The importance of research and planning became evident throughout the AS and A2 coursework. I carried out two different types of research, primary research and secondary research. Primary research involved my own thoughts and research sources. Whereas secondary research involved looking at existing media products.
During the AS coursework the primary research stage involved me pitching my ideas to the class and gaining vital feedback. I also constructed a questionnaire that enabled me to understand how much people would spend on a music magazine and what particular genre's were popular. Other primary researched included taking test shots of the band, and coming up with the band name.
All these factors helped me to piece together my original ideas for the music magazine.Primary research was gathered by myself, or the people I was working with. Meaning that this type of research is purely based on people’s opinion (e.g pitch feedback and questionaire) so it can sometimes be subjective and bias. However I did gain certain knowledge of what i wanted to achieve. By just having your ideas at this early stage of the production you might not be completely accurate with the conventions needed to make a successful product. That is why the secondary research was so important. By this stage we knew exactly what we were looking for in the existing texts.
The secondary research stage was important during the pre-production of the music magazine. The main way i researched this topic was to buy music magazines and see how they were layed out e.t.c. There was a slight cost of maybe £10 that had to be considered. However the magazines did give me a useful insight into what real music magazines contained/featured. For secondary research, i also used a number of websites such as 'FFFOUND' and 'Cover Junkie'. These websites were easily accessible and allowed me to see real magazine covers and together with the test shots of the band i could imagine what mine might look like.
When looking back at the pre-production secondary research and planning stages there wasn't really that many cons. The only one that might be significant is that by just looking at existing pieces of work there could be a lack of originality. However, that is why primary research was used. Overall, secondary was helpful because i was able to see what real media products looked like and maybe creatively challenge the conventions.
These two different research methods were also useful during the A2 coursework brief of making a music video, digipak and advert. By having three different areas of media in one task it mean't the research had to be a lot more thorough and more was needed.I worked with a partner for the task and we began by pitching our ideas, and making moodbaords to gain feedback. Another factor we considered in the primary research of this task was the deciding of the band name and genre that we wanted to portray.
Secondary research included looking through certain photography book that also features famous album covers. This helped us to understand what was popular. We also looked at the video's, digipaks and adverts that previous students have created. This was useful because they also had a low budget for their project so we could see the standard of work produced when planning our own pieces of work.
Overall, my research and planning skills have definitely improved over the course of the two tasks. Due to the brief at A2 involving the making of a music video, digipak and advert more research and planning was required in order to gain a deep understanding of all three areas. Some might argue that at AS we also had three tasks however they were all in the same area of a music magazine. Meaning we predominantly researched music magazines. As opposed to A2 when we research CD covers, music videos and album adverts that are different media areas.
My research and planning skills have improved dramatically especially throughout the A2 coursework. At AS research and planning was new to everyone and I didn’t understand the amount of planning that is needed in order to have a good focus on what I wanted to achieve. My research skills involved buying music magazines, looking at their convention and using them in my own work. At A2 my research and planning skills improved, I became quicker using the technology and had a better idea of what to research such as, certain websites (FFFOUND) used to gain inspiration. From using the technology of Photoshop in the previous AS task I was more advance when using it at A2.
No comments:
Post a Comment