1a. Describe the ways in which your production work was informed
by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for
production developed over time.
Research into real media texts was an
essential part of constructing my productions over time. For my film opening in
my first year of the course I began by watching a great deal of film openings
from my chosen genre. I watched drama films which were recent such as 'Public
Enemies' (2009) and 'The Godfather' (1972). After constructing a ten-frame
analysis of 'Public Enemies' as a point of reference I was able to see the
common conventions of this type of film. This included a variation of shot
angles, something which I used in my final production. I posted these findings onto my blog for my
own personal reference.
The
internet was also a crucial part of my research stage. I watched the film
openings of previous students to see what I would be capable of making on a low
budget myself. I also used the Internet Movie Data Base, this enabled me to
cross reference films of my chosen genre and measure their success. I was able
to obtain royalty free music for my film opening on RoyaltyFreeMusic.com, this
allowed me to use music without confronting issues with copyright.
My
research also extended to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter,
these allowed me to keep up to date with the development of social media and
measure the level of interest from people who would be faced with my finished
product.
Research was also a key component in the construction of my Music Video
in my second year. I began my research for this by watching numerous music
videos from my chosen genre (pop) on Youtube. I went on to complete another
ten-frame analysis, except this time it was in much more detail and far more
relevant to my final piece than my previous one for the production task of my
first year. Instead of analysing simple facts such as colours and scenery, I
looked deeper into them. As music videos are more artistic I looked for symbolic
meaning behind the objects, scenes, lighting and perspective of the video. By
trying to make more relevant comments about each frame I was able to notice
patterns in the shots used. Most shots would return to the type of shot they
had began with. For example a sequence may start with a mid shot, then go to a
close up, before returning back to a mid shot. This observation made me much
more aware of how sequences worked and allowed me to use this sense of
regularity in the construction of shots in my final production.
I
also created another preliminary task for my second production. This was far
more developed than my preliminary task from my previous year in which I
demonstrated a sequence of shots in an improvised situation to use techniques
such as shot reverse shot and cross cutting. Although this task had allowed me
to practise new filming skills I found my newer technique used in my music
video preliminary task far more applicable to the further creation of my final
task. This is because my second attempt involved me replicating the opening
sequence of a real music video. Instead of blindly trying to create shots from
a textbook I copied them from a real product, Taylor Swifts 'We are never ever
getting back together' video. I found this much more helpful to the creation of
my task as it challenged me much more and enabled me to film something which I
was aiming to create instead of just separate tools which I hoped to use at
some point. The filming techniques were much more difficult to create, but this
was mainly down to the lack of professional equipment I had. We had to
improvise with our low budget filming equipment in order to try and replicate
the high standard of shots and techniques used in the real video. At first this
proved challenging, but we were able to gain the desired effect after some practice.
The
internet was once more crucial to the research of my music video. The use of it developed greatly in our second
year. We went on to use online tutorials to learn how to gain new transition
effects and develop our editing skills for when we had finished our task. By
teaching ourselves how to use our software in a more effective manner we were
enabling ourselves to stretch the boundaries when we reached our editing
process. Something which we did as our transitions included a kaleidoscope
effect, animation and inverted overlaid images over our shots. These skills
would never have been able to be used in our video if we had not researched how
to better use and understand the workings of Final Cut.
I
also began using social media much earlier in our research stages. We used
Twitter, Facebook and Deviantart to advertise and create a following for our
video before we released it. I did this by giving regular updates on progress,
releasing sneak peeks, and sharing my preliminary lip sync task. This was
useful as I was able to gather interest for the video before I had finished and
released it. I also used the social networking sites to release a series of
polls in order to evaluate the age of my target audience and their expectations
for the video. This helped me to stick to relevant conventions whilst planning
my video and not stray too far from my themes and what my audience wanted to
see.
I
blogged in further detail in my second year, using a more varied and creative
manner of presenting my ideas such as post-it note films, whiteboard talks and
Prezi presentations.
Despite the development and success of the planning of my products I
also faced a degree of challenges in these first stages. For my film opening I
found that the drama genre is extremely broad and is often paired with other
genres such as thriller and horror. This made it extremely difficult to find
films that were of the drama genre alone to analyse due to the sheer amount of
overlap. With my music video the challenges were also present, but varied. My
research and planning was much more involved in the creation of my music video
as I had a clear idea of the locations I wished to use and had to gain
permission from the National Trust and Bekonscot model village to film in their
locations. In some cases this took a great deal of time phoning and chasing
different people in order to get permission, fix filming dates and sort out
risk assessments. We also had to gain permission to use the music we had chosen
by our unsigned artist, this all took up a great deal of time and restricted
the development of our product at stages as we often had to wait on the
response of other people before being able to continue further in our planning
and production route.
Each stage of my planning is recorded on my
blog. This collation of my planning processes demonstrates the sheer amount of
time I have spent researching and planning each step of my production. Without
these stages and the use of other media texts I would not have been able to
create my task.