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Week One
In the first official week of our Final Major Projects, we were looking at the Preparation Work. This included: SWOT Analysis, Idea Generation, Research Visits, Interview Lists, Research Sources and the Pre-Mortem. Furthermore, we looked into creating our WIX Sites based on the inspiration we did in our Idea Generation Presentation.
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis was the first official task of my Final Major Project. This was talking about my strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities that I have when it comes to this course. The reasoning behind this was to figure out what strengths would help me and which weaknesses would affect my Final Major Project. From this, I could work out what threats I had, and the opportunities that now present to me throughout the rest of this project.
Feelings
Going into this first task, I was super excited to get the Final Major Project underway. I enjoyed doing the SWOT Analysis as it really showed me the improvement I had made since I did this in my last Final Major Project, I felt a lot more confident in my strengths especially practically now. However, when first thinking about our Final Major Project it did stress me out quite a bit, it has come a long a lot quicker than it should have. But at the same time, I am confident with the progress I have made throughout my First Year and was ready to take on the project that decided my future.
Evaluation
I believe talking about my weaknesses went well, it helped me map out the elements that I need to look into improving, to ensure I can achieve the higher grade criteria for this Final Major Project. Without the SWOT Analysis task, I would’ve gone into my theory tasks as I usually do and this leads to a lack of concentration, I didn’t think to improve the environment which so far has ended up working well for me, and I’ve been successful with all the theoretical tasks so far.
Through this task, a way I could improve it and something I will focus on next week would be to talk about a few more Strengths. I have talked about a few, but I know I could build on these more. I moved on to weaknesses quite quickly after, as I felt at the time they would be better to focus my time on to see what improvements I needed to make. However, when I think about it now the strengths will be just as important as they will help figure out what other opportunities I have now provided myself with, which in essence should improve my Final Outcome as I will know which elements of Film and TV are my strongest.
Idea Generation
This Idea Generation is a Presentation containing all those Initial Ideas that come to mind when first beginning my Final Major Project. As I specialise in Cinematography, I like to heavily focus on this aspect throughout. But, as I am creating a Short Film, I still took into consideration the narrative as I can’t create a successful Short Film with only pleasing Cinematography. I had to talk about who I was working with, what initial ideas I had, Research Sources, Visits and Interviews.
Feelings
The Idea Generation Presentation was definitely the most exciting element of the first week of my Final Major Project. I had been thinking a little bit a few weeks before starting FMP what kind of Film I wanted to create and it was great to finally get these ideas down and start fleshing out the narrative and style. Throughout the Idea Generation, I have become a bit nervous. With University being right around the corner, I feel great pressure to try and achieve the grades as I’m so passionate about this, so I was stressed throughout creating this Presentation. However, now I have concluded with this, I’m really happy with how I’ve started on my Initial Ideas.
Evaluation
What went well about that Idea Generation was how it started to initiate the base of my Research. It allowed me to think to start thinking about the Cinematic and Narrative Style gathering inspiration to build inspiration for the look of my film. Interviews were a detrimental part of the Idea Generation which ensured my Research had not just secondary, but primary research. This went well, I managed to message 6 people and within the first day already had a response which is a sign that the Idea Generation is going well, and I can make a good start on the Reports in the upcoming weeks.
Something that wasn’t overly too successful within the Idea Generation was the time in which I took to complete this. Some sections such as the Narrative Style, definitely get more developed than the others. This is something that for the future, specifically within the Final Concept, that I need to take into consideration. I need to stay more consistent within every section and ensure every stage is developed to a good standard.
Conclusion and Targets
To conclude Week 1, I was pleased with the initial development to my Final Major Project. I had a strong enough foundation to start Researching into what I specifically wanted to create, and where I’m influencing from.
A target I would like myself to ensure I start improving on in the upcoming weeks is consistency. This could be throughout the Reports, Planning or even Production, I need to ensure I’m staying consistent with all the elements and not prioritising certain sections.
Problem Solving
For the first task, SWOT Analysis, we had to talk about our Strengths. For some reason this really stumped me, I find it hard to sometimes talk about things I’m strong with. To overcome this issue, I started by watching all my films over and noted down what things I liked. On top of this, I looked into my Peer Feedback to see what other people thought were my strongest elements in my last FMP. Both myself and my peers believe my editing skills such as Grading were a huge strong point throughout my work, so doing this gave me a good foundation to start talking about my editing.
In regards to the Interviews, the first day I thought they were going successful as I had already received a fast reply from one of my interviewees. However, as the time went my reply count stayed at one. This became an issue as I needed to acquire more responses to ensure I’m ready to start my Process Research Report. To solve this problem I ran into, I changed the platforms I was contacting people throughout and found Discord to be much more successful than Instagram or Facebook. Within a few days I had gathered 5 responses, which was much more promising when I come to start the Process Research Report.
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