March 2022

Top

Tuesday 1st March

I continued with my sound editing on my options project today. Today, I focused on adding in my soundscapes as these act as basically backing tracks for the whole of the piece. I was able to get them all in today, however a couple of them are still rough. Particularly Wallace’s apartment and the alien world soundscapes I felt I still needed to improved.

I was fairly happy for the medieval and object soundscapes. For both of these, I used a mix of natural outside for objects and indoor sound for medieval. As well as combining each with one other feature to make it significant. For medieval I used the chair pull which was in my original plan and for the object world I used the item drops I had recorded to give it the right sound effects.

I was particularly happy with the human world effect where I mixed my natural outside road recordings together. I cut it up so that the car noises going past were closer together to make the effect more impressive. I also removed parts where the wind was heavy on the mic as it ruined the quality. However, I decided to add these back in, but only very quietly and behind the other sound. This gave a very quiet wind noise and improved the realism of the soundscape without it being obvious mic noise.

I had a little bit more time so I added in the music for both of my shop scenes. This was fairly simple as I could get the music online, considering I cannot write music myself. I put each piece quietly in the background of each scene and to the end of each I keyframed the volume going down slowly. This allows for a smoother audio transition into the next soundscape rather than an abrupt halt. However, I left the abrupt change in the beginning as it creates a nice contrast to show that Wallace has entered the shop. Additionally, in the human world this sudden change to shop music is quite comedic when seen with the shopkeeper simply staring at the camera, and I actually really liked that comedic effect.

Tuesday 1st

Wednesday 2nd March

I started today by writing one more of my project 2 evaluations. This was not too hard, as now that I have already written two I am starting to understand more about what I need to write. Now I’ve done three of them which only leaves me with 2 more. I plan to do these in lesson tomorrow as I have an hour and a half dedicated to project 2.

I then continued with options project audio editing. Today, I was focused on adding in the foley and sound effects. The majority of this audio editing went well, and there was only really one piece of significance. While I was editing the whoosh sound for when the world traveller comes out his bag. I was experimenting with using a repetitive sound mixed with pitch editing to create a more alien whoosh sound. The final sound I ended up with was something that I didn’t think fit well with the whoosh I was going for. However, while listening to it, I thought using the sound for the portal would actually work pretty well. So now I’ve replaced all the old portal sounds with this new portal sound as I much preferred this new sound and I think it fits a lot more of a sci-fi vibe whereas the old one was more robotic in nature.

Wednesday 2nd

Thursday 3rd March

I had missed yesterday as I was ill, meaning I worked at home. I knew that all we were doing at College was options project work. However, I didn’t find out until today that the lecturers have given us a week’s extension on our project works. This is slightly annoying as I’ve been working quite hard in order to be able to finish by tomorrow. However, I now have another week which I can’t really complain about. But, since I’ve been working to finish tomorrow. I still plan on finishing all my work tomorrow, as I only have my evaluations and sound editing to do. Instead, I will use next week to go over all of my work and double check that all the work that needs to be completed has been completed.

The first half of today was dedicated to project 2. So, I used this time to finish off my evaluations. As I’ve been doing these over the past couple of days, I only had two left to do. The first one wasn’t too hard to write about as it was just about my production stage. However, the last question was really big and took me about an hour to complete, with me ending up writing over a page for it. The question was about evaluating the final product and specific pages which is why it took me quite a long time. However, it feels really good to have these evaluations done now as it means I’ve basically finished my project 2 now.

For the second half of today I went back to audio editing for my options project. Today I finished off adding in all my sound effects. The majority of these went quite smoothly.

The only one I had a little trouble with was the bag splitting and the furniture crashing right at the end of the piece. I ended up using a lot of layering, which I had previously used and knew about thanks to my research. So for these sounds I used layering of the multiple sounds that I had recorded during my production. I did like the final sounds that I created with this technique although I still think it needs a little work until its completely finished.

Aside from the sound effects I did a little more work on my apartment and human world soundscapes. For the apartment soundscape I simply adjusted some of the volumes a little bit as well as adding in a gradual increase in volume at the very beginning. This helped the soundscape fit in slightly better.

With the human soundscape, I had to cut up the first layer a little bit and re-organise it as on the top layer there was some unwanted wind noise that I needed to get rid of. Finally, after adding in all my effects, I’ve realised that the end bit where Wallace waves at the viewer seems quite weird. I am going to look at fixing this tomorrow but I feel I will want to add some sort of music at the end, as I think this will send the piece off with the right tone.

The last thing I did in lesson was to just clear up the audition page. To do this I simply changed the order of the layers so that they were in chronological order. This will make editing a lot easier.

When I got home I added images to my project 2 evaluations and then uploaded them to my WIX website. This means I now have all my project 2 work uploaded to WIX. However, I will double check this over the course of next week.

Thursday 3rd

Friday 4th March

Today was originally supposed to be the last day for project 2 and options project. But as I said yesterday we have been given an extra week to work on these projects. But since I still wanted to finish today, I continued with this goal.

I started by finishing off the sound editing on my options project. This didn’t take too long as I only needed to add a couple of things. I began by fixing the furniture crashing. This was quite simple as all I did was duplicate what I’d already done and add it on re-positioned slightly. This have the sound the final impact that it needed to sell the realism.

Then I added in the music for the ending as I had said it sounded a bit too quiet. Originally, I looked for some other music online, but I couldn’t find anything good. But then I realised the music I used for the shops would also work well for the ending. So, I took that shop music and listened to the very end of that piece of music, and it worked perfectly. All I had to do was arrange it so it lines up with the ending visuals, and I was very happy with how it sounded.

Aside from those two adjustments all I did was ever so slightly adjust some sound volumes and my final piece was done. However, I’m going to show the lecturers it next week, so it is possible that it could change before the new final deadline.

I spent the rest of the lesson working on my evaluations for options project. Similarly to the project 2 ones I did yesterday, these took quite a while, but they’re good to do now as it means I’ve now technically finished all of my work for project 2. Although I will be checking all of this over the course of next week.

Finally, I finished today with adding pictures to my evaluations and then uploading them with my final piece onto my WIX website. I am very happy with how I have worked in this project and I’ll be able to double check all my work and add anything I may have missed over the course of next week.

Friday 4th

Monday 7th March

I believed I had finished all my work on Friday, so I spent the entirety of today checking over my project 2 and options project work. I first copied both of the project briefs into google drive so I could use them as a base to double check my work. I then went through my work referring to the project briefs and highlighted in green all the work that I had completed. Once I had gone through this I would then be able to tell all the work that I hadn’t completed. This method did not leave me with much work that I hadn’t done. In fact the only thing I though I hadn’t done was adding in a bit of relevant annotations to my navigation flowchart of project 2. Aside from this I believe that I have completed all my work for these projects. Although I will continue to check this over the course of this week.

I finished off today by checking through these project again, but checking the WIX aspects this time. Including checking all the buttons and anchor menus work and that the layout of everything worked. I double checked this for the computer design as well as for the website when it’s on a phone. There were a couple of minor errors such as anchor menus not quite being titled right or some text boxes being slightly off but on the whole the majority of it worked exactly as expected.

Monday 7th

Tuesday 8th March

I got John to watch my work today as I felt it was important to get some feedback from my lecturers before the deadline at the end of the week. He said overall he really enjoyed it and that the visuals were really good. The only thing he felt I could add to it was a bit more sound to the whole piece, as he felt there were points where more sound would help to keep the piece alive. He recommended adding things such as medieval trumpets to the medieval sector as well as whooshes to the transitions.

I felt this was really good constructive criticism as it probably wouldn’t have been something I’d have realised on my own as I’d been listening to it for so long.

So, I started on improving using John’s advice as guidance. I only started things today so a lot of it is still rough, but I added some of the fanfare music for the medieval as well as adding the whooshes. At the moment some of the volume’s need to be adapted to make the whole piece work together, but I aim to preferably have finished it tomorrow or Thursday as I feel that should be enough time, and if I constantly work on it I worry I may end up doing more damage than improvement.

