Wednesday, 27 September 2023

Media Studies - COMP 3 Weekly Plan & Progress

This blog post features my (Maxi) diary and plan for my teams music promotion package project.


Here is the schedule for the development and production of our promotion package, outlined by our teacher Mr. Nick.
 

Week 

Term 2

Week 

Term 3

1

(2 Oct)

Brief, Research

8

( 8 Jan)

Development

2

Research

9

Shoot

3

Research

10

Shoot, Self Reflection

4

Proposal 

11

Post Production

5

Development

12

Post Production

6

Development

13

(13 Feb)

Deadline (Tuesday 13th February)

7

Development

14

 


Here is a diary that tracks the progress of the creation of me and my music promotion package project:

Week 1 - 06/10/23

This week, having already decided on the team that I will be working with throughout the project, we began our research for our Component 3 music promotion package project, deciding what we want and what we don't want to see in our music video, and began discussing genres for which type of song to use.


Week 2 - 13/10/23

This week we continued our research and decided on a few songs that we could use for the music video were going to make, as well as looking at different artists social media pages and branding. We further discussed about what type of artist we want to have be the star of our music video.


Week 3 - 20/10/23

This week we began to create our statement of intent, and have already agreed on an artist, and their song, that we will use for our music video, which is Sabrina Carpenter's "Feather". We also began to briefly discuss the ideas for the aesthetic of our music video.  Also, I had received feedback from my teacher Mr. Nick where he advised me to include more detailed information in my weekly plan and progress, which I will now do by being more reflective through including the problems we encountered, as well as the possible solutions to those problems in each update to my weekly progress.

Problem: We haven't fully finalized our statement of intent, and still need to finalize target audiences, interests, etc. Our artists persona has also not been fully thought of.

Solution: We will continue to discuss and brainstorm about what kind of personality we want our artist to have, and get a good idea of what we want our music video to look like and who we want it to cater towards.

To Do: Finish statement of intent, and continue discussing the theme of our music video.


Week 4 - 27/10/23

This week we began to pinpoint the aesthetic and vibe of our music video by watching more videos of the same genre, analyzing the lyrics of our song to see what would fit it best, and by creating a mood board. We were also able to practice lip sync editing where we filmed a short segment for a music video as a class project. We hope that this will help us and we will be able to use the knowledge we gained when we shoot our music video,

Problem:  We still haven't decided on our artists name and one of our team members wasn't there to film our mini project with us.

Solution: We will discuss and brainstorm in our own time to finalize the details of our artists persona, and other characteristics.

To Do: Begin to write a screenplay and draw a storyboard.


Week 5 - 04/11/23 

This week we began outlining the timeline of our music video, using a lyrics sheet we started writing and visualizing the scenes for each part of the song. We hope to have a detailed split for what part to include in which scene once we finish this timeline. We also finalized our initial shooting ideas and who we want to cast, as well as the overall theme of the music video.

Problem: We realized that theres a risk of rain in the time that we plan on shooting, which is a problem as a majority of our scenes are outdoor and rely on sunshine. Casting our actors may also be difficult as we experienced in previous projects that scheduling conflicts may often arise when working with large groups of people.

Solution: Finish the development of the screenplay and storyboard, and begin shooting earlier as to avoid the rain. As well as making sure that we have clear communication with our actors which we intend on doing by making a group chat on WhatsApp, and sharing our plans with them there as the team moves forwards.

To do: Finish the outline and timeline of the scenes of our music video.



Week 6 - 10/11/23

This week we finished the timeline of our music video which saw us adding and deliberating on all the types of scenes that we want to include, which helped us when we also began drawing out our storyboard.

Problem: The storyboard may take a bit long to create, and we may not end up needing that detailed of a screenplay, as music videos tend to not have such detailed screenplays, if any.

Solution: Create a storyboard that is initially detailed, then just use a rough draft for the rest of it, while creating a screenplay anyway that is detailed in the important sections where actors will need to put on a performance, as to provide them a clear idea of what their behaviour should look like. 

To Do: Finish the storyboard and screenplay.


Week 7 - 17/11/23

This week, as we are about to go on our 2 month long break, we completed and finished the blog posts that we weren't done with yet. We also have finished important parts of the screenplay and storyboard, making sure we had the majority of them done before we left for our break.

Problem: Still have some information and reflections that haven't been added to the blog, as well as not having the complete storyboard and screenplay.

Solution: Will add and finish the blog posts, as well as finish the storyboard and screenplay.

To do: Over the break, we plan on scouting our locations (and start filming our music video if possible).


Reflection (Halfway point):

Going into this term break with the progress we've made so far, I am quite happy with how the project has gone so far. Everything has essentially gone according to plan with little to no setbacks, except for maybe tight deadlines and pushed back work. Other than that, we have been able to effectively work together to create the basis of the project, developing and researching what we could to the best of our abilities in the pre production phase, and are eager to move onto the production process of the music video.


Week 8 - 12/01/24

This is our first week back after finishing our 2 month long school holiday. During the holiday, we were able to finish the screenplay, and scout a few locations for our shoot, however were not able to start shooting due to schedule conflicts. We also contacted all our actors and made sure of which dates they would be available for shooting. Also, I had received feedback from my teacher Mr. Nick where he advised me to further continue researching more music videos, which I also plan on doing. Lastly, we finally updated the formats of our blog as to make it simpler and easier for Cambridge Examiners that will eventually read them, and mark them.

Problem: Do not yet have set dates for when our shoots will be, and still need to think about how and what equipment we may need to rent and use when we shoot.

Solution: Come together and look at our schedules and finalize the exact dates where we are free, and give those dates to the actors. If problems further arise, we'll discuss with them and get better dates.

To Do: Finish the risk assessment of the locations we plan on shooting our music video in.


