Research, Planning and Evaluation

We used different varieties of researching from questionnaires, watching alternative videos and films in the same genres, storyboarding and more.

When it came to other media products we watched a lot of films/videos from films like Kidulthood and Adulthood to Blink 182’s ‘Always’ music video which we were directly inspired by and in fact attempted to use the three section dividing technique from it but were unfortunately unable to recreate this effect due to the programmes not being available to us. By watching other videos and films we were able to see the features and techniques that were used which we could then use on our own products to make sure that they followed the conventions of other videos/films in the same genres

that we had chosen.

This in turn helped us create questionnaires, we had some ideas that we had collected from our wider research and could make the questions more specific whilst still allowing people to have their own opinions for example a selection of music video effects, Blink 182’s ‘Always’ video split screen effect being compared with Powder’s ‘Up here’ cartoon to reality transitions. These types of questions will result with more detailed answers that are precise to our genre.

The audience are the most important factor of our products since the point of our work is to create entertainment for them. This means that questionnaires are equally as important as it allows us to hear exclusively from the audience to hear what they like to see and what they don’t like to see in our music video/ film opening.

I think as a group we managed our time a lot more successfully when producing our A2 music video compared to our previous teenage drama opening since we were able to learn from our prior mistakes which allows us to divide our time sensibly, for example when it came to storyboarding we spent a little more time to make sure that we had every second accounted for by going through the timings and setting an image for each period, this meant we could spend less time filming, since we didn’t need to worry about what needed to be filmed next and where because all the timings were written down.
We had schedules to keep to when it came to filming, storyboarding and meeting up in school to edit our film. However since there are some times when members of the group are unable to make those set times/dates then its difficult to have everybody together, however the whole group tried their hardest, all of us gave up our free time in order to plan our production be it times to film or drawing on the storyboard.

There were very few disagreements between the team members because individually we are all quite open people and were willing to listen to each others ideas whilst still inputting our own views. Its important to have a group that get along since its easier to make sure that everyone involved likes the final product, if members weren’t in a position to comment and get involved it could jeopardise our product since people that are uncomfortable wont be able to contribute as much as they might want to and could be depriving our product of their skills.

There will always be things that you want to change when you see the final product, problems with the setting could have resulted in the mishaps with the backdrop showing its edges in the clips since this would not have happened had we stuck to the original location. Things like the grainy image cannot necessarily be helped since we had limited resources and the quality of camera had its boundaries and our videos our bound to look less professional since we have only ever made two productions at school.

I think that if we were to do the whole thing again then it is likely that we will spend even more time on planning and research. I also think that filming will take more time since we did have to return and film again on another date, had we spent more time then we could have had more shots and replaced the bad ones with other options.