Reflection: Research and PlanningRicardo Reveron Blanco

In this reflection I will be assessing how the research and planning has led to the construction of my final music magazine last year and is presently helping my construction of a short film. I will assess both of the projects to draw comparisons and contrasts from both year products.

This will finally allow me to expose the significant progress that me as a Media Studies student has achieved.

AS Foundation Portfolio & A2 Advanced Portfolio: Pre-production

The process of producing a media text should always rely on the influence of previous research.

AS Foundation Portfolio (ASFP)

Examining professional and similar products as well as collecting information on potential target audiences has prevented my media products from being unfocused. In terms of the ASFP, I focused on understanding how current magazines are presenting in society so I evaluated a newsstand in order to see how magazine are represented and how my own should be to fit in (details are in the next slide). I then collected audience feedback when presenting my proposal.

A2 Advanced Portfolio (A2AP)

Here I have also examined three case studies on professional and similar products which will be discussed further. I have also carried out an audience feedback which differs from last year’s as I did not present my proposal to my class but rather made a questionnaire in addition to creating an open comment for people to feedback my treatment.

ASFP: Newsstand task

I took this photograph in WHSmith in Westfield Stratford last year. In my blog I discussed how the magazine has to stand out from the rest as when they are displayed in a newsstand they must attract the customer’s attention. In this case I found the NME magazine to do this and therefore concluded that adding similar features such as the masthead and the colour schemes (red and white) will benefit my overall product.

A2AP: Case Studies

Dexter Opening Sequence

This is one of the three professional short films that I analysed in order to incorporate certain code and conventions into my work. In my analysis I presented a synopsis of the short film, and then progressed onto examining customs such as the mise-en-scene, character representation, camera techniques, editing et al.

I found out that the opening sequence with micro-shots of certain peculiar aspects would be the most beneficial to incorporate in our project. Which we then presented in our storyboard for potential audience to feedback.

ASFP: Pitch

In the pitch I presented last year I included topics such as mission statement, publishers and cross-media in order to reveal how the audience would feedback and change some concepts accordingly. For instance, this pitch revealed that I had to develop why I wanted to add a catch line with my masthead as well as the cost of the product.

The link to the full presentation is attached here: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5180531573629312341#editor/target=post;postID=6315354634507130100;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=18;src=postname

A2AP: Audience Feedback

ASFP: Mise-en-sceneI decided that pre-planning everything that I would need in the shoot beforehand would make my work in the studio much easier when shooting. For this reason, I used a call sheet to plan costumes, props, and model needed for the shoot:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5180531573629312341#editor/target=post;postID=2852730763408837906;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=14;src=postname

A2AP: Mise-en-scene

This year in order to prepare before creating the footage we managed to present a recce with all the necessary assets that we would need to have prepared before shooting. (Location, props, costumes…)

In addition to this we asked several individuals that would be potential actors for our project as they fit with out treatment by using release forms: ( link)

A2AP: Paperwork & Team work

In our group we decided that sharing the different pre-production task would meet the given deadlines and we would accomplish the tasks in a higher standard. Some of us would manage the college paper work such as equipment booking, or risk assessments whereas I took some pictures to add in our location recce. In terms of group meeting, we would just allocate them in class time in order to discuss them easily. This contrasts from last year’s work as I would not pre-plan ahead I would do the planning retrospectively.

Continuation• As I have arrived late to A2 Media Studies, I was unable to incorporate ideas

in the initial storyboard as my group already completed ir beforehand. However, I was able to give small ideas such as presenting a “dead body” in the container. After filming our test footage we were able to do some group changes in our storyboards to incorporate combined ideas. Although we were able to efficiently finish our storyboard coherently, we could have asked several audiences to give us feedback of our storyboard to avoid complications when actually filming.

• In last year’s storyboarding I found that I have had high standard work as I firstly drafter music magazines in pencil and then started doing some drafts in InDesign and following these drafts closely benefited my work.

Time Management & Blogging

I feel that that my own time management has improved from last year as this year I take action by preparing a week in advance minimum whereas last year I procrastinated and had to finish task retrospectively.

In terms of blogging I am constantly blogging from what we do in class and extra whereas again last year this was not the case and I uploaded posts retrospectively and late to meet deadlines. Moreover, this year I have implemented more creative elements such as embedding technology to give a higher standard to my present work.