Tuesday 8th

Wednesday 9th March

I finished off Worlds of Wallace for the final time today. Using what John had advised me yesterday, I already had a good idea of what I needed to add in and as I said yesterday, I didn't want to spend too much more time on this otherwise I felt I may do more harm than good. So today, I started with improving the bits of audio I had added in yesterday. This began with the trumpets for the medieval section I added in yesterday. Originally, I had them throughout that whole section, with their volume changing so as not to drown out the dialogue within that scene. However, when re listening to it today, I felt having them throughout the whole scene was a bit distracting. So instead, I used the end of the trumpet piece that I had edited yesterday and moved it to the front of the scene. This made it seem like Wallace was coming in halfway through the king's meal and the trumpets had just ended. I feel this fits the scene much better and is also less distracting.

I then listened to the whole piece again and added some slight adjustments. This included slightly altering the positioning of the transition sounds I added in yesterday. This was simply to get them slightly more in line with the visuals of the transitions so that the two parts happened at the same time. Finally, I then turned up the volume of some of the thuds so that they felt more impactful to the audience. Then I could start on adding more things.

John had said that occasionally the piece felt a bit quiet so I added a couple of additional sounds where I felt it could benefit from a bit more atmosphere. The first time I felt could benefit from this was the soundscape for the human world where I decided to add in some car horns. I synchronised these sounds so they aligned with the sound of cars going past, and I felt it added more personality to the scene and made it seem more realistic.

The final thing I added before finishing off my piece was the sounds of plates smashing when Wallace is pulling the table into his bag and the plates slide down into the bag. Once again this just helped to add a bit more sound into the more quieter scenes and added a bit more realism into this specific scene. I felt this audio effect was definitely an improvement as before they didn't have a sound which I now realise was probably a bit odd as the audience would expect them to make a noise.

Overall, I'm fairly confident I have now finished my options project and I'm very happy with my final outcome.

Wednesday 9th

Thursday 10th March

Since I’ve finished my work now, I spent today checking over all my evaluations for project 2 and options project. Evaluations are very important so making sure mine were up to scratch was pretty vital.

I had already uploaded them to WIX so I just read through all of them and made sure they illustrated what I was trying to get across as well as covering all the topics that are mentioned in questions for them.

Overall, they were pretty good and they definitely talked about things I felt were important. There were a couple of spelling mistakes that I had to fix. But this was not too much of a problem and fixing them now is better than if they had gone unnoticed.

Friday 11th March

I spent my time today investigating some potential ideas for the upcoming final major project. At the moment I have a couple of ideas floating through my head. One being some form of music video and another being a mockumentary style piece. Currently the mockumentary is slightly more fleshed out in my head, but I’m trying not to limit myself to any one thing at the moment.

One thing I know that I definitely want to do is a form of mixed media in whichever piece I chose. I really enjoyed animating in my options project and would definitely like to do a mix of live action and animation in my FMP.

So I spent my day watching videos on documentaries, mockumentaries, music videos and different forms of animation and I feel I now have a better grasp of these aspects which will allow me to make more educated decisions next week.

Thursday 10th

Friday 11th

Monday 14th March

We were officially introduced to our Final Major Project today. This is quite a big deal and I’m quite nervous about this project as this is what our entire year has led up to. We spent the first hour or so going through the project brief as well as being introduced to the project proposal and action plan. These two pieces are part of the ideas development, which is also my first deadline, being this Friday (18th March) at 4pm. This is a lot quicker turn around then I had expected so I’m a little bit nervous as I want to try and get quite a good grade.

I began by doing what I felt was the most helpful thing and created a list in google drive of every section (e.g. ideas development pre-production etc) and what work I need to complete in each of those sections. This gives me a realistic view of all the work I need to do and when. I also introduced a traffic light system into it which will help me keep track of what I haven’t done, What I’m currently doing, Finished work and Finished work that is also on WIX. Using this list I then structured the rest of the week for myself. Currently with all the work I need to do I have structured it so that I finish it by Thursday. This’ll give me the Friday before the deadline to check everything and hopefully get some lecturer feedback.

I then moved onto the thing I felt was of high priority which was creating my WIX pages for this project. I used the headlines from the brief to create my separate pages as well as creating a separate weekly journal pages to go along with this project. I will still up date the monthly journal which is part of the main website, but this weekly journal will help the examiner in finding all the journal entries which are specific to FMP. At the moment the pages are blank with only the up button added and all the navigation is just one colour at the moment. This is not what it will look like at the end but just having a solid base to build off of and add to is a really good thing to have right now, and I believe having a strong base will really help me later down the lane.

Then using my list for what I needed to do today, I started on my Mind Maps. I had several ideas running through my head so I detailed these on a single mind map. This allowed me to get a rough idea of all of them and what I’d be able to achieve with them. They consisted of a drama, animation, music video and Mockumentary. Using this Mind map I detailed all the rough points about them and what I’d have to do to make them. I was still struggling to choose between them though.

To fix this problem, I created a separate document where I detailed the rough plan of each of them as well as pros and cons. This allowed me to get a really good and easy view of what all of them would contain and some of the challenges I’d be facing. I then narrowed these 4 ideas down to 2, being the mockumentary and the music video.

At this point I decided to do some initial research into both of them to help me decide between the two. For this initial research I only used YouTube videos as at the time and place where I was this was the most accessible form of research for me. Using this further research, I created another mind map for the two ideas. All of this allowed me to get a much more thorough idea of both of them which then allowed me to come to my final decisions.

I have chosen to do the Mockumentary. I felt this was the best choice as it allows me to use a mix of live action and animated skills as well as allowing me to further my skills in foley, soundscapes and dialogue. But additionally, I haven’t tried to create anything like a documentary or mockumentary before so it will also allow me to try a new form of media out. I think this mix of medias as well as brand new challenges will be able to best show the skills I currently have as well as allowing me space to develop new skills throughout the project.

I then went back to WIX and added all my work so far. But most importantly I started working on the aesthetics of the website. I chose the colour palette for the FMP as I want to make it resemble the work that is being produced instead of making it blend in with the rest of my website. However, I’m unsure that what it looks like at the moment will be what it looks like at the end as it is quite hard to design it at the moment considering I have only just started and don’t 100% know what my final piece will look like. But it’s good to start designing it now, even though I’m fairly confident that I will change it quite a lot later down the lane. Currently, I have just given it it's own colour palette, I'm still designing it like I have my previous pages as this is the way I am used to designing a website. However, when I'm more aware of the aesthetic of the piece I can update the website. But having it like it is now is quite useful as everything will be up on the website in a way which I am used to which means adapting it later on will be a lot easier.

Overall, I’ve used this first day to collect my ideas and choose a specific one. Knowing this early is best and will allow me continue my Ideas Development with a single goal in mind, as well as taking this further it allows my research to be more narrow focused which will make the research I do be a lot more specific and useful to the piece that I want to make.

Monday 14th

Tuesday 15th March

I continued with my idea development today. To start with I created my mood boards. These are pretty important in ideas development as they continue from the Mind Maps and help to start visualising how the piece will actually look.

I separated my mind maps into four different ones. These consisted of one for style, characters, locations and techniques. Based on what I had planned in my mind maps yesterday, I felt these were the most important features that needed development but also the sections that would benefit most from the creation of the mind map. Other sections I had planned yesterday such as how I plan to research, I felt wouldn’t benefit from a mind map as I would only be repeating the things I had already discussed yesterday. So I then created the mind maps.

I started with finding the pictures for each of the mind maps. This allowed me to get a rough sense of the important things I wanted to discuss within these mind maps. I only chose 2 to 3 images for each talking point within the mind map as I felt that was enough to illustrate the point, but I also wanted enough space to be able to write around each of the sections and discuss my ideas in accordance with the images.

