Research and Planning Essay

My research and planning skills have improved throughout my time studying media. In Year 12, we had to begin by researching genre and how it relates to film. We then explored this further by identifying which conventions are related to each genre. We did this by watching a variety of films and, more specifically, film openings. We then did a photography task where we had to take photos around our school to represent different genres of film. This allowed us to put our knowledge into practice. We then had to research independent and mainstream cinema and learnt how the production company of a film has an effect on the quality of the product produced. We discovered that independent films have a much lower budget than mainstream and therefore, do not include massive sets and stunts. Independent films also, typically, tackle more serious narratives than mainstream cinema.
After this, we also looked at different theorists and the things that they believed about the narratives of films. It was important that we knew how narrative worked and what the narrative of our entire film would be in order to make a believable film opening. Theorists we looked at included Todorov's equilibrium theory, Propp's character theory, Levi-Strauss' binary oppositions theory and Bathes' enigma codes theory. As well as this, we explored the audience reception theory, hypodermic needle theory and, most importantly, semiotics. This gave us all of the tools that we needed to develop our own film opening. We also looked at 'Art of the Title' to examine how the titles of a film opening in a particular genre are presented, but also the order that they appear on the screen. We then had to ensure that the titles in our film opening matched the order and style that we had found historical dramas had. We found that the titles faded in and out on the screen with no other transitions or effects, they were black or white and were not 'funky' in any way.
After this initial research, the planning stage of our project began. This started with doing some practice edits using Adobe Premiere Pro to ensure that we could accurately use the software before making our film opening. These practice edits included importing and then editing footage of dancing animals together, copying a real film opening, in our case Juno, and this included both filming and editing the footage and then doing a preliminary task so that we can experience the whole process of making a film opening before doing the real thing. This included making storyboards, shooting schedules, prop lists and shot lists. When making our final film opening, all of these documents needed to be much more thorough and we also needed to make a risk assessment for the location that we were going to film at.
In Year 13, our research process needed to be much more in-depth and complex. There was also more research in general that needed to be carried out since we had to research artist's brands, music videos, digipaks and websites. To begin with, we researched the different forms of music video- narrative, concept and performance. We then looked at genres of music and identified which genres were most likely to produce the different types of music videos. This was a critical thing to look into before we made a decision about which type of music video we decided to make for our chosen genre. We then looked at two prominent music video theorists: Carol Vernallis and Andrew Goodwin. We looked deeply into their theories and then found some music videos that support them. We then did a few creative tasks which involved listening to songs and trying to come up with ideas about what the song's music video looks like. This allowed us to think about the imagery that music and lyrics create so that we could effectively apply this to our own music video.
Once we researched everything we needed to for the music video, we moved on to the digipak. It was important that we looked at how connections were made between an artist's image, their music videos and their digipaks; we would need to make similar links when we created our own. We found that all digipaks had common conventions, such as the size of the panels, the fact that new artists typically have their face on the cover and their name, there is album art inside and a song list and a barcode on the back. However, when we researched further, we found that there were also more specific conventions that could be found within different genres of music. For example, indie artists typically had photos that were black and white or dull in colour on their digipaks.
We then had to look at artist's websites and again see how these link to their other products and branding. We found that artists have many photographs on their website and also a homepage, gallery, news, music, tour and contact page. However, different genres may order these pages differently on their navigation bar. We needed to identify as many of these little details as possible in order to make our own website look professional. We also found that artists tend to have merchandise pages and the products they sell have links to their music video and their current album's digipak.

We then began our extensive planning stage of the course. This involved doing some practice edits in order to develop our skills further before making our music video. This meant using many different creative effects and doing a preliminary task of copying a real music video. This prepared us for the amount of work that was required to make a music video since there are many more shots to film and edit. We started our music video creation process by annotating the lyrics of the song with some ideas that we had and creating a video mood board of ideas from real music videos; we then had to storyboard our music video so that we could work out exactly what our music video would look like. After this, it was time to make our prop list and shot list to ensure that we were as prepared as possible for filming. Before going onto location, we also had to write up a risk assessment for the shoot. This was to ensure that we were prepared for any emergencies that could happen. The same had to be done for the artist photo shoot that we carried out to get the photos for the website and digipak. Once the photo shoot was complete we needed to edit the photographs in Adobe Photoshop before they could be used. We then had to draw out plans for the website and digipak layouts based on the research that we had previously conducted that told us all of the forms and conventions for a website and digipak in our genre. We then had to put together some synergy ideas for how we could ensure that the music video, website and digipak all look like one brand. We decided to use the colour red to do this as well as using the same font and similar costumes.