Week 9 - 19/01/24 This week we finished our filming schedule, and created a WhatsApp group with our cast members in which we provided them with information regarding their costumes, schedules, locations, etc. This allows us to easily communicate with all our actors in case of a sudden change in plans, or if any of them suddenly won't be able to make it.

Problem: One of our team members wasn't able to come during the creation of our filming schedule, but we were able to inform him via WhatsApp and confirmed that everything looked great. Another problem is that I unexpectedly will have to be in Sydney next week during the filming of one of our scenes.

Solution: Since I wont be able to attend on the first day of filming (27th of January), we decided to choose the easiest location on that day to shoot, which was the scenes at Gunung Payung Beach. Additionally, if anything went wrong, my team members could still call me and ask for help regarding issues with the screenplay, etc.

To Do: Research social media pages of artists in the same genre and get inspiration for our artists social media page, and plan out what kind of posts we need.


Week 10 - 26/01/24

This week we began more extensive research into the social media pages and digipaks of artists, and what the general conventions of each are and how we can apply them to our own artist. We also began planning out what kind of posts we want to include on our artists social media page.

Problem: We plan on having our first day of shooting on the 27th of January, however I will not be able to attend due to sudden plans.

Solution: If the team encounters any problems where they need my help, they can easily call me via WhatsApp if they want to ask me anything or confer for my opinion.

To Do: Finish shooting all beach scenes.


Week 11 - 02/02/24 Over the weekend of this week, we had finished shooting the first few scenes of our music video which were at the beach, which is all detailed in the behind the scenes/production process of that day on my blog. We also began writing our critical self reflections.

Problem: While shooting at our original location, Gunung Payung Beach, we were suddenly told it would cost us IDR 750.000 to film there by security.

Solution: Since we believed that this was too much money for us to pay, we ended up moving to the nearby Pandawa Beach, where we ended up getting all the shots we needed as well.

To Do: By next week, we aim to have finished our villa scenes as well, as we will be shooting on the 3rd of February.

Week 12 - 02/09/24

Over this weeks weekend, we finished shooting the scenes of our music video with our artist and her friends that were set in the Villa, and further detailed the behind the scenes and production process in my behind the scenes blogpost.

Problem: While shooting at the villa, we intended to film the closing scene of the music video, which was the sunset scene. However, since the skies on that day were quite cloudy, we were not able to capture the sunset.

Solution: We decided to instead change the location of the sunset scene to Peninsula Island Park, where we will be shooting at shortly.

To Do: By next week, we aim to have finished our villa scenes as well, as we will be shooting on the 3rd of February.


Week 13 - 02/16/24

Over the course of the week and the weekend, we finished shooting the scenes of our actors where they would be in the car, and at the park. Additionally, Timo finished editing the first draft of our music video, and showed it to our teacher Mr. Nick. We had also gotten the majority of the content that we planned on uploading to our artists social media, including pictures, interviews, and dance challenges, as well as photo's for our digipak. These can be seen in the social media development post, and the digipak development post. Lastly, Mr. Nick also extended the deadline for the submission of our project from the 13th of February, to the 23rd of February, due to various school and national holidays that took away from the time we originally had in class to finish the project. Thus, we now had a bit more time to finish all aspects of our project.

Problem: Mr. Nick saw a few minor problems with our first draft, mainly due to the editing choices that were made. Including cuts being too fast, or the speed of some shots not matching the lyrics of the video

Solution: Since they were only editing issues, Timo only had to choose different clips to put into the video that would fit the timeline of the video better.

To Do: By next week, we will have to submit our final finished project to our teacher Mr. Nick, thus the team and I will need to finish all our blogposts including self reflections, as well as finish uploading our artist's content onto social media, and finish creating the digipak.


Week 14 - 02/23/24

As this was the week we'd be submitting our project to the school, we recieved some final bits of feedback from Mr. Nick, and made our final changes to our music video, digipak, and social media page. I had also gone back to older blog posts and updated them with new information, such as how our storyboard and screenplay differed from our final music video, and added additional reflection to a few posts as well. Another change to my blog posts I made was including Hyperlinks in blog posts that relate/include material from previous blog posts. i.e, in a blog post about the production process, when mentioning the screenplay, I added a hyperlink as to allow anyone reading the blog to easily find the material I was referencing in the various blog posts in which this occurred. Bonus Week - 04/26/24 After submitting our project for our school grade, we still had lots of time until we finally submitted our project to Cambridge. Mr. Nick had done this as so we would still be able to edit anything that needed to be changed during that time frame. In this time, I added new blog posts such as how we used media language to represent the story and characters in our music video, as well as a blog post detailing how we were regulated throughout the creation of our music video. I also edited my self reflection as to make it more in depth. Lastly, I made final checks and small changes to previous blog posts such as highlighting important information, adding extra images, adding more links, etc.



Reflection (End of Project):

Over the course of the second half of this project, there have been a myriad of aspects and elements which I am proud of, as well as problems that we faced which should not have occurred, and could have been avoided. However, the progress of our Compenent 3 project in general remained stable, and we were able to keep all our tasks on track and keep on schedule. Overall, despite the problems that we faced throughout the shooting process, I am proud that as a team we were able to rise above them and find the solutions to those problems using our own innovations and plans. This helped us stay ahead of ourselves and not fall behind schedule, despite the pressures that may have led us into doing so. This progress report to me has been useful in outlining each week the problems we encountered, what we should do, as well as keeping an organized list of things to finish as soon as possible, which has helped me keep myself, as well as my teammates organized. All in all, I am very happy with manner in which my team and I have progressed throughout the course of over 14 weeks of working on this project, and hope to improve on areas which we lacked in for future projects that I may embark on in the future, outside of A-Level Media Studies.

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