WEEKLY JOURNALS

This is where you think about your FMP learning journey and development.
Don’t simply describe what you did - consider what you have learnt and how this has benefitted
your project. What do you need to improve?

THIS IS JUST GUIDANCE THAT YOU NEED TO ADAPT TO YOUR OWN PROJECT. YOU HAVE CREATED YOUR
OWN PRODUCTION SCHEDULES AND YOUR WEEKLY BLOGS SHOULD REFELCT THAT.

THESE QUESTIONS SHOULD BE ADDRESSED IN THE WEEKS YOU COMPLETED THEM. DO NOT JUST SUBMIT THIS
FORM FILLED IN FOR YOUR WEEKLY BLOGS. THERE SHOULD BE 11 WEEKLY BLOG ENTRIES (INCLUDING
EASTER).

Week Three - Research

RESEARCH

What did you learn from your I learned lot from my research was the tradition, I have done
research? research into the conventions of mafia gangs, their behaviour,
what they would usually get up, as in how they would perform
their crime and how they would hide money and other drugs. This
small bracket gave me a lot of useful information that I can
weave into my preproduction and also my script.

Also about the Codes and Conventions of my genre, this helped

me tailor how I produce my short. In my research I looked into
what makes a short film, why people make them and how I can
make mine better with the research I have gathered, with all of
this information I can produce a high quality production.

How has the research into your target
audience helped you improve your
ideas?
My target audience research helped a lot with working out how I
am going to make this thing, from all the surveys and focus
groups, I actually know what my audience wants to see, they
want some action, and a lot of comedy, so I’m going to tailor
that experience to suit my target audience, the surveys I sent out
were very informative, showing in depth answers from my
respondents.

All of this information helped me improve my ideas because its

exactly what I was looking for, I was running out of ideas because
of how complex the story was, I was heavily doubting I was able
to pull this off, but with all of the idea people have given me
through surveys and focus groups, it’s an effective source of
ideas an information.

How has the research into your Platform research was simple, all I needed to do was send out
platform helped you improve your some surveys and focus groups asking about peoples preferred
ideas? platform told watch media on, I did this. Sending out a big survey
 asking people about what they watched media on, and how
long they would use these platforms for. Of course, the usual
suspects cropped up such as YouTube and Netflix, but what
surprised me was how long they use them for, 5 hours some
people said. I wrote this down immediately, this was great, as this
survey clearly said to me that YouTube and Netflix are heavily
popular and widely used platforms to upload my short on
because of their availability and popularity.

How has researching characters and
actors helped you decide who to
cast?
Frim researching my character and actors, I sculpted what kind
of personalities my characters have. They all have certain
personalities and traits that I want my characters to perform,
they’re not complex but they’re different than usual parts
especially David, who is the nutter of the group. I think helping to
decide who to cast was easy, I made the personalities of my
characters and found people who would be good playing them.
I picked my usual 3 (Paris Oscar and Fin) Not only because
they’re my friends, but they’re amazing at playing compels roles
especially Paris. So I had already had people in mind.

What have you learned from your
test shoots? How will you use these
ideas in your production?
The test shoots were very useful, having practicing what have
been researching and putting all of my hard work into practice
really helped me get a good grip on how to use my camera and
how to use these different types of complex camera angles,
even though I only researched two and the two I researched
were quite common, it was a first for me trying to perfect these.
But with the ideas I had in mind paired with the techniques I have
learned I feel like I demonstrated my knowledge very well.

What work do you need to complete I have small parts to catch up on, some small portions of research
outside of lessons to stay on track? and some auditions to upload, other than that, that is it.

High Grade Tips

Research
● ‘Thorough research’ - include plenty of sources and detailed analysis of this information
● ‘relevant & coherent’ – make sure your research sources are not just the same as the Media
product you hope to make - and talk about how they inform your planning
● ‘sustained’ – continue your research throughout the eleven-week project and don’t just limit it to
the first two weeks
● ‘accomplished & considered’ – all of the above referred to in your daily/weekly reflections