1A- Research and Planning First Draft

Explain how your research and planning skills have developed over time, and how they have contributed to your media production outcome.
Research is a systematic investigation to establish facts or principles or to collect information on a subject and planning identifies the goals or objectives to be achieved and formulates strategies to reach them. The use of research and planning has had a massive influence on my media productions over the last two years since I started the subject in year 12. I have learnt how to utilize them in the most effective way, and from this have perceived the various benefits they create. This has proved very valuable to me and its merits can be seen in my finish products, which are, my film opening 'Outlaw' and music video 'Drugs'

 In year 12 for our AS media studies, we were required to find inspiration from texts and in this paragraph I will explain how we used this research to create our final products. Firstly, the chosen genre for our film opening Outlaw was action/mystery and both of these were fairly easy to research as they are the common foundations for many big budget blockbusters of Hollywood and it was just as easy to apply these action and mystery components to our scenes. However in year 13 when we were assigned to producing a music video, our group decided to choose a mixture of two genres, psychedelic music and alternative rock, which is basically a style of rock music popular in the late 1960s that was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called “mind-expanding” drugs such as marijuana and LSD, and that reflected drug-induced states through the use of feedback, electronics, and intense volume. From this our group was able to establish various ideas surrounding the genre, such as, a need to include bright and trippy colors that match the conformity of psychedelic music, thus we edited some shots into being multicolored and reversed so as to implement this. 

 Furthermore, for our film opening 'Outlaw' we decided to create a lot of enigma, which can be summarized to Barthes Hermeneutic Code, referring to any element of the story that is not fully explained and hence becomes a mystery to the reader. In correlation with our research of this, the group collectively decided that we would leave the audience questioning every single shot and scene as to the purpose of our main character, for example, the first half of the video consists of the protagonist walking through the wilderness without a clear explanation as to where he is heading and what will be there to greet him. Ultimately, this leaves the audience on edge and allows the enigma to leave them with questions that are unable to be answered until the very end of the film opening. Alternatively, with our year 13 music video it was harder to include the same level of enigma as the lyrics of the song 'Drugs' made it evident as to the direction of the music video and therefore the audience wouldn't need to question what would be happening next.

 In year 12, the only other thing our group needed to research was for the film poster, and we took inspiration from the likes of The Matrix and the first Star Trek movie. We decided to copy and adapt our own version of their film posters, and the influence we gained from them was to have the main villain staring into the camera for the photograph and then this was edited on Photoshop, in which we gave him red devilish eyes. It was as if the villain was staring at the audience, and he was wearing a mask to keep his identity unknown and to keep the element of mystery intact throughout the film opening. Although, because of the tasks of a digipak and website, the need for further research was exceedingly more essential in year 13 for our music video, and this level of research wasn't necessary when creating the film opening. For the digipak we were enticed and inspired in particular by Coldplays digipak for their most recent album because it revolved around brightness and happiness which was exactly our aim and therefore this research was very useful to our group. Next, for the website, Post Malone and Travis Scott were crucial to the creation of our own website, as we drew various ideas from each of their websites in combination to form the image and structure that we so desired, such as, Travis Scotts color scheming of black and green for his homepage, and from this we halved our main photograph into two colors and this worked extraordinarily well in highlighting/focusing the audience on the main artist Paleme.
 Finally, we were required to plan ahead for all of our tasks in year 12, in preparation for the film opening, that way we were able to conduct ourselves in an organised manor and at the same time avoiding mistakes that could have been made if our group didn't plan at all. For our film opening 'Outlaw' we created a very simple storyboard that was practically a simple sketch of what we aimed to shoot on our chosen date, and it was so basic that most of the shots were changed on the day. In a similar fashion we created a shooting schedule which comprised of the date we were going to film on and the equipment that was required for this. On the other hand, with our year 13 music video the shooting schedule was more intricate because of the busy lifestyles each group member had, for example, it had to align with our planners, work schedules and all the other clubs and activities we were involved with. This was very helpful for us in allowing the opportunity for shooting days, otherwise without this schedule the amount we were filming would have been minimized greatly. Similarly, with the music video storyboard it was necessary to include extra detail and information, and as a result we decided to create a video storyboard as well as a physical copy.
 In conclusion, my overall improvements have been considerable in the transition from year 12 to year 13, particularly my research and planning skills for which have played an important part in my products as a whole.