I finished my 4 mind maps and was pretty happy with how they turned out. Most importantly, I feel by creating these mind maps, I’ve been able to flesh the idea out a lot more in my mind than what I already had from the mind maps. I now understand a bit more what I want to do but also what I need to do in order to accomplish a good final product. This is useful to know now as it gives me a realistic sense of what I’m about to undertake in this project and helps me prepare for that.

I then moved onto my next part of ideas development, which was comparing my current idea with the theories and practitioners that I had learned about in project 4. I felt this was a really good ideas development task, as from project 4 I’ve realised how many films these theories apply to and how each film conveys them. Additionally, the fact that all these theories can be applied to all of these films shows the importance of the theories and also that following them will allow me to create a better base for my idea and make it a lot more solid. As well as allowing me to start the fleshing out of my idea.

I started by outlining the theories I felt were most important to my piece. This left me with 8 headings I could talk about: Codes and Conventions, Genre, Todorov’s narrative theory, Propp’s character types, Levi-Strauss’ opposite, editing, sound and representation. These headings covered many of the topics I discussed in project 4 and I feel they are the most important in helping me to improve my idea as they covered the bases of most features within a piece.

I completed the first four today being codes and conventions to Propp’s character types. They were all incredibly useful and I wrote a summary for each of them detailing how each of them has helped me so far. But Todorov’s Narrative Theory I felt was especially helpful as it’s really given me a skeleton to further build my narrative off in the coming weeks. This is useful as having a good foundation will help to prevent further problems down the road, for example having a rushed or undeserving ending, which is something I definitely would like to avoid.

I finished off my day by uploading my Mind Maps to WIX. However, I didn’t upload my theories today. This is down to two reasons. Reason one is that I still have the second half of it to finish tomorrow. But secondly, I have asked Lainey if I can send my theories to her for review once I have completed them. This will be really useful as I want to make sure that my analysis with these theories is good. I’m slightly worried I have either repeated myself a couple of times by accident or possibly rambled on a bit at times, so getting it reviewed I think will be really helpful for me.

So I will upload these theories onto my WIX after they have been reviewed.

Tuesday 15th

Wednesday 16th March

Unfortunately, I had a dentist appointment this morning, which meant I had to miss today’s lesson. However once I returned I started my work at home.

I started by continuing the application of project 4’s theories which I had started yesterday. This included Levi-Strauss, editing, sound and representation. Similarly to yesterday, I wrote summaries for all of these in which I detailed their usefulness, but particularly the representation theories aided me quite a lot. I had already considered the other three before coming to write about them. However, I had not really begun to consider how my piece related to representation. I had a brief idea but I had not put a great detail of thought into it. But after completing it, I really started to better understand how it applied to my piece and I was quite surprised by how useful that particular theory was. But, all the theory applications have been very useful, and as I said in many of their summaries, I will continue their development by applying them into my research stage.

Once I had completed my theories, I emailed them over to Lainey as she said she would be able to review them when I asked her yesterday. Currently, I have not received the feedback yet, but I’m hoping it’s all good as I feel I put quite a lot of effort into the work and I hope it is up to the right standard. Once I receive the feedback and depending on what it says, I’ll upload the theories to WIX.

I then moved onto the second piece of work I had to do today which was the Action Plan. I really struggled with this piece of work. I read through the brief on it again, and saw it mentioned “time spent sourcing materials, other resources, feedback and when you will carry out independent study”. On the whole I feel I have made a solid start to the Action Plan.

So far I have included, the week and start date of each week. I initially got a bit confused with these as I forgot to take into account holidays which don’t apply to the week numbers. Week 29 confused me a bit as week 28 is the week before easter holidays and week 30 is the week after. This would mean week 29 lands in the holiday. However, I’ve been able to adapt this. The first week of Easter I know for a fact I am on holiday, and for that week it will be practically be impossible for me to do any work. Therefore, I have made week 29 starting on the 18th of April when I will be back from holiday and therefore able to continue with work.

I’ve also included what I will be doing each of the weeks along with a day to day guide of the activities I will be undertaking. Not all of this is able to be completed at this time. For Example, my production and post production sections are quite brief at the moment. However these will be updated during my pre-production phase where I will be planning more, and can therefore update my action plan when I have more information.

Finally, I included any additional tasks such as receiving feedback as well as the resources I will need for each week. This is a lot of information within the action plan and I feel means I’ll definitely be able to run my production a lot smoother as I’ll be able to understand better what I am doing each day. Additionally, I’m making sure to have flexibility within my action plan so that if and when plans may change I’ll be able to easily adapt and not lose any time. This is essential as falling behind on this project would not be good, and I would hate to be in that predicament.

However, currently I have not included any information on time spent resourcing materials and when I will carry out independent study. This is essentially because I am not quite sure of what I need to include here. I carry out independent study basically every day after lesson as I come home and work from my own computer as I find that more efficient if I am only doing work that requires typing or theoretical work, such as research and ideas development. However, I’m planning to ask either Danny or Nigel to look at my action plan as well as help to guide me on the things I am stuck on within in. Hopefully this will allow me to finish off the action plan by tomorrow.

I am also supposed to be doing my bibliography and formal proposal tomorrow. However, thanks to my planning I left Friday open if any delays were to occur. I still plan on trying to get both of them completed by tomorrow, but if delays do occur due to the action plan, I can be confident I still have time to complete my work thanks to my planning.

Wednesday 16th

Thursday 17th March

As I entered college today, Lainey talked to me about the work that I had sent her to review yesterday. She said that all my theory applications were good and I didn’t need to change anything about them. This was really good to hear and meant that when I returned home I was able to upload them onto my WIX website.

Originally, I had planned to spend the entire lesson working on my proposal and bibliography, however Danny offered a small workshop for people who were planning to do a drama. Now mine isn’t strictly a drama but it is within the same category so I thought it would be a useful thing to participate in. In the workshop, Danny ran us through the behind the scenes and job roles that went into shooting a scene. We included the actors, camera operator, director, first assistant director, clapper board operator and boom operators. We were each designated positions and I was given the boom operator, but I was also able to see how all the other jobs worked as well. I think the most important thing I learned from the workshop was how the flow of command works on the set. The director is in control, who then indicated to the first assistant when to call first positions. And then the camera operator instructs the clapper board operator before starting. Understanding the importance of each jobs was a really good thing to learn about, especially as I hadn’t considered some jobs such as the clapper board before. But overall, I will definitely keep this workshop in mind when I am doing my own shoots as well as this workshop can count as my research. And acts as a good jumping off point for my further research.

Then in the second half of the lesson I went back to my paperwork. I began by showing Nigel my Action plan and asking for help on how I could improve it. He said that it seemed very thorough to him, which was a good thing to hear as I was a little unsure. He did give me a few things he said would just help to push it up even higher which I was happy to include. These included; adding the exact dates to each day; improving the descriptions of what I was doing each day; including and talking about the holiday weeks and mentioning what work I was doing in and out of college. I was very happy to add these things and definitely feel they improve my original action plan. Obviously, this action plan is still unfinished as certain sections like holidays, production and post production are quite brief currently as I have not reached pre-production where I will plan them out in much further detail. However, having this action plan now is extremely useful and I will be able to build on it and further my planning as I progress through the project.

I then spent the rest of my day on my formal proposal and bibliography. I had no problem with the bibliography as I had experience with Harvard referencing thanks to my project 4 essay. And similarly to the action plan, this bibliography will grow and progress along with the project. I had a little trouble with the proposal however. The first two sections on rationale and project concept were not to bad. We were told we were allowed to go slightly over the approximate word limit as long as it is closer to the word limit. So for rationale I wrote about 140 and for project concept I wrote about 240. And these should be fine as they are closer to 100 and 200. However part 3 about evaluations and only having roughly 50 words was quite a struggle for me. I started by writing everything I wanted to in the section and I ended up with about 100 words.

