• Research: For our film I have researched wide variety of short films videos through YouTube and Google. For instance In Google I have searched about how to produce a successful short film and the techniques linked with it. So for my case studies I have mainly researched about drama genres but when as a group we decided to have both drama and comedy genre hence I had to research about comedy short films as well. For my music magazine it was based Bollywood music magazine and during my research the magazines I needed to look at was quite difficult for me to get because Bollywood music magazine come after every 4 week in UK and hence it was quite hard for me to start preparing for my initial magazine draft ideas.

• However luckily I got the magazines I wanted to analyze. The magazine I looked at helped me lot in terms of creating the Bollywood style and layout within my magazine. Yet it didn’t help me much in terms of codes and conventions associated with music magazine. The music magazines I chose to analyze also had Bollywood film features which made it difficult for me to understand and how could I have implemented some of the codes & conventions.

• For my music magazine I also looked at press kits. The press kits helped to understand the key ingredients needed to make

a magazine professional: such as price of magazines, readership, average age, male female target market and etc. It really aided me when I was doing my magazine as in deciding what type font, colour schemes, and tone and house styles to use. Plus since my magazine was aimed at female readership some of the magazines I have analyzed such as Filmfare press

kits enhanced my understanding further more. • For my short film case studies I have looked at the home, break and the desk. These 3 case studies were useful in giving me more ideas, concepts, elements I should reinforce in my short film. The main case study that related to our story was

the desk and the break i.e. from the desk we finalized our initial idea for having an object that will be the case of trouble in the story (an envelope) and the desk was studies due to the character excellent facial expression without any dialogue. So

these 2 films have hugely influenced our initial idea for our short film more and it supported our story.

• Reflecting: Comparing my research and planning skills last year it has improved to an great extent because this year I was ready with my ideas and I had plans made before which helped me to organize my research and planning work. Reading magazine wasn’t something I enjoyed doing and I never had any interest. So when it came to do the research and planning I was struggling to choose which genres I should pick and due to my confusion it took a lot of my time in researching Bollywood music magazine as I was unaware that it’s quite rare in UK to find any Bollywood music magazine. However because my teacher gave us summer task to do our draft ideas for film, I had more time for planning for a short film idea which indeed came as a bigger advantage for me since I was able to do more independent work.

• Hence this year I was able to do my research and planning case studies however I had to change my case studies as my teacher said it didn’t link with my story yet I had more time to re-do 3 more case studies. Plus last year in my music magazine case studies I presented was very minimal and wasn’t properly analyzed in terms of understanding all the codes & conventions as I mentioned before all the music magazines I looked at had combination of films and music which made it confusing for me to analyze and understand. Hence I couldn’t use the correct terminology for my explanations. Towards the end I understood I learnt how and where to use certain terminology and how t could I have improved in my case studies. This year I was able to identify the codes & conventions linked with films and annotated in a detailed way since I used more than one media applications; I have also used TV drama Glee which inspired our idea of luck in the story.

• The research we carried out for our target audience was mainly young people. But as our story has a moral we decided to have age range from 15+ onwards. This is because our story correlates around about having trouble life and we wanted to explore particular trouble/problems young people face especially vulnerable innocent young people who are unsure of certain situations and end up committing a crime for instance in order to fulfill their desire or have what they want. This is what mainly inspired our story as we want to show a short film that surrounds around everyday normal issue which young people could face in real life world –Finders keepers.

• The feedback received from the treatment pitch for our short film initial ideas, we were able to make a generalization about what could and would our target audience might like and wouldn’t want to see in our film. The target audiences in our class mainly fitted with our target profile as some of them were 18+ onwards. Last time for my magazine the target audience was mainly female and the audience I used for my target audience feedback wasn’t that helpful for me as some of the females don’t read Bollywood music magazine and only few like Bollywood music magazine but they only buy once in a year. this year in order to not to repeat the same mistakes I did extra audience feedback for our short film initial ideas: I went to the same audience who were in my treatment pitch to ask them more what should I include more which gave me more diverse ideas for our chosen genres.

