L3 CMPT Final Major Project Daniel Locke
WEEKLY REFLECTIONS
Week 1 / 2
How has writing a concept / proposal
helped you with finalising your idea?
How did the feedback help you adapt
your idea what did you change after
feedback?
How has the research for your target
audience helped you understand your
production more fully?
How did your primary research help
you?
How has researching the conventions
of your chosen genre helped you
understand what is required from you
in order to meet a distinction grade?
How has including a variety of
sources (primary and secondary)
helped with your understanding of
your medium / genre?
Week 2 / 3
What did you learn from your
research?
Reflective Entries
.
This week you worked on your initial ideas and started your FMP
concept
By writing my own proposal, I was able to put all my ideas into one
document and pull them together to create a final idea.
After feedback was given, I was able to implicate stronger, easier ideas
into the production to possibly give it the professional look. I was able to
pinpoint what each persons job roles were.
This week you worked on your initial ideas and started your FMP
Research
After doing research into target audience, I was able to work out that
people viewing are most likely to be between the ages of 14- 23.
Teenagers and young adults are going to be watching the production so
we could adapt the character ideas into classic young adults instead of
adults so they would be more relatable to the audience.
Primary research helped us scout out locations. By finding out what type
of locations people found scariest, we were able to pinpoint that dark
forests and wide open fields are the best locations to shoot a zombie
horror.
Also by doing primary research we were able to determine the length of
short film we should make. After analysing our survey results, prime
duration for a short horror should be 3 to 5 minutes. This is so it is long
enough to involve some sort of plot line without being so long that the
audience would lose concentration and interest.
Knowing what other zombie horror films have included helped us because
we knew what to include so people would know and understand what they
are watching. But by doing this, we were also able to avoid copying other
directors plot lines and stories so we were able to keep our production
original. I am hoping that by employing the conventional traits of other
films that have been previously made and incorporating my own original
ideas, this could end up leading towards a distinction.
Learning about the genre and medium from the audience point of view
allowed us to create a final product that can be understood by pre-existing
fans of horror.
This week you will start your planning
From my research I found that a 3 to 5 minute zombie horror film based in
the woods to be mainly presented online through platforms such as
YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. These elements all came from my
primary research.
From my secondary research learned more about the genre and how to
implicate popular conventions from other productions into my own whilst
keeping to our original idea.
How will this be useful to your This will be useful to my planning because knowing more about the genre
planning? and the target audience, I was able to adapt and morph to create a final
idea that could appeal to the widest audience we can.
During the planning I wont have very much time to complete it all. By
doing the research, it has helped me to create a plan of shooting a lot
quicker because I will have visions of what the final product will look like.

What did you learn from your planning During planning I learnt that even then, lots of different ideas get thrown
this week about even if the research was perfect. Giving yourself enough time to
have rough planning before finalising everything is important so the story
can be perfect.
I also have a much better grasp onto what I have to do when completing a
more complex script layout with less speech, more stage directions and
sound effect timings.

What issues did you encounter and There were problems with one member of the group not completing their
how did you overcome them? part of the planning quickly enough so two of us had to take over all the
pre-production and was able to create the final plan.

Trying to find actors in time and having them all free at the same time
proved quite the task. We managed to overcome these problems by
creating a timetable of when everyone is free and correlating each scene
into what needs to be filmed and with who. This happened to be our
production schedule in the end.

Week 3 This week was the start of your production process

What practical work have you done This week we were meant to be filming but due to an inconvenience in the
this week - and how helpful was your group we were not able to film.
earlier planning

How will this be useful to you as your Our production schedule had to be changed again so that one member of
production process continues our group can film with the group.
After the complex re-shift of the timetable I ended having to film and edit
the production myself with my actors.

Upload and pictures you have taken

These were the original images I took for the location recces.

I decided to use these location due to our previous research, the scariest

What issues did you encounter and
how did you overcome them?
Week 4
What did you learn in your sessions
this week
Have you tried anything new this
week - if so, was it a success
What feedback did you find most
useful verbal or written
How will this be useful to you as your
production process comes to a
conclusion
What issues did you encounter and
how did you overcome them?
Week 5
What feedback did you find most
useful verbal or written
What did you learn in your sessions
this week
How has this helped you meet your
targets - see FMP Workbook
scenario for a zombie horror short would be open fields and forests.
Having these closed proximity areas to film gives the audience a feeling
of being more involved into the film because its possible to see all parts
of the set.
We had to reschedule everything because of a group member that
caused trouble in the production.
This week was the second week of your practical production
This week I had more of an understanding of solo film creation. I was able
to film and edit the whole production myself with help from one other
group member. This was complex to do due to the other group member
constantly changing plans and causing complications when we had
planned to film.
During this week I was able to learn a lot more about Adobe Premier and
various functions that can be applied to future work I create.
This week while editing I used more audio effects and transitions. They
turned out to be a success. By using effects I have never used before I
was able to create a unique sounding film giving it that slight edge to what
was a bland production.
I had verbal feedback from one of my teachers whilst I was struggling with
when to film telling me to record inner monologue in the background.
Once I had done that, the editing process became a lot easier to
accomplish.
This will be useful later on because having the inner monologue. This is
an original idea from someones feedback that I created meaning that the
production has had a higher chance to go viral.
I encountered many problems with weather when trying to film but I overcame this very
easily by looking at a weather forecast and planning out when the weather was better.
This week was your finishing off week - for both your edits an
written work
At this point I has no written feedback about the edited production but I
did have various different people giving feedback verbally to me.
Everyone said similar things telling me to make transitions and cuts
better.
During these sessions I was able to learn how to take peoples advice and
feedback and apply them into my production so I was able to produce a
better film. I am a lot better at adapting my work and implicating the
advice given.
This helped me possibly reach a higher grade for the actual product. I
was hoping to get at least a merit for the film itself and I feel that after
applying the feedback I obtained from other peers and teachers I have
 been able to achieve this target and maybe even higher.

How helpful did you find the pitch I didnt find the pitch to be very useful because all feedback was written
what feedback did you get? whilst we performed. This meant that we didnt have any feedback by the
time that the final deadline came about.

See pitch feedback below

How did your peer feedback help The peer feedback was not useful because when we did the pitches, we
were unable to edit our productions by then because we had run out of
time and had needed to move on to this evaluation.

What issues did you encounter and Our only problem during this week was a lack of time before the final
how did you overcome them? deadline. We overcame this by doing a lot of work outside of college time
meaning that we could finish everything on time. We were able to finish
our presentation for our pitch.