Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how t hese skills developed over time. I developed a variety of research and planning skills throughout the production of my AS and A2 courses. I think that when doing the research for our AS production, the location planning had by far the biggest impact on the production that contributed to it turning out well. We knew that we wanted to create a film in the thriller genre, and so we needed a location that created an eerie atmosphere. After carrying out some in depth research about what type of location created the uncanny atmosphere in other films in the thriller genre, we decided that our final location would be a train station. We chose to film almost all of our production at the train station because of the contrast of it being such a normal, everyday location that would be turned into a formidable setting. Another reason why the planning of the location was so important was because we had to consider the effects of the possible diagetic sound. When contemplating the train station, we thought about the trains making high pitched, and very loud, sharp noises. As well as these sounds, the audience would also be able to hear the everyday noise of trains and commuters talking. The contrasts of these noises would contribute to the disturbing setting. The research and planning of the mise en scene for our AS production had a big impact on the ‘scary’ effect that we wanted to come across to the audience. We decided to use the conventional weapons and fake blood to make it obvious to the audience that our antagonist was the dangerous character out of the two in the film. We also took our actors clothing into consideration as we wanted our villain to have a mysterious look about them, and we gave our protagonist a school bag to make her come across as innocent and vulnerable as possible. The reason that we chose to use such conventional objects and clothing is because when we looked at the opening two minutes of films in the same thriller genre, we found that violent objects were commonly used to represent the ‘villain’ without giving away too much information about what they have actually done. I improved and progressed my research and planning skills at A2 whilst making a music video. When doing research, I looked at 10 music videos that were part of the indie genre and they were all dramatically different, ranging from music videos that were entirely performance based to some with narrative. This was a huge help to me because I was able to think more about what specifically contributed to making these videos successful and I was able to access the research that I had found whenever I needed it via my blog. At A2, one of the most important factors that contributed to us producing a successful music video was making a filming timetable. During our AS production of our film we didn’t properly plan what and when we were going to film. Because of this we had came across a lot of problems with the availability of our actors and with the weather on the day preventing us from filming. To avoid this when making our production at A2, we created a filming schedule and we informed our artist about the times and places that we wanted to film weeks in advance. We also made sure that we maximised our filming time as much as possible by planning what we wanted to film beforehand.
Although I created multiple storyboards during the production of our AS film, in A2 I feel
that they had a much greater impact on how the quality of our music video turned out. At AS, even though I created the storyboard beforehand, I found that because we were creating a film, some of the shots didn’t work well on camera. We therefore had to change a lot of our plans and the filming process became quite confusing. However, at A2, when making a music video with only one setting, we were able to picture how each shot would look in each location. This impacted the end result because we were able to create better quality footage instead of messily making it up if the shots didn’t work. Before creating the website, I thought that it was really important to look at websites of other artists in the indie genre. This really impacted the quality and quantity of the website, as we used the other websites as a ‘template’ almost, so that we knew what pages we did and didn’t need. For example, 4/5 websites that I looked at included a ‘news page’, but only 2/5 has an ‘about me’ page. This helped me to make the decision not to include an ‘about me’ page as it was unnecessary especially with existing websites like Wikipedia that fans can use to access information on the artist if they wanted too. Not including certain pages also made space on the site and it gave it a more ‘minimal’ and professional look that we were going for in the first place. Looking at the finished quality of the website, I was quite proud of what I had done especially considering I had never built a website before. Looking at other indie artist’s digi-paks was important especially because we weren’t sure about how we wanted ours to look. Before I started A2 media, I didn’t have any skills or knowledge about how to create a digi-pak. After looking at five different artists digi-paks, I found that the most important aspect of each one was that they conveyed emotion. Because of this, I found that our digipak should include low toned colours to reflect the artist’s emotional depth. Our final digi-pak included a low contrasted orange with lots of shadows. When taking audience feedback, many people who commented on the looks of our digi-pak said that they thought it represented the fact that the artist was emotionally intelligent. From AS to A2 I improved my research and planning in many ways, leading me to make better creative decisions to overall create a successful final product. EAA 6/10
(Explanation/analysis/argument)
EG 7/ 10
(Range of examples used)
TERM 3 / 5
(Accuracy/ range of media terms )
A* 22.5
A 20
B 17.5
C 15
D 12.5
E 10
Achieved Level 3 (16–20 marks) There is some sense of progression and of how examples have been selected, and some useful descriptions of research and planning. Progress made is described and evaluated with clarity. Candidates offer a mostly clear, mostly relevant and reasonable range of examples of research and planning in relation to decisions and outcomes. The answer makes proficient use of media terminology throughout, with research, planning and production terms handled very well. Straightforward ideas have been expressed with some clarity and fluency. Arguments are generally relevant, though may stray from the point of the question. There will be some errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar but these are unlikely to be intrusive or obscure meaning.