• So one way my organizational skills improved from last year since I was unsure of how to do it. However while doing our pitch our audience were bit confuse with our story as we were stuck with the middle part of the story but later we were able to build the middle part of the story in a more professional way. For e.g. one of the comment that was made by male audience who gave us suggestion of creating more bad luck getting wet for instance. Others suggested that, as we are focusing on the build up, we should have scenes of the protagonist in bad/unlucky situations. This is most likely to affect our locations and would mean we need to have more settings. Later we were able to decide and chose our location successfully which is Essex road south, Abbotts Park and Oxford street.

• Logistic planning: When organsing for actors, we went to lunch time auditions to see if there any actors available for our film but however no one turned up. As a result I decided to ask my peers if they want to act and later I posted a poster in instragramabout audition for our film and fortunately we found a perfect actress who matched with the characteristics and physical lookfrom our story. So Instragram app came as a useful resource for me as it saved my time but however there were some improvements our actress needed to work on so we took our time in studying her improvements for her role in our short film. In terms of location it was more complicated for us. In our story we had 3 different locations: the first location was easy for us to find as it was near our college, the second location created more trouble for us. The 2nd location we had first was VALENTINES PARK, when I emailed the park members and authorities I found that you have to pay £18 per hour if you want to film in the park. Therefore due to the high budget we changed it to Abbotts Park and it was free to use the park. We also had issue for our final location for shopping as well. We were restricted to film in Westfield( 1st choice of location) shopping centre as my partner asked the securities and the authorities to allow us to film but they refused then we changed it to either Leytonstone shopping centre or oxford street( 2nd choice of location). Costumes and props aren’t organized by us as we mainly wanted simple dark colour clothes with tops or skirt. Before shooting ,our actress have to wear maroon top with a black jacket / grey& black jumper with a hoodie and before the film we will give our actress one hour to get ready (less makeup provided by herself) and be ready to come to the location when we need her. After wards we have stayed in contract with the actress through whts up, twitter and instragram since it was necessary for us to be in contract if there were any changes in the film plans, shooting days or her arrival time.

• Release forms, recess, risk assessments and call sheet were really useful for us as it saved our time. The recess were an essential part of our short film production outlining the pros and cons of each location which made it easier for us to remove any problem in future for filming on that location. Risk assessments helped us in terms of buildup of our filming and consider the risk involved when filming which reduced more future problems for us for filming. Plus the time toast also helped along with Release forms, recess, risk assessments and call sheet because we were able to work when and what to do certain days ( risk assessments) in order to make it easy for our shooting and have less problem. So overall it saved our time and doing our shootings without any issue and we hope we have fewer issues in future if we were to re-shoot.

• Last year I was less organized and more relaxed about my work because I thought I would be able to finish the work within thedeadline but I was less prepared and wasn’t experiencing I wasn’t sure about how to get my grade: my teacher always kept talking about blogging and I didn’t understood the difference of doing blogging everyday and every few weeks/months. This year, as I said before I was more organized and had planned ahead of my work which made it easier for me to finish my work within deadline. For music magazine I had to make a call sheet which was helpful since it made it clear for my model the costumes and time she should come in. Unfortunately last year I had no actor for my magazine so I had to be the model for my magazine and my friend helped me in doing the photo shoot , so in a way I didn’t had any issue with my photo shoot. The lessons that I have learned from my improvements last year made me more serious about blogging hence I’m blogging every week now; I’m more clear about how to blog and how to be a detail blogger and why it’s important to blog. Surprisingly I enjoy blogging now about anything, every little piece of my work I try to blog and relate it to my film. Blogging will help to demonstrate my journey of my short film initial idea to creating a professional film. Plus I’m more active with watching films therefore my interest in my work is more active and interesting. However designing a magazine wasn’t something I enjoyed doing it as its individual task with the purpose to make it professional; it was difficult for me as I don’t read magazines. Plus due to the fact it was an independent task I also uploaded some of the tasks late but this year as I’m more excited and committed to doing the best I can for any of my work even if fall behind I will try my best in producing our short film. Thus I have decided to stick to the deadline given for each tasks and finish it before the deadline.