This was bad as I needed to be under 75 words for it to count. So, I spent quite a long time scanning through the text and either removing any unnecessary words or joining words such as “I will” to “I’ll” to save me words. Eventually I was able to get it down to 73 words although it was quite a struggle.

I’m fairly happy with my proposal and Lainey has said she’ll be able to read through it tomorrow and give me any feedback before the deadline at 4 so that will be really helpful.

The very last thing I did today was create my project title. Obviously, I want my title to seem like a real documentary title as that is the aesthetic I am trying to achieve. I already had a rough plan in my head which was: “The name of the protagonist” The Animated Man. So my biggest struggle today was to create a name for my main character. I wanted the name to have a purpose and not just be pointless. And then I came up with the idea to have an anagrammed name. Where if the letters were put in the right order they would create different words. And as my piece was about an animated man I though it would make sense for his name to be an anagram of a very famous cartoon character. Originally I planned to use Spongebob Squarepants but that was way too many letters to make a normal name. So then I decided to use Scooby Doo. And after quite a lot of attempts and playing around, I was able to come up with the name Cody Soboo. I was surprised by how well this actually worked as I was able to come up with an actual normal first name which had been my biggest struggle. The name doesn’t have a massive influence within the piece, but I thought it would be a nice little easter egg for anyone who realised what the letters could also spell.

Thursday 17th

Friday 18th March

I started my day by sending Lainey my proposal for review.

Then at the start of the lesson, Lainey showed us some previous examples of FMP works. On the whole this was really useful, especially seeing the different people’s WIX websites as I think the design of my WIX website may be something I’ll have a little trouble with. But seeing these past examples of work was really reassuring as it’s given me a realistic example of the kind of things I need to achieve.

Then a little while later Lainey was able to get back to me on my proposal. She said on the whole it was good she just felt there were a couple of bits that weren’t 100% necessary and I could probably remove them to save on word count. I was fine with doing that and so I was able to complete my proposal and bibliography and was able to hand it in with plenty of time before the deadline.

I realised I made another mistake with my Action plan, when I was figuring out week 29. I had miscounted the weeks and thought we came back a week later from Easter than we actually do. But now the action plan is 100% completed. Currently the action plan, bibliography and proposal are all up on my WIX website. But as my bibliography and Action plan update I will also add the new entries of them onto my WIX website as well, to demonstrate my progression.

I spent the rest of my time in lesson writing up evaluations of my Ideas development and official paperwork section. This is really good to do know while the information is fresh in my mind. However, It will also be able to fuel the larger evaluations later on down the line as well as providing me a reminder of what I’m currently doing. There was a lot I wrote in the evaluations, however, I realised I had written some of it before, especially when I was talking about my Theory applications. So instead, I replaced the sections I’d written and added in a thing saying I had already mentioned that point in the summary. I felt that was better than repeating myself multiple times which may make it seem like I had nothing else to talk about.

Finally when I got home, I started looking ahead at my research week which is next week. I began by adding in my day to day plans into my to do list so that I can always check what I need to do. I also added in some more research that the lecturers mentioned such as research into target audience and equipment. I then started looking at the possible times I’d be able to book out the studio and equipment so that I could hold some demos for research. There are quite a lot of bookings at the moment so I need to look more into this to try to get what I want. I’m hoping to get in for either next Thursday or Friday as this is when I’m planning to do the majority of my primary research.

Tomorrow, I am visiting a university so will be unable to work, but I am considering starting some work on Sunday as this will help me to keep up with the workload of research.

Friday 18th

Sunday 20th March

As I said on Friday, I wanted to start some research today, so that I could try to keep up with the large workload which I’m going to have next week. In order to do this, I spent my day today starting my research into Mockumentaries and Documentaries.

This is the best place to start all my research as the genre and style of my piece is based around these two. To start with I looked into the history and techniques off mockumentaries, and after that I looked into the Techniques and visual style of documentaries. I wrote summaries of each of these detailing their uses but mainly, I felt these were the aspects of both that would provide me with the most useful information. To initially collect all my information, I wrote up all the useful parts into a google drive document. This allowed me to gather my thoughts. Then, for most of the parts I made them into tables in Photoshop to better lay out their information. Previously, I have made tables on WIX, but they have been unreliable and messed up their own layout several times, by making them on photoshop I hope they will be laid out better on the website.

I used quite a lot of sources today, however they are quite limited. As most of the references are from YouTube and all of them are from the internet. This was mainly due to the fact that I was at home doing independent study today. However, over the coming days I plan to go to the library in order to get more of a variety of sources, as this is important for better research.

The final thing I did before uploading all my work to WIX was to update my bibliography, this is important to complete as the project progresses and I made sure to do that today. Unlike my action plan, the bibliography is easier to update as each reference has the accessed date so understanding when I used things is a lot easier. So I was able to upload my updated bibliography along with the work I completed today.

Overall, I found today’s research very useful, however, I think I will do some further research into Mockumentaries tomorrow as I feel there is more information about them that I could discover.

Sunday 20th

Monday 21st March

I continued with the research that I started yesterday. Today that research focused on Equipment, target audience and audio.

I started with research into equipment. This involved research into cameras, tripods, gimbals and sound equipment. This was a really good first step into the equipment I plan to use, and this research will be furthered later on this week, as I plan to carry out primary research demo tasks where I can practice with the equipment I researched today. The main goal of this specific research task was to get me thinking about the possible equipment I want to use and by the end of the week, thanks to all my research tasks I will have a solid grasp on all my equipment needs. However, I may have to be slightly flexible on the equipment I book out as it is likely some of the equipment will be inaccessible as with so my class and the year 2’s all filming at similar times booking equipment out may become tough.

The second research I focused on was the target audience. I will continue research on target audience’s in my primary research where I will use surveys and focus groups to gather these people’s opinions. However the research today allowed me to discover the rough target audience I should be aiming for. I researched into the target audience’s of Documentaries and Mockumentaries, and the research showed the target audience I should be aiming for is around 18-49 year old however the audience most likely to view my work was 15-35 year olds. I discussed this more thoroughly in my conclusions for that research, but this research has allowed me to narrow my focus for my primary research, as I can now avoid gathering data from people below or above the target audience as I know it is unlikely that it would provide useful data for my research. This research turned out a lot more fruitful than I had expected and will really make a difference to what I had originally planned for my primary research. I am now considering holding several focus groups with people across this age range in each group, e.g. one for young adults and one for middle age people. This will then allow me to discover the differences between the ages within the target audience and possibly allow me to focus my target audience even more.

My final piece of research today was focused on audio, where I researched into Dialogue, Foley and Soundscapes. As I mentioned in the research I already had a decent amount of knowledge thanks to my options project. This research allowed me to progress this knowledge, and similarly to my equipment research, I will keep this research in mind when it comes to carrying out my Demo tasks as well as later on during my production stage.

The last thing I did today before uploading all of my work was to update my Bibliography. I used quite a lot of sources today and so keeping up with them is important. Every time I use a new reference I will update my Bibliography as this will stop me from losing any references, which would significantly damage my research. Later on during this week, it is also likely my action plan may change, so keeping on top of both of these pieces of work is important.

Monday 21st

Tuesday 22nd March

Before lesson today, I went to the library to look for books I could use as references for my research. I was able to pick up two books that I felt would be useful for the secondary research that I was going to undertake today. One of these books was focused on animation and the other was on editing.

With these books to hand as well as the computer I started on my research for today. I began with rotoscoping research where I used my references to start looking at the benefits and weaknesses of using rotoscoping and then the ways to improve my current skills in it. The benefits and weaknesses went really well and the book I had gotten out of the library was really useful for this topic.

