Hello! I am Amy Liddell, an 18 year old A2 Media student at The Bishop’s Stortford High School. This is where all of my time management will be displayed and will highlight when deadlines were met and where amendments were made. Filming dates are in the ‘Production log’ under the menu ‘Production’.
Diary Entries:
8th September – Today was the day we decided on who will be part of our coursework group. My group consists of myself alongside, Dana McLean and Emily Bedford. We then immediately began discussing possible ideas and felt that it would be best to create a survey in order to ensure that we were complying with the uses and gratifications theory. Following our AS coursework we decided to use SurveyMonkey as it is the best online way to gain responses and to analyse results. Dana then created the survey.
9th September – Using ‘Outlook Web’, I managed to get it emailed throughout The Bishops Stortford High School to both students and staff members, in order to gain a wider range of ages/genders responding to our survey. The link that was used was: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J6GFYRR
15th September – Today we went through the survey results (we received 180) and drew up some conclusions from the responses regarding genre and target audience, with myself representing this in graphs and explaining our choices we established from this. The certificate was also created to suit our results and decided genre. (Romantic Drama – primary target audience = 15-24 females)
22nd September – From the beginning of this week we decided that we wanted to analyse various different pre-existing media products that were both specific to our genre and in general. We then created a ‘conventions of trailers’ sheet for the general films.
25th September – To gain a better understanding of genre we researched various genre theorists (Steve Neale, Christine Gledhill, and Pam Cooke), and created presentations about their ideas/theories.
29th September – We then completed a romance conventions sheet from our knowledge that we gained from our deconstructions. This provided us with a better insight of how we wanted our genre to be portrayed and all of the different conventions that majority of films follow.
September 30th – we researched into whether we wanted to use an independent or Hollywood distribution company, from this research we decided that our film would be a Hollywood distribution.
1st October – Today our group came together and went over everyone’s tasks and what we needed to complete. Our narrative has been discussed and almost confirmed (story based around a reporter). We are now looking at USP’s to make our film unique and more profitable – following Steve Neale’s theory and that ‘the pleasure is in the differences’ of films and following this theory will help us create a realistic product which also pleases the audiences need for something different whilst still following conventions.
7th October – Today our class had a lesson on how to use Photoshop which is what we shall create our magazine front covers and film posters on. We had permission to use a photo of our teacher and place his face onto any other picture. Here is what I created in the lesson…
8th October – Today we finalised the film plot synopsis and trailer synopsis. We did this following political cinema.
9th October – Today the Health and Safety Risk Assessment was completed. This was important. To complete this we first thought about what situations are applicable to our film/storyline and accidents that may occur during this, listing them, with Emily physically presenting this in a neat table.
10th October – 13th October – We exchanged emails with our friend Charlie Jonas, (whose father works for the BBC), in regards to the creation of our moving logo and also whether we could borrow professional equipment.
13th October – Today Dana completed the first draft of our storyboard, and gathered feedback in regards to improvements that could be made.
14th October – Today we had the presentation of everyone’s Photoshop creations. This we found useful as we got to critique each other’s work and were introduced to various techniques that we hadn’t used. This could benefit us during the ancillary text portion of our film.
20th October – Today we created Powtoon’s/Presentations of various narratvie theorists (Roland Barthes, Vladimir Propp, Tzvetan Todorov, Claude Levi-Strauss).
Emily also stayed behind after school in order to complete my given mise-en-scene tasks (costume/makeup/hairstyles).
I also completed her lighting work and gained permission from the schools stage crew for their help.
21st October – Today we had lesson to catch up with our blog and pre-production work. We have been exchanging work and the casting research has also begun. A local actress called Sinead Michael, is a mutual friend of ours and we are keen to have her star in our production.
We also exchanged emails with our friend Will Barnardo, who we have asked to create our soundtrack for our trailer. He was prepared to spend a few lunchtimes going through the music in relation to the storyboard so that the timing for the climaxes and music is cohesive.
23rd October – Today research was carried out in relation to the romance conventions prezi about what props were to be used throughout our product.
26th October – In conjunction to the storyboard Emily then adapted the Health and Safety sheet, to fit the new storyboard/filming proposals.
7th November – We started deconstructing magazines and/or posters, these varied between Hollywood and Independent texts and/or genre specific and general. By doing this we were able to compare both types and which we would decide to use for our own work. We decided to go with a Hollywood version; therefore we deconstructed a few more of this type in order to gain a good level of knowledge.