• There are only 2 people in my group which is in a way an advantage for me because there will be lot more control on the work and it will be easy for me to separate the work or task between us. Yet still there can be issues while working in a group as I want commitment from my team member to be in time for every lesson and work and putting equal amount of effort.

• Narrative planning: Due to the shortage of the members interested in film production there was only one girl who agreed to work with me. I wasn’t familiar with my team member but as time went we started getting along with each other and I enjoy working with her. So meeting Sammah my partner is another aspect of my short film product which I liked it as I enjoy meeting new people and getting to know them. As there were only 2 of us it was easy to separate the role and certain tasks, we divided the role between us equally. Me and Sammah gave each other equal opportunity for each role such as we were both in charge of the storyboards. For final film Sammah was the director and I will be the main editor for the film. But to give each other equal chance we will help each in other role when necessary such as I’m the assistant director. However we had some ups and downs in shooting. My partner was away for 3 weeks and I had no contract details of the actress as only my partner had it and she wasn’t responding to my emails or message which created a bigger problem for me. But now my partner is back and we are back on our work, we are going to shoot for 2nd location which is the Abbotts park. Another problem we have faced are our actress, whenever I’m free my actress isn’t available and whenever both of us free my partner isn’t available, we want to do the film shoot together so we can help each other out to make sure we don’t make any mistake while shooting. But we are making progress and doing well as a group but we just need to figure out more free times we have altogether and use our free time productively for our shooting.

• Due to the treatment feedback our storyboard improved and our independent audience feedback conducted by us helped to make our story professional, modified to excellent standard. In our storyboard we wrote down different editing techniques and camera angles to use. However our whole story depended on the character facial expression and body language since our film isn’t based on voice over (we have no dialogue in our story). Compare to last year, I didn’t do much planning for my music magazine front cover but however I did more for double page standard. In addition as my target audience was female and the feedbacks I had from my mocks-ups it was tricky for me to pick which bits to left out and what to pick for certain parts of my magazine as I had different feedbacks from different age range (16 + onwards).The sketches and plans I made were bit different to my main magazine as I was confused with my ideas as well and too much effort weren’t placed on mock-ups or plans. This year I was more ready and have improved on my drawing and planning of my initial ideas. I had confident in my work and with my short film initiative. But at the end, I tried my best in putting fair amount effort for my work as I did 3rd draft for my magazine front cover. As a result I did better than last year in understanding and utilizing my time doing my

planning and research especially for the draft version and the final version of our film story.

• My group this year is successful in time management even though we didn’t start our shooting at the holidays and the first few dates but as we are back on our track of work we are doing quite well in terms of time management and I hope we stay on the same level. Last year as I was more relaxed about my work I didn’t realize how behind I was with my work, as it takes me long time to understand a task properly and operate it. But this time If I don’t understand anything I always ask my teachers and my peers for suggestion as I’m more confident in approaching different media students for help for certain tasks.

• To present my research and planning work I have mainly used prezi because at first when I used it I loved the different features used in

prezi as they are more easy to use and not confusing like other technologies such as powtoon which I have used for one of my evaluation questions and I thought it would be exciting to use

powtoon but I didn’t enjoyed using Powtoon because it had all the unique features but for the ones I really wanted to use you have to pay for it, which I didn’t like it. But surprisingly compared to before I’m confident in using different technology now on presenting such as using slideshare, blogger, Emaze etc. I have experimented using

different technology to present my work but prezi has always presented my work in a best way. Due to my blogging, I learned

about vlog, along with doing blogging I’m also doing vlogs whenever I’m doing any shooting or work. This year I’m planning to

use different technology to present my work. So I have definitely improved in terms of using different technology and I’m confident with its designs and layout but I may use the technology I’m more

comfortable with and find it easy to show my creativeness.