POST PRODUCTION

*Introduction:

From studying media studies from AS level to A-level, I believe that I have developed and honed my research and planning skills for my future career in Media. This is because I have made two different successful productions which were a Thriller opening which was based on the concept of a suspenseful ‘stalking’ and ‘moral conflicts’ type. In contrast to a music video which was the advanced production where I created this based on a conceptual/performance type video, where it focussed on one main artist representing her image of being a strong, independent powerful women.

*Pre-production:

Through the course of the two years I encountered vast and thorough research in order for my productions to be a success. In both years I carried out very similar research however, the research I performed in A2 was more defined and effective as I was working as if I were in industry. I carried out primary research which included creating mood-boards, which were to capture inspiration and develop my ideas. In AS my mood-board was specific to a film called ‘Train Spotting’ which as a class we used an influence for ideas, further on in A2 the mood-board I created was more flexible in ideas as the song choice I had chosen was a bricolage of different genres therefore this enabled me to be more creative and incorporate ideas that I had learnt about ‘hyperreality’ from theorists such as Baudrillard.

Important research that had the most impact on both productions was gaining audience feedback. I found that when creating the music video, I was searching for a varied target audience, therefore I used existing artists profiles who had a similar identity and sound to my chosen artist as they would already have an existing fan base that I could feed my production details and videos out to them to gain the right audience feedback that would be valid and reliable seen as the music video would attract the same audience. To do this I used social networking sites such as ‘MySpace’ as this is where the most popular music orientated form of web2.0 for getting music noticed, I also used Facebook to create a fan page for friends of my own (who are of a similar target audience) to ‘like’ the fan page and become involved in this, similarly to Twitter however this method was not valid as I was not able to benefit from it as much as I had hoped because the video was only seen on a small scale where I just gained peer feedback for those who had time and showed an interest. Although this was the case it was not completely useless as I did manage to gain little feedback which I used to develop my music video further to ensure that it was successful. At AS level I uploaded my video to YouTube to gain views and feedback but I only managed to gain feedback from peers in my class. The feedback I gained I did not develop my idea further on from this, I just used it to evaluate the success I had made from that.

Throughout the pre-production process it was crucial that I was organised. From learning this in AS, when it came to A2 my organisation skills were much improved as I was learning industry standard process that I should/could have used in AS. Such processes were production schedules, location recees, call sheets and risk assessments. In AS I had created a production schedule that was very basic, it had only included details of location and a shot list, although I had created a detailed shot list, it is also important to have had a detailed description of locations, which is where in A2 I learnt about a Location Recee and a more detailed and professional production schedule that listed everything needed on set for each day that I spent filming. I also realised the importance of a Risk Assessment as it is a requirement that is very crucial when filming.

*Production/Post-production:

For both productions researching into the ‘genre’ was key in the contribution towards making my production a success, as knowledge on know the correct codes and conventions that resemble the genre would help establish the purpose of each production.