How has research and planning helped you to create successful media products?

How has research and planning helped you to create successful media products?

To make my media product a success and build it from the ground up I was heavily reliant on my research and planning processes. I began with researching as I needed to gain a simple knowledge of first, common filming conventions and then begin to settle upon an idea which I liked and work out how to film it to make it a reality.

     I began by simply researching how film openings were constructed, after watching the openings of a fair variety of genres such as chick flicks, comedies, horrors and dramas I realised that the common conventions of each varied greatly. After settling upon my chosen genre ‘Drama’ I began to focus on watching openings of iconic drama films. From recent films such as ‘Public Enemies’ (2009), to classics such as ‘The Godfather’ (1972). After finding common trends of this genre I posted the findings onto my blog along with screenshots of the first ten frames, analysing each.

     The internet was a huge help for me within my research phase. I used Youtube a great deal to continue my research, watching the work of previous students to see what somebody without professional crews was typically capable of. This was extremely helpful as it gave me a more realistic idea of my expectations.

     The Internet Movie Database was also very helpful when it came to cross-referencing films and measuring their success. This allowed me to see how Drama films were received out in the world and compare their success to the success of other genres. The internet also helped me to find royalty free music to use in my project to avoid copyright issues. The website RoyaltyFreeMusic.com allowed me to do just this, providing me with the scores for my film opening. Despite finding music on this website I had also looked on Youtube for older music where the copyright had expired as well as amateur musicians who had no copyright to their music. I did get into contact with a few who did give me permission to use their music if I so wished.

     The use of Social Networking sites was also very useful to me. As I wanted to keep my project and researching topics up-to-date and current with the trends of society I was able to measure my audience’s expectations through the use of sites such as Twitter and Facebook. By using these sites I was able to measure the level of interest for my genre of film and see what my expected audience would be.

     My blog was absolutely essential for planning and organising my findings through research. It allowed me to organise all of my findings. My blog shows the development and progress of my ideas throughout. I have been able to organise every single though, development and finding on my blog from my first decision and storyline to the finished storyboard, shot list and script.

Without my research and planning my project would never have come into existence. The use of the internet helped me to piece the ideas of my project together and find my soundtrack. My blog and the organisation was also the core of what helped my project become successful as I was able to record and document each step of my production on it.