10th November –In order to have a full understanding of the finished look of a magazine a conventions sheet was created by myself, this was done as an overview to guarantee during the design process that no vital elements of a magazine were left out.
13th November– Dana has finished the final storyboard, therefore the shot list can now be finished alongside with the development of script.
15th November – Emily created the shot list in order to make the filming process quick and simple, this was something our group didn’t do in AS and our work suffered due to it.
22th November – Casting issues are arising, due to Sinead being a professional actress she was required by other media groups around our area. This resulted in a slight panic and made us want to use two new actors, Tom Dickerson and Abbie Daniels. Filming needs to happen ASAP!
15th December– Dana finally finished the location sheet and we had evaluated what areas would be effective and convenient. Recce shots were also carried out in order to make our research quick and whilst on location we received images in group chat to what locations were preferable.
21st December– This was where our group discussed the script and then came up with the final version, we had accepted the fact that some aspects may change, however it was vital to follow a guideline rather than completely improvising.
24th December – Absolute crisis (ironic we know) sadly Tom has to leave the UK to start his ski-instructor training, therefore we were left hanging and also issues started to occur with Abbie due to her drama coursework.
20th January– Green screen research was vital in the understanding of how to produce the BBC news clip; therefore extensive research was carried out about how it is used etc and also practice versions with our entire group learning how to use the technique our self, to produce this.
26th January – This was the first filming session with Sam Grant on the first news report.
29th January – Emily created the production logo for ‘StillWater Entertainment’, using the program PhotoShop. The first edit of the BBC news report was also created by myself, due to filming quality lacking it was decided that the sound or footage needed to be re-recorded.
30th January– We decided to use the idea of the stereotypical kiss as our intertextual reference, we looked into films that featured this iconic image and Amy then practiced with the lens flare on Adobe Premier Pro.
1st February– NEW CAST! Cameron and Skye have been a massive help and decided to step in and help us with our production.
2nd February – Poster deconstructions began to be the main focus. We deconstructed general and genre specific posters, which we shared between our group. We deconstructed more within our chosen genre as we needed a good understanding of the conventions and any aspects we wanted to include.
7th February – MAIN FILMING DAY! Today was where we spent a Saturday filming the montage in Bishops Stortford town, this was a long session and the weather wasn’t on our side (very cold!) however the results we received were great and with the help of Mr. Abedin’s new sound equipment, we were able to include voiceovers if the quality of sound in our original footage wasn’t good enough.
14th February– I went to London to record the second news report and film some different shots of London scenery too, worked well as this was a pre-arranged date with her cousin (reducing travel costs).
16th February– A general conventions sheet for posters was carried out by Emily which was utilized by the entire group.
I filmed in Little Canfield this was carried out for a few hours, getting Cameron and Skye to Amy’s house was slightly difficult to do however all in all the filming was a success.
26th February– I carried out poster credits research and we all individually included our own developments in regards to our own products.
27th February – Emily went to Cambridge (her dad’s house) and recorded the ‘past’ footage of the younger versions of the main characters. Due to the weather/timing we weren’t able to film outside like the storyboard suggested, but still got some good footage.
10th March– First rough cut was finished and our group recorded feedback. Dana carried out a survey and analysed these results, displaying them in graphs and I received feedback from our teacher. We understood that we needed a few more filming sessions in order to create an effective final cut.
13th March – Emily and Dana did the re-film of the BBC news report, this allowed a better quality of sound and also this allowed us to change the script of Sam slightly, so that the plot of our film was made clearer (listening to the feedback from our first rough cut)
During the editing process we required imported footage to make the narrative clearer, as we couldn’t get to Syria or re-create the footage we wanted. So Amy searched endlessly on YouTube to find suitable ISIS footage which we could include. Another feature which was added was the development of Emily’s production logo as it was made aware to our group that we were allowed to use footage of YouTube.
25th March– The ad screen was developed in order to add to the authenticity of our product. This was done after an initial ‘final cut’ upload to YouTube (VERY ANNOYING).
30th March– Today is when the final final ‘final cut’ was uploaded and therefore allowed us to take still shots to express how mise-en-scene was used during filming and move onto our ancillary texts as being our main focus.
31st March – This is where we went through all of the equipment that we used, finding out information and discussing as a group how it was used. Usefully we had all been at filming when various equipment had been used, therefore we all had an understanding of it.
Amy Liddell - Media A2 Coursework 