasks included a film opening in AS and a music video in A2. The research and planning stage for both AS and A2 were similar in the fact of the actual tasks which we completed. Yet, in A2 as a group we went into more depth and detail, over all making it a more successful year of research and planning.

In AS for the Film Opening, for the research stage we conducted research into the genre in order to create a successful teen drama film. We researched into titles, such as using the website art of the title in order to achieve the desired look and timings for the typical teen drama. We researched into film genre conventions through research of actual films and he directors comments. A practise edit we did was replicating the opening titles of the film Juno in order to achieve the correct timings of shots and correct imagery/ conventions for the genre.
Another research task we did was creating a survey of questions suited to our genre and film opening, and sent it to the target audience to gain some feedback. As this feedback was specifically suited to the video and genre, it was more valuable and we were able to apply this to the video in the research stage. This was a large influence as we were able to have an insight into our target audiences opinions and how to shape our video to it, making the target audience more valid and reliable.

Whereas in A2, we conducted similar research - yet in more depth. We researched into the genre of pop and R&B music videos. We found from artists like SZA and Rihanna that R&B music videos typically have a narrative to the video and use of abstract imagery or meaning to the video. Pop music videos, like Katy Perry's and Dua Lipa were usually more performance based with straight shots and cuts. We wrote many pieces of work about the comparison of music videos from these genres in order for us to have the highest knowledge possible of our music genre.
For the other ancillary tasks of the Digipak and website, we found the pop and R&B genre conventions were similar in the fact that they both used bright colours and more the digipaks were more photoshoot based.
Some inspiration for our music video were Bruno Mars's Uptown Funk music video which was directed by Duddy, also Katy Perry's California Gurls video, which was directed by Cullen - both very respected and creative music video directors.
We directed multiple questionnaires and surveys for the research stage of our music video creation - including for the name of the artist, album title, and general feedback for the video. This allowed us to learn more about our target audience's views and letting them influence our work accordingly to make the video more fitting to them. The audience feedback was generally positive, apart from the negative comments stating some of the ancillary tasks being not synergetic enough, or pointing out certain shots in the video which needed tweaking. We applied all of the valuable feedback to our ancillary tasks.

In the planning stage for AS, we used initial ideas which we documented in the story board we made previous to filming. We knew we wanted to create a teen drama film about a rebellious girl arguing with her mother. We then built on this idea by planning costume and prop lists, more in depth plans for each shot. We organised our time using a template for a shooting schedule - where we could lay out clearly what times all four of our group were free to film and or work together. This was beneficial as we were more productive with our time and for getting our work done efficiently. The planning stage did help in our production as we had each shot planned in advance and knew what props and costume to bring, as well as when we could film and work together, making the overall filming and creating process much more professional and effective.

For the A2 planning stage, we were more depthful for the music video. We knew how important planning was from the film opening in AS, therefore we definitely prioritised it. We made pitches for our top three potential songs and what we would do with each for the video, which we presented to our class in order to get an educated decision for the final song choice and proposed music video. We documented our original/ initial ideas with examples of images and inspiring clips from real music videos. We organised ourselves similarly to AS with the same layouts for shooting schedules and story boards, and then our own prop and costume lists. Similarly to AS, the planning stage was effective as we were able to use our time concisely and productively - managing to keep to all the deadlines that were set by our teachers as we had set specific times for each task (such as filming, editing, and allocating certain amount of time and mini deadlines for blog posts). Thus, planning did help in the production stage. Also, our knowledge of the importance of research and planning from the AS tasks allowed us to have an improved second production in A2 - as we knew to prioritise these processes.

The digital technology that we used in both the research and planning stages were the use of blogger to house all of the actual research and planning, such as inspirational music videos and official documents like the risk assessment and the shooting schedule. We used YouTube in order to embed the inspiring videos onto blogger. We also used iMessage as a group in order to stay in contact as a group to ensure we were using our time constructively and being coherent to the deadlines. Adobe Premiere Pro was used to create the prelims, practise edits and the steal-o-matic for A2. Similarly to YouTube, we used Google Image Search to retrieve inspiration for the digipak and posters to put on the blog.

In conclusion, the research and planning stages were beneficial in order to create an overall successful final product. We learned from these processes the importance of both research and planning, as they both improved the final product as we knew exactly what look and final aim we were striving for.