Creativity: Research and Planning

Before starting the media course I had already started doing research and planning and using digital technology. This was by taking pictures like selfies, this has led me to have an understanding of what angles and lighting to use. The way research and planning is used is by looking at other celebrities and how they took pictures and applying to my own. Over the two years I have been able to gain a understanding of how important research and planning is, to create a product that is targeted to the audience and so that it fits in with other conventions of the genre and is recognisable.

For the first task we got given which was the preliminary task we had to make a magazine for the college. For this task I did no planning and didn’t draft what I was going to do beforehand. I also didn’t do any research of previous college magazines. This means I had no understanding of conventions or what rules there are to what it should look like. This therefore means as a magazine it’s unsuccessful as the lack of codes and conventions means it wasn’t recognisable. What I did use to make the magazine was any previous knowledge of what I have seen in magazines before. However I had no skills to imitate them completely and I had things like a basic rectangle box of where the text was and all one block colours.

My music magazine in AS I was able to understand a bit more how and why research and planning can help develop skills and make the magazine look better, specifically with the progression of all the different drafts from drawn to digital. For my music magazine I picked the Rock genre, I looked at magazines like UNCUT and Q to show me how the magazine should look and what conventions should be used. I found that typically the rock genre uses the colours red, white and black. I looked at between 15-20 magazines to see how they all use the conventions. I understood the use of a dominant image and a main cover line as conventions, to show quickly to the audience the genre of the magazine. However I did not fully understand the use of colour for rock, I know now it’s because stereotypically rock can be quite aggressive and the colour red is used to signify anger and evil. Knowing about the conventions limited my creativity as I had to stick to certain conventions in order to suit the genre.

While research and planning for my A2 film trailer I feel as though I had a deeper knowledge of the reasoning to why it was important in developing creatively and knowing more about how to create a successful trailer. I have looked at over 20 horror trailers from all different types of genres. Me and my group then picked the slasher genre and then watched more specific slasher horror trailers. We found the different conventions used to show the characters and how the meaning behind them effects the type of character. For example a convention of a dumb blonde is blonde hair and she will be wearing pink as she would be Girley and weak. I looked at trailers from the 1960’s to trailers now and saw how the character types evolved. The research showed that if we want the trailer to be successful it needs to be recognisable to the target audience as a slasher trailer.

AS music magazine to A2 music video planning has developed a lot. For the music magazine I did a few drawn drafts then did different drafts of a digital version. However for the video, I have done a detailed story board and shot list to show what I will be filming then went out and did practice texture shots and then we will film the real one. Research helped with understanding of how to plan what we needed to film by doing audience research and asking over 20 people different questions about trailers, like what they find most noticeable or scary.