However it was during my research into ways to improve my skills that I made an amazing discovery. I talk more about it in depth within my research, but I was able to find a software called Ebsynth, which utilizes keyframes in order to create the animation. This means I would only have to draw one, or a couple of frames of animation, which the software would then apply to all the other frames using the keyframe as a reference. If I can learn to use this software effectively and it works for what I want to do, it could save me so much time, as well as allowing me to include more animated segments within my piece. I plan on carrying out a primary research demo task in Ebsynth which will allow me to learn how to use it as well as understand its strengths and weaknesses.

The final bit of animation research I did was to find already existing pieces of media which I could look at for inspiration. I was able to find three different pieces which were all very differente, one being the full length film “A Scanner Darkly”, the famous music video “Take on me” and a youtube short film titled “Exordium”. I have watched both the short film and music video currently as well as the trailer for the full film. If I have enough time I will try to watch the full film as it seemed super interesting and could be a great source of inspiration.

I then moved onto editing research where I researched into potential techniques I could use as well as specific editing of documentaries and mockumentaries. This allowed my knowledge of editing as well as docu/mockumentaries to advance. All of the techniques I was able to discover could potentially come in really useful for when I arrive in my post production stage and I think it was really useful for me to start thinking and researching into it now.

I texted the people who I need for one of my focus groups today to ask if they were available for Thursday. However, one of them was unavailable. This has led to me moving the focus group forwards one day. This does note affect me too much as I can create the PowerPoint for it in the morning and then hold it in the evening. This has led to me updating my action plan which I have uploaded the new version alongside the old version to my WIX.

After uploading everything else to my WIX page, I also made sure to update my Bibliography with all the new references I used today. This makes sure I stay up to date with it.

The final thing I did today was watch the Netflix Mockumentary “Death to 2021”. During tomorrow’s lesson I will be textually analysing this piece as I feel it will be a great source of inspiration. Watching it tonight was super useful as it allows me to be better prepared for tomorrow and start thinking of possible ideas.

Tuesday 22nd

Wednesday 23rd March

This day started off with me receiving feedback on the initial ideas development work that I had done last week. I was thankful to finally have this as I felt it would be a great opportunity to find out what I needed to do to improve on my work. Nigel went through my website with me and highlighted some things that he felt could be improved. All of this was recorded and I will upload the recording with additional notes when I receive it. Some of the additions he recommended were just cosmetic changes, such as trying to get better zoom on the images, adding some more subheadings and fixing a couple of spelling mistakes. Others were things I could add in or improve on such as adding in the learning outcomes, defining a couple of my headings, changing the way I have referenced throughout these pages and explaining a bit more on certain sections. And finally there were some new things I could add in such as ethics of a mockumentary and how documentaries use cameras. Nigel said overall my website looked very good but these were just some features I could include to push it up even more. I am happy to change these and I was able to do a couple of them today, such as fixing the spelling mistakes. However, I am extremely busy this week with research and so the larger improvements such as adding in the new information will have to wait for this weekend when I have time to add them in.

So then after the meeting I moved into some primary research. Initially, I was going to start with my textual analysis as this is my last bit of secondary research. However, as my focus group has been moved up a day I felt it was more important to prioritise the work I would need to effectively carry that out. So I started with creating my PowerPoint for my focus group tonight. Within this PowerPoint I have included what I felt were the most important features they would need to know. These are; Premise; Characters; Locations; Style; Techniques; Target Audience and Purpose. I chose these features as they outlined all the information about my piece and also are the parts I feel I will benefit most from receiving feedback on. Once I wrote up all the information, I added images as well as a questions page at the end, where I will ask the people in the focus group if there is anything they want to ask me.

I then moved onto creating my surveys. There were two surveys I needed to create. The first survey is for people to answer before their focus groups/interviews and focuses on their opinions of Documentaries, Mockumentaries, and genres. It includes questions on their age and gender as well to allow me to make sure the target audience I concluded from my secondary research is accurate. This first survey acts as a way for me to gather their initial ideas before they see any of my work.

The second survey is then after they have been through the focus group and is more focused on how they feel about my idea. This includes questions on, what they liked, what they disliked and what they would change. The purpose of this survey is that it will allow me to get further knowledge of their thoughts and opinions on my idea, after the focus group/interview has ended. But both of these surveys are going to come in useful when it comes to proving what I have discovered in my secondary research is accurate information.

Before returning home to work on the Textual analysis I attended one of the Technician’s workshop. This workshop was focused on lighting. I felt this was a useful workshop to attend as if I’m trying to achieve a professional look within my Mockumentary then learning how to properly use the lighting equipment would be beneficial.

The Workshop took place in the studio where Ash took us through how to use the lighting equipment as well as going through the basics of three point lighting again. I had already learned three point lighting, but having a recap of it and making sure my knowledge was all up to date was important. For instance I had forgotten the rough brightness each of the three lights needed to be on, but I now remember the Key light is 100%, fill light is roughly 50% and the back light will depend on the effect you are going through.

I also had basic knowledge of how to use the lights, but Ash introduced me to this app they have on the Ipad which you can remotely control the lights from. This was amazing, as it meant you could control the colours, saturation and brightness of the lights remotely. I had known you could change the colours of the lights but I had never figure it out until now.

Finally, Ash introduced us to the studio lights on the ceiling of the studio. This was useful to learn about as I had not used these before, however, it is unlikely I will be recording in the studio so I am not sure if I will use these lights within this project at least. But it’s still good to learn about these lights as it means if I change my mind and do want to work in there, I will know what I’m doing.

I have also planned when I am doing my demo works now. I will be carrying out my gimbal and Ebsynth demo tasks tomorrow morning before college and then I have booked out the studio and equipment out for Friday afternoon where I’ll be able to do my camera, tripod and audio demo tasks. Now that I knew better when I was doing it I was able to update my action plan and add the updated version into my website.

I was then able to move onto my final piece of Secondary Research which was my textual analysis. This was super useful and as I’ve explained in the initial conclusions it has offered me a multitude of techniques and possibilities for me to use in my own piece. Most prominently it has made me think about how I can use music within my piece and so I have updated my action plan to include a time for me to look into potential music pieces I can use.

The absolute worst thing has just happened. I just held my focus group. It went on for around 30 minutes, I showed them my PowerPoint and then had about a solid 10 minutes of questions which were super informative. I felt the focus group was really useful on of the best pieces of research I have done so far and I learnt so much from it. But, then the worst possible thing happened. My phone, which had been set up on a tripod behind me to record the whole thing had for some reason powered off. I had used this technique to record my Options Project focus group and it had worked fine and so I thought it would work just as well for this project.

At first I had just thought the screen of my phone had turned off however I soon realised it had completely powered itself off. This meant the recording had cut off after only 7 minutes of recording without me even noticing. This is absolutely horrible as it means the recording has cut off in the middle of my Style page. This is only the 5th page meaning 3 other pages as well as the 10 minute questions which I found the most useful were not recorded. I have absolutely no idea what to do as I feel I can’t do it again because then it won’t be genuine as I’ll know the questions beforehand. But I also can’t not show the evidence cause I found it so useful and not including it would be extremely annoying.

It’s also currently 8pm and I’ve still got to upload all my work to WIX so I can’t even email a lecturer and ask for their help. My best bet is to ask any of my lecturers tomorrow and try to get help from them. As I’ve said this was one of if not the most useful bit of research so far and not having it all recorded is horrible. I have no idea what I can do now so I guess I’m just going to have to wait till tomorrow and see what my lecturers say.

Screenshot 2022-03-23 201129

Screenshot 2022-03-23 201146

Screenshot 2022-03-23 201308

Screenshot 2022-03-23 201129

1/9

Wednesday 23rd

Thursday 24th March

I think I’ve discovered the problem that led to my focus group not being correctly filmed. This morning before College, I started my gimbal demo task. This is when I discovered my problem. While I was filming using my gimbal, at one point, my phone just powered off and stopped recording. When I turned it back on, I realised it was due to the fact my phone storage had become full. This had meant the video I was recording didn’t save and meant I had to re-record the gimbal demo task. Based on what happened today, I think the same thing must have happened yesterday during the focus group. I haven’t gone to College yet, so I will still ask one of my lecturers when I get there. I will describe less about what I did in my demo work here as during the videos I describe what I am doing and the uses they have.

