Planning

The organisation of time and equipment

For our thriller film there was 3 of us in our group, we wanted to be able to all go out and film at the same time and be able to edit as a group, fortunately we had the same free periods as each other, we also spent a lot of time filming after school as we found this time of day suitable for the ambiance of our thriller film. When in school we would sort out what lessons we would shoot in using a shooting schedule, this helped us a lot because it made us manage our time a lot better. When using the shooting schedule we would work out what shots needed to be filmed in the same day meaning the mise-en-scene would be the same. We would book out all the equipment that we needed on the day, this normally consisted of a video camera and a tripod for steady shots. We worked well as a group and could all pitch in idea's that we had, this made it easier when coming to filming as it made things run more smoothly and didn't take a long time. We encountered some problems when it came to the equipment we used, some days we found that the video camera would run out of battery half way through filming a shot, which would be time consuming as some of our shots were outside, this meant we had to wait for the camera to charge until we could film again. We also found that when using one of the tripods the camera did not stay still on it as it had a fault, this meant some of our shots could have been better than they were, but i don't think it affected our overall outcome. When filming our music video we used the same concept of a shooting schedule as we did in our thriller film. Also the person i was working with had the same free lessons as me meaning we had plenty of time to plan. We were not able to film in lesson time which meant we had to use our free lessons to film which didn't turn out much of a problem as we had 10 hours a week free.

The efficient choice and organisation of actors, setting and props

In our thriller film we decided that it would be easy to use people from our group as actors as we knew exactly what we wanted. I think this worked out well because we worked well as a group and didn't come across any problems when it came to acting. For the setting we wanted our thriller to be based on the unordinary happening in the ordinary, we achieved this by using one of our houses as a location. In our film we used a typewriter, this gave a deeper meaning to our film, leaving the audience wondering what the typewriter was there for. In our music video we decided to use our artist as the actor as well as she would have a connection to the song as its her own, it also made it easier when it came to the editing stage as we wanted to use lip syncing and this was made easier with the artist. When planning for our music video we knew we wanted to film outdoors, as it could give us a good use of shots, we chose a local woods called 'Hitch wood' for our location as it was easily accessible and fitted what we were looking for.

Scripting and/or Storyboarding

When it came to story boarding our thriller film it took us a few times to get the story board right, as going through it we would come up with new ideas, this was good as it made us realise what we could do to improve it. I feel that the story board helped us when planning but when it actually came to filming we got a better understanding of what would look good and ended up changing a few things. It helped in the way of what shots we could use and what frames needed filming on what day.
For our music video we storyboarded what we thought would look good but again, when we were filming we decided to change a few things because we thought that it would look better, when changing these idea's it meant that we had a lot of things to talk about when it came to the evaluating stage. Again it helped us with what frames to film when and what shots would look good.

Initial target audience feedback

For our thriller film we wanted the target audience to be the same age as us 16-17, as we felt because it would be shown to friends and people in our class it would make it easier to get feedback, plus we have a better understanding of what that age group wants. We watch films such as Se7en and Face off to get some research about thriller films. We also gave out questionnaires to our target audience to get a deeper understanding of what they would like to see in our thriller film. I found that this research and feedback helped a lot when it came to planning our thriller film because we had initial ideas but from the feedback we could make the film much better.
For our music video we watched a lot of different video's before deciding what type of video we wanted to make, we watched video's that were narrative, performance and concept based. In the end we chose to use the narrative base because it would fit with our genre of music, we also used some performance of our artist lip-sycning. We realised when researching about this type of music video that it would appeal to people around the same age as us, about 18-24 year olds, and also that it would attract more girls than boys because of the genre. Taking this on board we made the video fit the target audience as much as we could.

Existing media practice/products

When planning our thriller film we researched the conventions of a thriller film and chose what we would like to use in our thriller film, for example we decided to use the idea of the unordinary happening in the ordinary setting. We also watch openings to other thriller films to see how they introduce characters and situations. I feel this helped a lot when it came to making our thriller because we knew what would look good and what wouldn't.
When planning our music video we watched lots of different music video's, we also researched about theories and conventions of music video's and found out about Goodwin's theory. He said that 6 conventions always come up in a music video, we looked at these principles and made sure our music video consisted of them.

Creativity

Novel (new) associations which are useful
(Isaken and Treffinger, 1993)
Creating is making new links to what the conventions are, in my music video I made links to different conventions that were normally seen in a music video, for example I used some conventions of Goodwins theory. This included using Genre characteristics, the relationship between lyrics and visuals, the relationship between music and visuals, voyeurism and Star motifs. Goodwin said that in every music video these conventions would appear.

The making of the new and the rearranging of the old
(Bentley, 1997)
A different way of looking at creativity is taking inspiration of something and making it your own. For example when planning our music video, we looked at some music videos that matched our genre. The artist that we chose would best suit a narrative based video. We used the idea of a story emerging behind the video, which we had seen in other narrative based video’s we then decided that if we added some performance in the music video would make it more interesting.

Rule breaking/boundary testing
When using creativity you can break rules deliberately for it to be your own. When making my music video I tried using different editing effects that would not be stereotypical to a narrative based video. This is because I wanted the video to stand out, and make it look different to everything else. I think the use of different transitions still make the music video look soft and magical but with some of the editing techniques that I used I made it look different.