Planning

The organisation of time and equipment:
When we planned our thriller we organised our time in such a way that all 3 group members were free, fortunately we all had the same free periods at school and because last year we could film during lesson time it worked out so that we had 5 hours a week where we were all free to film at the same time. This meant to organise our equipment we had to plan which time of the day we needed to go and book out our still and video cameras along with our tripod. We had to also make sure that our timing of booking out our equipment enabled us to to shoot at the time of day appropriate. This aspect of our planning i thought was very well done and worked really well for us as a group. The problems that we encountered were technical problems with the equipment, it was either not charged or was not available. It could have been improved if we took the equipment out early then we knew what what we had to work with and we could charge the cameras ourself.
For our music video the planning was very similar as Claudia and I have the same frees, however we could not film in lesson time which meant we did not have the opportunity to get out and film as much as we did last year. The progression this shows is that we had to be even more organised and specific about out timing of filming and booking out equipment.

The efficient choice and organisation of actors, settings and props:
In the thriller film we chose 2 of our group members to be the actors, we chose one of our houses and organised for a type writer to be in the house when we needed it. We decided to this as it meant we only had to rely on group members, if anything was forgotten or didnt work it was the groups problem to sort out, we were all responsible to make the task work and we were all in regular contact and knew when we were all free. I think this planning worked well as we never let each other down and we never felt we had to chase other people or rely on other people to make 0ur project successful.
In our music video we knew we wanted it to be filmed out doors in the countryside, this is why we selected the woods, we wanted adventurous shots of trees and the artist in the natural surroundings. We chose our artist to be our actor aswell aswell as sing as she knew the song, so she could sing properly to enable us to lip-synch appropriately. She was also a close friend of one of the group members so we could trust her not to mess us about and she was willing to do the music video shot for us, she wanted to be invovled which also gave us the satisfaction that she would not walk out on us.

Scripting and/or storyboarding:
Storyboarding our thriller was quite a lengthy process due to lighting issues so we had to change a few frames from the ideas that we originally wanted. We drafted about 3 storyboards until we got the one we wanted and were happy with. I dont feel this aspect of our planning was effective as we knew what we wanted to do, we had a rough idea before we storyboarded but i felt that we had more progression through trial and error with shoting shots with the camera.
When storyboarding the music video, we only did one storyboard and changed a few frames, the only thing we did different is go out and look at our location first at all times of the day and assessed any problems we would have prior to filiming, this is why our original copy stayed. This shows progression through us evaluating the possible problems and taking them into account before planning.

Initial target audience research:
To research our target audience for our thriller we researched thrillers who had a similar target audience to us, like Face Off and Seven. We also gave out questionnaires to find out what our taregt audience found gripping, good, bad and boring about thrillers. We took this into account as we made our thriller whilst sticking to the conventions of thriller film characterisitics. This research was very useful for us as it mean we knew exactly what the audience wanted from our thriller.
For our music video we researched the genre of our music first to see if there was a clear pattern of target audience, we then did questionnaires and general internet research to find out if our music would fit our target audience. I feel it did and our research was very helpful to us. This enabled us to again know what the target audience would expect of our music video.

Existing media practice/products:
We watched many thriller openings, analysed them and compared them to other thrillers with the same and different target audiences. We also researched the conventions of thrillers using the internet and sheets provided by our teachers. This research was very useful to us as it helped us to realise what we had to do in our thriller to achieve a product which used the correct conventions.
For our music video, we watched many different types of music videos, which consisted of narrative, performance and concept based. We researched about Goodwin's theory and looked at how his principles are applied to all music videos. We researched how different genres of music used different principles and why the different principles make one genre appeal to one target audience and another to a other target audience.