Research & Planning

(A) Organisation Of Time & Equipment

When organising our time and equipment for the Foundation Portfolio, we started off by making sure that we had decided ont he days that we wanted to film so that we knew exactly when we were going to go out with the cameras to ensure that we had time to refilm any scenes if needed afterwards. This also meant that as we knew exactly when we wanted to film, there were no problems with taking out equipment at the same time as any other group. Our planing for the project turned out to be succesful as we filmed when we planned to and had no problems when we needed extra days to film again as we left ourselves time. However, planning for filming in our Advanced Portfolio proved to be difficult due to our choice of outdoor location and bad/winter weather which meant that we were unable to film on a couple of occasions. This meant that we then had to change location and try to arrange a time when it was okay for the artist and ourselves to be able to film. As we both had knowledge from filming our Foundation Portfolio, it meant that we knew that if we didnt make a quick decision to change our location for the music video then we would waste a large amount of time.

(B) The Efficient Choice & Organization Of Actors, Settings And Props

For our Foundation Portfolio task, as there was three of us in the group we felt that it would be easiest to use Toby as our actor, one of our group as it meant that it would be easier to arrange when we filmed and could discuss this in lessons. Toby was also appropriate for the character in film as he wore dark clothes and fitted the part more than anyone else we knew. However, as the three of us lived in different places it meant that we had to film during lesson times which did end up being a problem because our actor would not turn up to some lessons, this also meant that we had to choose a location which was easily accessible and would not allow us to be let down by the actor for the distance of it. The difference in choosing our Advanced Portfolio was that the music video project meant we were unable to use ourselves in the video, so we had to choose an artist that we trusted and would hopefully be reliable if we wanted them to be in the video. Luckily, our friend was talented and willing to both record a song for us and be in the video with another friend of ours so they were willing to meet on a day that was easy for all of us to film on.

(C) Scripting And/Or Storyboarding

When coming up with an idea for our Foundation Portfolio, it was fairly easy to create our storyboard as we were quick to decide on what we wanted to film. When we came to film, we used our storyboard as a guidance and as it was our first project felt more comfortable more or less sticking to our storyboard throughout filming and only needed one draft of it. The difference between the scripting of our Advanced Portfolio was that we started with a draft, which then was changed due to our change of location and was then changed once again for our final storyboard as throughout filming and thinking about ideas for our location we changed our mind on what we thought would work. The problem with doing a performance based video was that we had to think  of many difference shots and angles to put down on our storyboard to make it interesting and original. Therfore when shooting we did not stick to the storyboard as much as in the Foundation Portfolio because we had more confidence to think outside the box and do things differently to how to first intended.

(D) Initial Target Audience Research

Creativity Theories

According to Bentley (1997), creativity is "The making of the new and rearranging of the old", in the creating our our ancillary tasks, a digipak and magazine advert we researched and chose a smiliar artist who's album cover design we wanted to recreate for our products. The cover for John Mayer's album 'Room For Sqaures' consists of a design of squares which supposedly creates the photograph of him, so using lines I created the illusion of a number of squares which made up the photograph that I took of our artist like a puzzle. To make sure that the idea looked original I used colours from the still photos to add coloured squares in places.

"A process needed for problem solving...not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability processed by most people" this is Jones's (1993) definition of creativity. During the filming of our music video we had a major problem with the lighting due to the winter season it got dark very quickly which limited us to how long we had to shoot our footage. After filming the first time, we realised that the footage was too dark to use so we had to return to our location and film again. The second time, we had the idea of using a small floodlight which lit up the barn creating the effect of it looking like day time.We were then able to film again for as long as we needed without worrying about the time of day or the weather as it did not then affect our filming.

Creativity can also be seen as 'Rule breaking/boundary testing', when making our Thriller opening we decided to go against the convention of keeping the character's face covered from the audience as although for the duration of the opening you cannot see our actors face, however in the black and white flashbacks you can. We wanted to purposely show Toby's face during the flashbacks as we wanted the audience to be able to see the expression on his face as it gave the audience an idea of how he was feeling about the situation he is currently in.