The gimbal task was quite useful though. I already knew the basics of how to use the gimbal, but it was quite useful to recap and I also learned quite a few ways of how to use it and not to for specific things, which I discuss further within the video. For example, the zoom is quite slow so for fast zooms a different camera would be better to use. However, as long as I fix my storage problem, which I am currently working on then the phone and gimbal should be absolutely fine to use for my project.

The final thing I was able to do before College was film my videos for Ebsynth. I wasn’t able to animate them yet due to the problem with the gimbal task which led to me losing a lot of time. I’ve filmed 5 videos for the Ebsynth, all of which are different stages to test Ebsynths capabilities. The first stage is me sitting relatively still and just talking. The second is me sitting and talking but using hand gestures. The third is me standing relatively still and talking. The fourth is me walking and moving around slowly. The final one is me moving around more erratic and faster. These 5 stages are planned in this way to be able to test Ebsynth’s capabilities. From what I learned from my research, the more movement in a scene, the harder it is for Ebsynth. So in my stages, I’ve increased the movement of each one, and hopefully later tonight when I animate them I’ll be able to discover what Ebsynth is able to handle.

When I arrived at College, I started with reviewing my first survey that I had sent out yesterday. I have done a lot more thorough analysis within my review but to also explain here, the best part of this first survey was it confirming what I had learned in my secondary research. For instance, my target audience has now been solidified. The information that this survey provided was in line with what my secondary research told me about target audience's and so I'm able to move forward into the proper production being a lot more confident about my target audience and being able to adapt my idea to more focus on this demographic. It was also really useful in gaining people's personal opinions on doc/mockumentaries as well as them providing me with pieces I could use for inspiration. All this new information will become very useful in looking for adapting my piece into proper production as I can use these opinions to fuel what I can include or what I shouldn't include. And the pieces I've been offered for inspiration could definitely come in useful to fuel my furthered ideas development, especially when going into pre-production.

So as I explained in my last Journal entry, the recording of my focus group cut off after around 7 minutes of recording, cutting out the latter half of my presentation as well as the entire question section. This was quite a large blow to me as I found the focus group one of my most important and informative pieces of research.

I also think I know the reason for why the video failed. During my gimbal demo task, my phone powered off due to its storage becoming full. I think this was most likely also the reason my phone powered off yesterday. The only good thing about this happening was that I was able to catch this situation early, if the same thing had happened while I was trying to film my proper production it would have been disastrous. Because it’s happened now, I’ve been able to fix the problem and now have about 40% of my storage free which should be more than enough to complete the shots I will need to shoot on my phone.

So, today I asked Nigel about how I should approach the handling of the situation as I have lost the evidence for the last part. Nigel agreed it was a horrible situation and thought that the best way to handle it would be to write up about what happened in the rest of the focus group rather than doing it again. I agreed with this, as if I did the focus group again, I would be prepared for the questions, whereas at the time I had to really think about the questions which helped me to understand and develop my own idea more. Luckily, one of the people within the focus group made notes on the questions they asked so I am able to discuss some of the questions I had to answer. I have also displayed the image of their notes, but I understand their handwriting is a little hard to read so I’ve added a version where I’ve tried to translate what they wrote. See the Focus group within my primary research section in order to see an in depth description of what happened after the video cut out.

I have just finished doing my interviews and I feel they have gone really well. And thankfully, now that I have fixed my storage issue, the recordings went absolutely fine. I will write more about how the interviews were useful and what I have gained from them in my review tomorrow, but just to say quickly, once again the question section was really useful in allowing me to develop the idea of my own piece and also being able to properly explain it to someone else was really good.

I then finally moved onto my Ebsynth demo. Ebsynth is absolutely amazing. I had a little trouble with it near the beginning as it kept crashing. However, I soon discovered that this was due to the naming of my files. For the best results simpler names like 00001 should be used and then it will run fine. As I had lost some time figuring out how to use Ebsynth, I couldn't do all 5 stages that I had planned, so instead I reduced this down to 3. This being stage 1, 3 and 5 as I felt these would be best to help me learn but also to test Ebsynth’s capabilities.

1 and 3 went excellent with only 1 keyframe being used in each. They were both relatively smooth as I was fairly stationary but the face movement looked quite good. There were slight glitches such as in 1 the right eye becomes slightly cross eyed near to the end, but these are thing that would be easily fixed with just one more keyframe. And the best part is that to produce each shot it took just under an hour. So about 20 seconds of content per hour is amazing, especially when it’s animation.

Shot 5 was a lot more complex but I decided to only use 4 keyframes of each side of my body just to see how Ebsynth would handle it. Obviously, it definitely didn’t turn out perfect, but this was more of a test to see how it would handle it rather than for it to turn out perfect. This also helps to give me a better understanding of how many keyframes are needed for certain movements. As it seems that the more complex the movements and the more angles there are, the more keyframes are required. However, it is still faster than rotoscoping so with more practice and primary research into this I hope I can improve my skills a lot before my production occurs.

Overall, this demo work has proven that Ebsynth is definitely good enough to use in my proper production and by doing this demo task I have started my journey in learning how to properly use it. With more time and practice it should work out really well for the proper production and allow me to include a lot more animation within my piece.

Thursday 24th

Friday 25th March

Today's my final day in my research stage. It's been quite a hectic week with several late nights completing work. However, I understand that in order to gain a distinction, which is what I'm aiming for I need to put in the effort.

So today, I needed to have everything finished and uploaded on my WIX website by the end of the day. This included reviews of my focus group, interviews and follow up survey. As well as my camera, tripod and audio demo work. And finally, the final evaluations for this project, which I decided to split into one evaluation for secondary research and one for primary research.

So I spent all of my time in lesson today reviewing my focus group, interviews and Follow up survey. This involved going over the information I had received from it and reviewing its uses and what I've been able to benefit from it. Once I finished reviewing them one by one, I uploaded them all onto my Primary Research page. This was really good to get done first as that was the large majority of the work I had left. It also meant it was out of my way by the time I had the studio booked so that when starting my final demo tasks, I knew I could focus all my effort onto it.

At the end of the lesson, I moved onto my demo work task, which included me looking into the camera, tripod and audio equipment that I could potentially use.

The equipment I used for this demo was a DSLR Canon 600d, a tripod with gimbal head, a shotgun mic that connects to the camera and an audio recorder. The point of this demo task was just to have a test with the equipment, learn how to use it properly and evaluate whether I think it’ll be good enough to use in my proper production.

I set up the rough composition of the camera to resemble that of a documentary interview. Commonly the person is sat down slightly off centre to the camera. This wasn't essential to my demo tasks, but I just felt it was worth getting a little practice of framing an interview.

I made quite a few mistakes in this demo, mainly due to me not being used to the equipment. But I think it’s actually more beneficial to make mistakes now as that means I’ll know how to fix them and remember not to do them again in the future production. For example, about halfway through, I was worried that it didn’t seem like the shotgun mic was picking up any audio. After talking with Ash, I discovered that this was because I hadn’t actually turned the shotgun mic on. Obviously this is a very silly mistake. However, I had not used a shotgun mic that plugged into the camera before so I had not realised it needed to be turned on. But I’m definitely going to remember that now cause it was quite an embarrassing mistake.

Because the mic wasn’t turned on I had to redo a lot of my tests. In each of the videos I explain what I am doing, but to explain a couple briefly here, I did tests on how the different audios sounded. Including using the raw camera, shotgun mic and audio recorder to record the sound.

I also did a little test of the gimbal, just checking out how it works and how I could possibly use it for my piece.

