Oliver Keppie wrote about the progress on his filmmaking project over two weeks in his diary. In the first week, he created a pre-proposal and proposal that outlined his ideas in a general way to allow for flexibility later. He researched inspirations from animators and films. In the second week, he conducted research on existing similar products, target demographics like age and gender, and information on depression to inform his animation's content. He created a survey to gather primary audience data and found secondary research helpful but limited. Overall, the diaries showed Oliver's process of exploring ideas and gathering research to develop his filmmaking project.

1. Diaries
By Oliver Keppie

2. Week 1
• This week I started out by writing my pre-proposal. The way I wrote this was by keeping my ideas slightly more open and
just writing a general theme for what I would like to create. This was so I could figure out more of a specific idea later on in
the research and planning stages. I think my pre-proposal went well and gives a reader a good idea of what I would like to
create but still gives me the creative freedom to explore different ideas.
• I the created my inspirations. I started off by looking at animators who inspire me. This was a good place to start because
they connect directly to my project and I watch all of there work so I found it easy to speak about. I then started to look
into more broad areas such as color theory and sound. I decided to look into some more specific films such as “Inside Out”
which I think works well in my inspirations because of the similar themes between the project I would like to create and
the movie. To improve my inspirations I think I would add more visuals to prove and back up my reasoning and I would
also speak more about general inspirations that will have inspired me to make certain decisions when creating my piece.
• My proposal went quite well and I think that it was definitely helpful to have written my pre-proposal. I found that I
couldn’t settle on one idea just yet because I have a few in mind and I would like to decide on one after I have conducted
more research. One thing I struggled with was trying to find books that would relate to my project that weren’t just books
on animation. This resulted in me looking on the college online library for books on animation and media theory. I
managed to fill my bibliography but I think I managed to find sources that I will almost definitely use. The reason I have
done this is because I think it will be a great help to have all my sources in one area so I can easily navigate between them
and get the information I need where and when I need it. I tried to keep the proposal quite open to new ideas and
modifications so that I could adapt the idea later. I think that after I have done some more research into my audience and
what I want the subject of my film to go into, I will be able to decide for definite what I want the mood and tone of my
final animation to be.
• Overall I think this week went quite well although I had a few problems with finding books for my bibliography I think that I
managed to overcome this problem by using the college online library. I think that it will be helpful to go back and look at
my proposal if I need to get more of a variety of ideas as its quite open to interpretation.

3. Week 2
• This week I started on my first week of research. I started by looking into some existing products. The reason I started on this is because it would give
me a better idea on the path I would like to go down and it is also a good way to let the reader know why I have gotten my inspiration from straight
from the start. I then went back and added a little introduction and explanation to what my product will be to add aa bit of explanation and context to
the research. From all this I have learnt a lot about color theory used in the shows I researched and I decided to add a little research on the color and
shape theory's I saw.
• I then did some secondary research on he main factor’s such as age and gender. I started some research on location and income but couldn’t find
enough useful information so I decided to cut these slides. I found it a little tricky to find easy to display information. I spent a lot of time on these
smaller slides because I know that it is very important on the results of my product. I then created a short survey which I created a draft of first and I
decided to go with my second which was more heavily based on the mental illness side of my product instead of the animation. I am going to write
about the results next week. I think its important to do both types of research because secondary can give you a more general idea of the audience
your looking for but with primary it can be very specific and a lot easier to send that information to a specific audience to get more useful answers. It
also allows you to choose specific questions that can impact the final product greatly.
• After this I did some research into the causes and signs of depression as these are the things that I will need to portray in my animation. I also wrote a
lot about the context of my product and why I think I need to create this. For this I researched how many teenagers are educated in depression at high
school and also what the main demographic for people to started getting mental illnesses was. This information was very useful because it essentially
made my product very well needed as my results showed that its teenagers who need informing on this sort of stuff the most.
• I then went back to add a little more information and just round up my existing product research. I wrote about the similarity's and differences
between all the products I've researched, this will help during production if I need an overview for inspiration whilst creating a character or scene etc.
I then started to write about what parts of the existing products research I would like to use in my FMP. I didn’t get properly started on this so will
continue this week although I think its very important to explain to the reader what you are actually looking at in these products and why.
• Overall I think it was a very productive week and I found a lot of useful information. I am looking forward to seeing the results of my survey and seeing
if my questions got the answers I was expecting and if the information I have received is useful. If I could change one thing from this week it would be
the survey. I would add a few more questions as I only had 4 main ones although this is definitely enough to go off it would be nice to have a little
more information.