The document summarizes the student's research and planning process for their short film project. It discusses researching similar films to understand genre elements, examining a TV show's audience demographics to determine their target viewers, organizing logistics like locations and props, evaluating and refining storyboards, managing timelines as an individual and as part of a group, and using varied presentation formats to communicate their work, representing an improvement from their previous project creating a music magazine.

1. Research and Planning:
the moving image work
Kimberley Carroll

2. What research did you carry out into similar products?
The primary stage of our research started by looking at other short films, particularly those
that were a similar genre to what we as a group wanted to product as a final piece. The case
studies I looked at included: ‘Awake’ – Daniel Blackstock (2013), ‘Dexter’ - TV Show (2006)
and ‘Closed Door’ James Button (2011) all of which included aspects that were similar to
what we wanted to do. I decided to look at these short films as my case studies in order to
see how elements of both scaring and or thrilling the audience were done by either being
written into the piece or enhanced through editing such as using a soundtrack piece at a
particular time to shock the audience or to build suspense. Once we noted these points we
then thought about how we could translate them into our short film therefore helping us to
create a more successful piece that fits in with the genre we chose.
From this is it clear that my method of research has developed from last year’s. Though the
set coursework is a different format of media, I feel I have used the same skills set to
research these products by using knowledge I also picked up from last year’s course, such as
the way colour, camera angle and lighting can all convey a certain meaning that helps to add
to the scene for example showing someone as weak, through tilting the camera down, a
character being dressed in white conveying themes of ‘good’ and ‘innocent’ or red as
‘powerful’ or ‘angry’ or the way a dark room conveys the unknown and therefore sets up
fear and suspense in the scene. This will help in the production of our short film as we can
then use these elements as part of our own, through the characters involved.

3. What research did you carry out into your target
audience?
In the development of our treatment and pitch, from the case studies we
looked, we chose to look at Dexter in more detail as it is a TV and therefore
had more audience information available for us to analyse. Details we looked
at included age certificate, number of viewers and the gender of these viewer.
From this we found that there were a higher percentage of Men who enjoyed
this TV show than women, all of which we found from the shows audience
demographic. Therefore this we took this into consideration and were able to
choose who our target audience were, Males aged over the aged of 16.
However having filmed the age rating could be lowered as there is no actual
violence nor graphic scenes.
When compared to last year’s coursework I feel again the method of research I
used has improved as we did not produce a treatment as part of the
production of our music magazine, however I feel the actual analytical side is
still similar as for the magazine audience research I looked at press packs that
had information inside that is the same as the television audience details such
as number of readers and the percentage of gender.

4. How well did you organise
actors, locations, costumes and props?
As a group I feel we handled the logistics of the short film extremely well as we had planned our pre
production in advance. Through the use of our storyboards we were able to ensure we had time to get
all we needed for this section of the shoot by making lists of props and also making sure there was time
to fix any issues we had for example loss of props as we have planned exactly what would to be carrying
out and when, all of which were decided during our teams meetings. The only real issue we had was to
find a location for the container sequence. We decided to look at garages, studios and lock ups to see if
we could find anything suitable and if so would be allowed to film inside. As part of the search for the
container location we looked at hiring a space at big yellow self-storage however when we called to
question if we could, we found we were not allowed to film inside setting us back, however fortunately
we were able to use a storage container on campus at college therefore we were able to sort this issue
out. The other issue we faced when preparing to shoot the container sequence was both the time as it
would take a few hours to do and how we would transport the props such as cardboard sheets and a
fold up take, to combat this we all arranged a meeting point and from there took a hired car to college
to help transport all props and the same when returning. While talking to the caretakers we arranged a
suitable time to film during the half term holidays which was a big help as we could film without a time
limit or worry about noise from students as no one else was around.
When producing my music magazine there was a large difference as I did not face any issues such as
locations or props, as I had decided that the usage of props did not really fit in with the theme of the
photography I had decided to use. Instead I had to focus more on the organisation of the models used
for my shoot such as finding a time to take the images that worked for all my models and the clothing I
wanted them to wear.

5. Evaluate your storyboards.
Our first draft of our story boards were produced during the early stages of pre
production and contained a basic outline of what we wanted to achieve in our short
film piece all of which were done over the first few tem meetings. However once we
neared the end of the pre production stage we decided to again look back over the
storyboards and include changes to make the storyboard more practical, which was
influenced by the test footage we have filmed. Here we found that some of scenes we
wanted to include either were not possible to film, did not match the theme of the
others or just were not necessary to include. Other amends we made to our
storyboards were including more detail about the shots we wanted to use and what
would be in these shots. We produced two series of storyboards one for the forest and
one for the container sequence rather than having them both integrated like in our
first draft, this is because once we looked back over we were not to sure which scenes
should follow which therefore we decided if they were separated we could decide
where to place each scene, making it easier to compare and contrast between the
two.
Compared to my music magazine I believe I had planned more and in more detail in
this project as I based the structure of my music magazine on case studies I had looked
at rather than producing my own

6. Evaluate your own, and your groups time management. How
does this compare to the time management of the music
magazine
Throughout both projects I believe my time
management has been good as I have stuck to the
deadlines I have set my self using my time toast
production timeline as a guide. From this I have
allowed myself to go back and add to completed
tasked in more detail where required. However I
believe my time management was slightly better in
the first project (producing a music magazine) as it
was up to myself to do compared to this project of
the short film where work completed by other
members of the group contribute, therefore we
have to be more focused on completing deadlines.

7. How well have you presented your
research and planning?
• Compared to my music magazine I have believe this time
around I have presented both my research and planning in
better and unique ways as I have began to branch out into
using different formats to list this information on to my
blog. In this project (Short Film) I have so far used a number
of different formats to present my work such as:
Prezi, iMovie uploaded to YouTube, Slideshare and
infogram all of which I have used so far in this project. I
believe this to be an improvement of compared to my last
project as though I had used other unique formats I only
used a selected number throughout my work rather than
using other formats to keep the presentations interesting.