And finally, I did some tests with the camera, I framed most of my shots in an interview style framing as this will be quite a common feature in my piece. It was a little hard to do as I was working alone but I think it definitely turned out quite well. I also did a little walk around just to see how handheld footage would look. This was made as a comparison to the gimbal and I think from this I’m definitely going to use my gimbal as the handheld stuff was a lot rougher.

I summarise my thoughts a lot better in my initial conclusions, but to add a section here as well, thanks to this demo task I now know how to properly use all this equipment, and it’s quite likely I am going to use all of this equipment in my actual piece. However, it is likely I will use a regular tripod unless I specifically need a gimbal head, simply as I find them easier to use and have a lot more experience with them.

Aside from that this demo task has definitely improved from my secondary research that I had looked into equipment and I will definitely make sure to remember this for when I’m picking out my equipment for my final production.

The very last thing I did today was write up evaluations for my secondary and primary research. These are simply summarising what I did and why it was useful. Some of the things I discuss in the evaluations I also mentioned within my initial conclusions, but the evaluation was a good place to compile it all together as well as add new things that I’ve discovered or realised now that my research is complete.

Overall, I’m very happy with the amount and quality of my research. It’s been quite a stressful and work packed week but I think the work I’ve produced from it is definitely worth the amount of effort I put into it.

Friday 25th

Sunday 27th March

Today I implemented all the new and updated things that Nigel recommended to me in my feedback meeting last week.

There were a couple of things I had already discussed later on in my research such as the use of documentaries and cameras. But there was also one thing I couldn’t implement which was the more zoomed in images that Nigel recommended. The reason that I couldn’t do this is because it’s not able to be done on WIX. The only zoom feature only zooms in based on the size that the image already is on the page and so is pretty ineffective. Because of this I feel the pop out method that I’m currently using is the best way to display images on my website.

So, I then started on the features I could implement. I started with the subheadings and a bit more explanation of my mind maps. This was not too difficult and just adds a little more to my initial idea development.

I then added the learning outcomes onto the buttons on the main page. This shows which learning outcomes are on which page and means the marking should be made easier for my lecturers and the examiner, as well as making searching for work a lot easier as well.

The rest of the changes were then mainly focused on theory application in my idea development. This included, finding examples and referencing them at the end of the corresponding sections. This meant I also had to update my bibliography to include these new additions. Later on I also used references to my insight into Ethics which I also added to my bibliography.

The other parts I updated included defining and adding some more explanations into what I was talking about as well as adding the theories into the codes and conventions section. I had become a little confused onto what theorist Nigel had meant as I had used most of the ones I knew. But as I was going back through my notes I realised Steve Neale’s theories also applied to codes and conventions. Originally, I had just used him for genre but now I added in his own section within the codes and conventions.

And finally, I looked into the ethics of Mockumentaries that Nigel had recommended. This included looking into examples of mockumentaries and considering their ethics as well as looking into Ofcom’s rules in regards to using people for pieces like Mockumentaries.

Overall, today was really useful. Mainly just to get this work completed as it allows me to move onto my Pre-production with no other work needing to be completed. As well it keeps me free for my next feedback meeting where I will likely need to change more things to improve my work.

Sunday 27th

Monday 28th March

Today was the start of our Pre-Production section. I started my day by going through the work I had already planned to do. By going through the PowerPoint Danny had given us about Pre-Production, I was also able to add a couple more pieces of work I needed to do. This included things such as shot list and talent release forms. I also re-ordered some of the work, for example the character designs I had planned for today is now moved to this Friday as I need to confirm an actor, which will then supply inspiration for the character design. And my potential music investigation has moved to next weeks. These changes are simply to alleviate work on certain days and make sure that I don’t overwork myself which would lead to burnout which would then reduce the quality of work. I’ve taken this into account now as I felt I almost overworked myself last week as I was working pretty late most days and I don’t want to burn myself out. But all these changes were added to my Action Plan which has now been updated on my WIX website.

So the two pieces of work I needed to do were my Proposal and Hollywood style script. I began on my proposal. This is different to my formal proposal that I did at the beginning of my project as this proposal is more as if I was pitching the idea to a company. This was not too hard of a piece of work as lots of the content that needs to be explained on it were things that I have already talked about a few things. And lots of the additional stuff such as target audience and style were helped by the fact that I did research into these sections during my research stage.

So for the rest of the day I focused on my Script. I began by writing a brief plan, sectioning my plot into the three acts structure. This being Opening, Middle and End. After I had done this initial planning of the plot, I then did some research into the three act structure so that my final script could be as good as it could be. I made sure to add these references to my Bibliography which has now been updated to my WIX website.

After this research, I then made another plan for my script. This was a more expanded version of my initial plan. This version contained more explained versions of the scenes that happened within each act.

These plans then led to me producing my first draft of my script. Currently the script is 8 pages long, however not all of these pages are full due to the acts separating. So most likely the piece is currently going to be about 6-7 minutes which falls in line with how I planned it.

I was pretty happy with this first draft and getting it completed has really helped me not only set out the plot to the people reading it but also allowed me to understand the plot a little bit better myself.

As I said I’m quite happy with this first draft, but I’m going to get one of the lecturers to read through it and give me some feedback. However, I’m going to use this first draft as a base to start my shot list, storyboards and mark up of the script. This is because it is unlikely the vast majority of my script is going to change. Most likely some dialogue or structure of the script will change. And so being able to start this other work earlier will be more beneficial than having to wait for a completely finished script.

When writing the script I did remove some certain scenes and change others. For example, I completely removed the parents interview, this was mainly as I felt it didn’t really add anything to the plot and just took up extra time which wasn’t really necessary. I also changed how the interaction went at school. Originally it was a completely separate who disagreed with the bully but I felt having it be one of their friends would make the point of people being good more impactful.

I also furthered the idea that the filmmakers were in themselves characters within this “documentary”. To do this I added in a scene of two of them talking when they don’t realise the camera is on, which then helps to explain how they capture Cody storming out of school. Additionally, I gave the director an interview as the documentary starts to fall apart.

I really wanted to further the idea of the original documentary falling apart and that’s really shown through the directors interview. But I’m also considering playing with this theme particularly in the visual style. As the beginning is the documentary going well, that is when the visuals are a lot more professional, particularly using that inspiration with the Netflix Documentaries. However, as the “Documentary” falls apart the camera work may become more shaky and feel like they’re losing budget as the piece falls apart. However, this is only a idea I’m currently considering, so I haven’t decided quite yet how extreme I may take this idea.

Screenshot 2022-03-28 162409

Screenshot 2022-03-28 162428

Screenshot 2022-03-28 164336

Screenshot 2022-03-28 162409

1/3

Screenshot 2022-03-28 162914

Screenshot 2022-03-28 162931

Screenshot 2022-03-28 163123

Screenshot 2022-03-28 162914

1/8

Monday 28th

Tuesday 29th March

Originally I had my storyboards, shot list and script mark up all planned for today. However, I realised I wasn’t 100% sure about what a shot list was. Initially, I had just thought it was a list of all the shots you needed to do. However, I asked John just to check what it was. He informed me that it is essentially a list of shots, but for the day of production you were doing. So you would have the list with you to check what you needed to do.

Now that I realised what it was, it meant doing it today and tomorrow wouldn’t be practical as I still have yet to finish my storyboards which will provide me with my shots. So instead on my updated Action Plan, I have moved it to next Monday/Tuesday. Not only will this be better time as I’ll be more informed on my shots, but it will also help in my production schedule which is scheduled for next Wednesday. As due to the shot list I will already have the shots piled together. Finally, on my action plan, I added something for this Sunday to visit locations. This will mainly to make sure they’re viable. Many of my locations are easy to access as they are either my house itself or within walking distance. Other locations like College I’ll be able to survey next Monday.

Regarding, the script mark up, I have started the beginning of it. What I mean by this, is I have emailed a copy of my first draft over to one of my lecturers in hope for some feedback. Hopefully, they will get back to me tomorrow and I will be able to properly start my script mark up, based on what feedback I receive. If it takes longer to receive my feedback then that may mean the script mark up would be pushed back a couple days. However, this is not the worst thing as there will be space to fit it in amongst the other work.

