Research and planning is a way of aiding towards the final
production. During my time from the start of AS media till now I have developed
a wide range of skills towards carrying out extensive research and planning. The
difference between my AS media and my A2 media show the how I have developed in
carrying out research and planning.
For my AS task as a group we had to create film openings,
before we started producing our film opening it was important that we carried
out planning and research. I started by reviewing different film openings and reviewing
the different titles and when they appeared in contrast with the scene cuts and
changes of sound. Our genre for our film opening was thriller/horror so it was
very important that the film openings I viewed were relevant to this genre. Reviewing
different film openings such as “The Pact” and pulling them apart title by
title was very important for what the titles actually included e.g. Costume
Designer. My A2 task was to produce a cross promotional media package for an
upcoming artist known as “C.DOT”, this would include mainly the music video, a
digipak and a website. To find out our target audience which we would market
C.DOT towards we carried out primary research which mainly included online
surveys using software which was called “Survey Monkey”. We were able to email
this to large numbers of people simultaneously and then produce the feedback
into different formats such as graphs to assess the data.
Secondary research was much more in depth compared to the
primary research that was taken especially for my AS film opening. My research
skills were at an average level before starting AS, one of the tasks for
example at AS was to watch unseen films and identify the genre just from
watching the film opening as it was important for us to replicate this in
clearly representing our film genre being horror/thriller in our film opening.
To make sure I could be consistent with this I would research different
thriller drama films, however when searching for the films to research from due
to my inexperienced research skills I tended to just go for the films that I
preferred not the ones which would aid my knowledge. This was a big change from
this to carrying out my A2 research for especially my website. I wouldn’t just
go for my preferred artist I would look into the different characteristics
which C.DOT would produce on camera especially with fashion and match this to
an artist best suited to him. This would allow me to get a high understanding
of the genre of Hip-Hop/Rap which C.DOT was involved in and the different sub-genre
that are involved.
Different music videos and editing techniques which we could
implement in our video was vital in when researching and planning, as if this
was carried out correctly we would be able to produce a high level video.
