Progress Report - Radio Production and Camera Stills

The production of my group’s radio piece took place today, and although I had previous experience with the equipment, producing the advertisement was still a tough challenge. The skepticism I had built up of how it would turn out, due to the lack of planning, mainly to focus on the other products within the advanced portfolio, meant that more time was needed to make all the sounds and effects the group wanted to match perfectly. However, the atmosphere within the recording studio was calm, which led to clarity within our decision making on issues like choice of music and sound effects.

Photographic stills were also taken to reitterate the work-like atmosphere, as well as providing evidence of the physical work I have contributed to the advanced portfolio. Each member of the group contributed a fair amount to this production, by following the roles we assigned ourselves at the beginning of this project.
One issue that needs to be mentioned is that fact that our own production of music was created to fill in for the lack of copyrighted music we weren’t allowed to use, following the brief OCR has given us for the advanced portfolio. However, I believe this aided our radio advertisement, as it led to increased diversity, by creating our own piece.





My group has also decided that we are going to include other scenes within our film trailer as well as excluding those we believe do not aid the enigma and narrative. I think that this will create a more natural sense of fear than first cretaed when watching through the rough edit of the initial trailer.
The two photos above are photographic stills of the filming process which took most of the day, in an attempt to completely follow the codes and conventions. The first is where we have been refering back the storyboard, an important part of communication between each of the members within our group. The second image is of me, operating the camera.

Progress Report

As mentioned in the previous blog, time is limited at the moment and I have been attempting to create and apply ideas for my individual tasks as well as helping produce the group tasks – the radio advertisement and the film trailer. However, there have been some issues which has meant that alternative routes have been taken to solve these problems. An example of this is the way we have not been allowed to use existing music on our radio and film productions, even though previous portfolios have allowed this. Instead, we are going to use our own music for this. This has meant that we have larger responsibility surrounding the sound of our background music. It has also meant, however, that we have been able to directly mould the music around our pieces.

Relating to the individual tasks directly, I have been using Photoshop again, to update myself with some of the tools. This will aid my production of the individual tasks as I’ll be able to save time, which is critical at this late stage in the coursework. It will also give me the opportunity to create products that represent my full idea and in turn, show my understanding of these technologies. I have also created drawings of potential magazine front covers on paper, which has allowed for larger diversity when constructing an idea, due to the ease of drawing, in contrast to the complexities of Photoshop.

I have also spent time deciding the actual layout of the front cover; the use of the front cover to attract a potential audience is very important so the decision has not been taken lightly. The layout for my magazine is going to be similar to the style of Empire. The reason for this is that the picture I will be using conveys a sense of enigma, which is characteristic of this magazine throughout my research. This is reinforced by the posture and positioning of the character within the picture.

Filming for the Trailer

After arranging most of the paperwork allowing permission, as well as dates and props amongst other things, we went to film. The whole filming process took no longer than 3 hours, from which the required scenes were collected. It gave a good insight into the production stage of the Film Trailer, building on existing knowledge developed during the Foundation Portfolio, especially techincal codes. The result was that time management was smoother, as seen by the shorter amount of time it took to film.

Nevertheless, there were some minor issues which we had to correct on the spot. One of these was the issue with low batery. Although we had charged the battery the night before, this issue still caused some panic, in the ending, not running out. There were some other bigger issues though, such as the fact that one of our actors did not turn up. This lead to a rush to find someone who would be able to take up this role. For continuity, we made sure that all the shots filmed had this person in. We had taken test photogrpahs of our locations to see which would suit best for specific scenes. However, in a couple of these scenes, the reflection had made it impossible to film, leading to a change of location, more suited to our needs.

I also decided to take some still shots for potential use on my magazine and website productions, on top of the still photos taken of the location. This would aid the audience’s understanding of particular narratives, using my picture of the antagonist posing in a suggestive manner to illustrate this point. Pictures of my other group members, filming and organising the actors was also taken to reinforce the work ethic and direction of the narrative within the product.

Once filming had been completed, we returned all the equipment and then watched over the footage to see if any mistakes had been made, which were not spotted when watching the footage after each shot when filming. No mistakes had been spotted and we were happy with the footage we collected. Although the process was extremely stressful, we will be able to edit the film over the next week for the final trailer.

Planning of the Pre-Production

Since creating the blogs, for the purposes of explaining the process of the coursework, I have developed particular skills which have aided the production of this Advanced Portfolio. A direct example would be the use of web 2 technology, such as blogger, where this will end up. Furthermore, it has been used as a concise storage facility, linked to ‘Google Documents’ for the work produced over this period of pre-production. This will create ease for not just my group, but for others as well, such as the examiner who will need to locate each document individually.

In relation to the coursework production directly, I have been working well with the other members of my group, which has lead to quick progression since coming up with the initial ideas draft. This has also helped adapt our own transferrable skills to suit each other’s needs. This can be seen with the assignment of particular roles within the group, portraying the aspects at which we are better and worse at. This has lead to each of us helping each other with tasks we may find difficult, such as uploading work to ‘Blogger’ and ‘Google Documents’. ‘Google Documents’ has been helpful as a safe storage facility so that we do not lose important information. It has also meant that we can keep track of the work we have done and what work we still need to do through the use of a digital copy of the log book.

The pre-production of the Advanced Portfolio has shown that there is a lot more information that needs to be considered than in the Foundation Portfolio studied at AS Level. This may be partly due to the fact that there is more to produce, but it may also be stated that I have learnt that rules and regulations are just as important as deciding on other pre-production issues such as the technical codes. As a consequence, my group has dedicated a good amount of time in relating our own production to the rules and regulations, and advertising standards created by the BBFC.
Looking ahead, the filming of our trailer piece will take place tomorrow, which will be another big step towards the final Advanced Portfolio. Permission for equipment and locations have also been given, which will hopefully mean that no issues develop and the filming can be completed in quick time. Testiment to the planning between the group members.