I have just remembered, we have to also take into account post production for this pre-production. To do this I’m planning to take it into account while creating my production schedule. This will be in order to calculate when I’m editing. However, I will most likely check with Nigel tomorrow that there is no other post production paperwork needed to be completed at the moment.

So, the majority of my day was centred on the beginning of the creation of my storyboards. I started with using my first draft of my script as well as my initial thoughts to roughly plan out the shots I wanted as well as what was happening within the scenes and shots. I detailed all of these within my notebook as I find this the easiest way to collect all my initial thoughts. I split each of the storyboards into their respective Acts and Scenes to make planning easier.

To make the production of these storyboards easier, I have chosen to make them on photoshop. This is what I used for my options project and I felt they came out well. I split each of these photoshop files once again into their respective Acts and Scenes to make structuring the storyboards easier.

Today, at home I used my own drawing pad to draw rough sketches of all of my storyboards. This provides me with a basis of which to draw and colour them properly tomorrow. Although this seems like pushing most of the work to tomorrow. As I will have to draw properly, colour and fill in all the detail tomorrow. However, these initial sketches are actually in my opinion the hardest part of storyboards which is why it was important for me to get them done today. Having this basis down will provide me with a strong base to start tomorrow which will make the production of the work tomorrow a lot more efficient.

Tuesday 29th

Wednesday 30th March

I received an email back from Lainey today in regards to my first draft script that I sent her yesterday. She said that she will read it today and give me feedback on it tomorrow. I thought about it for a bit and have decided to move my script mark up once again to tomorrow and Friday. I felt this made most sense as doing it today would potentially be useless if I was then to be given loads of corrections to do tomorrow. So I have changed this on my action plan and hopefully I shall still have it completed by the weekend.

So I then spent the rest of my day completing my Storyboards. And it took quite a while. Yesterday, I had drawn rough versions of each of my storyboards. I spent my whole lesson this morning, adding in the written information that is needed on the storyboards. This took quite a while and I wasn’t about to quite finish it during the lesson. Instead, I was able to finish it by the time I got home.

After I had finished the written information on the storyboards, I then started completing the finished drawings for the storyboards. This also took quite a while, however, it was definitely worth it. Now that the drawings are properly drawn and coloured I feel it will improve the look of my storyboards and make them seem a lot more professional.

When I finished my storyboards, I uploaded them onto my WIX website. Having these storyboards completed is really useful. Having them completed, not only helps to portray my idea to other people as well as myself, but having them completed also allows me to better complete the rest of my pre-production. Particularly the audio script and shooting script which I will look at completing tomorrow.

I decided to split my Storyboards into each separate acts and scenes. This did result with there being some blank squares on certain pages, but I felt in order to have all the information relating to the specific scenes it made more sense to complete it this way. It also allows scenes to be viewed individually as well as viewing the whole thing so it does not impact the original way too much.

Overall, I completed less work today than I had originally planned. However, I think this was probably for the best as it allowed me to put a lot more effort into my storyboards which are a huge part of the pre-production.

Wednesday 30th

Thursday 31st March

Lainey was able to give me feedback on my script today which was really useful. She said that she really liked it and felt it was pretty complete. She said the only thing she thought I could benefit from was turning the script into a shooting script. Luckily, I had already planned to complete my shooting script today.

Thanks to Lainey's feedback, I moved onto marking up my script. This was quite a long procedure as I made sure to go through it several times and to make sure that I talked about everything I felt was important to note on it. I started with looking at my interviews. For many of these, I plan to use two different shot types. My master shot will be a simple mid-long shot where the person will be slightly off centre and they will look just past the camera. This sort of framing is the traditional that is commonly used in most documentary series and so starting with this shot makes the most sense in my attempt to emulate this style. My secondary angle is the going to be a closer mid-mcu at about a 3/4 angle so that the persons side and front of their face is both visible. I will make sure to shoot the correct side of the face so that the eyeline is kept consistent between the two shots. To mark when I would be using these different shots I used different coloured arrows and placed them around the dialogue that would be used for each shot. I felt this was the best way to split up which dialogue sections would be included in each shot.

Although, I am mainly the only person creating and producing this piece, when marking up the script, I used terms such as Art Department, Sound Department and Animated Parts. This is partly to make the script seem more like a professional one, but also I was highlighting these features anyway so these were also the best descriptions for each. For each of these three sections, I gave them a different coloured highlighter. I then went through the script and highlighted sections or parts that were relevant to each of these sections. For example when a character is in a voiceover I highlighted it in the colour for the sound department. The purpose of these section is to highlight the different parts I need to keep consideration of as well as things I may need to create for the scenes, or voiceovers that will go over the top. It also allowed me to add in some things onto the script that weren't there originally.

My penultimate task was adding additional notes. These notes were quite varied and included things such as rough storyboard plans, shot types and more descriptions of the scene. This allowed me to add any additional information that either wasn't there originally or I felt needed to be expanded on. These notes really helped me to expand the story and world a bit more and will aid in the shooting script which can then be more descriptive.

The final thing I completed on my script mark up was to add to more highlighted sections. These sections used a green arrow or purple arrow that were drawn next to their relevant sections. The green arrow was drawn when the scene was using a handheld camera and the purple arrow was for when it's a static camera. This is another way of keeping track of what is needed and happening in each scene and will also help me plan what equipment I'll need for which scenes.

Overall, this script mark up was very helpful in helping me understand my story and expand it a bit more, and it will now allow me to move onto the shooting and audio scripts. But while going through and marking my script, I realised there were a couple of mistakes or parts that could benefit from more description. So even though Lainey said it was very good, I'm going to go back and develop the script more to make my final version. The dialogue will mostly be kept the same, but the descriptions and character actions will be expanded on more. I think this will help the overall story and script as well as helping my actors when I provide them the script for lines.

So, I then started creating my shooting script. Using both my script, as well as the storyboards I created yesterday, I was able to fully complete the shooting script in lesson. Similarly to the storyboards, the shooting script will aid me when further planning which shots to shoot when and where as well as helping me to keep track of the story, and how visually it will eventually look. And the shooting script allowed me to take a step further in understanding my own piece, as the storyboards had started in me being able to visualise it.

I then completed a piece of work that goes largely in hand with the shooting script which was the audio script. I was able to use my completed shooting script to aid in the audio scripts production, mainly for the timecodes and visual cue’s. Currently, all the timecodes, visual cues, foley, dialogue and atmospherics are completed in the script. The foley is a lot less in comparison to my previous projects. This is mainly due to traditional documentaries not making too much use of foley as they are traditionally factual pieces. So, I have mainly only incorporated foley into places where I felt it needed to go to emphasise a certain action or where it needed to go in order to serve a purpose in the story. Otherwise the audio is largely, atmospherics, dialogue and music. Regarding the music, I currently have place holders in my audio script in which a brief description of the type of music is contained. This will be updated next week when I have chosen my specific pieces of music. But currently I have just given brief descriptions for what I will look for. And finally, the cu/cut reference. I initially wasn’t 100% sure of what this section meant. So I asked Nigel and he said it was pretty similar to the visual cues. So I have used it in order to really any additional information regarding the audio, for example whether a character is speaking via voiceover or when the cue is very exact. But aside from having to update the music, I have finished my audio script. And I think it had definitely benefitted me a lot. Audio can sometimes be a thing people forget about. But by completing this audio script, I have put a lot more thought and consideration into my audio and I’ll be able to keep this in mind, particularly when in production, as I will have this document to refer back to.

Overall, today was very useful and productive, allowing me to really further my pre-production. Tomorrow I plan to look at my resource list and character designs. By the end of the weekend, I will have completed many of the creative forms of pre-production. These will then allow me to look more at the technical side, with my production schedule going to be a huge part of this.