WEEKLY EVALUATIONS

WEEK TWO
The first thing that I did this week was to create three production schedules – weekly, daily
and after submission. Each of the schedules needed to be highly detailed, containing what
would happen each week or each day. For the weekly schedule, I created four columns
(Week, Plan of Action, Cast/Crew and
Evaluation). The example that I have produced
shows the weekly schedule for the first two
weeks (12th February - 16th February and 19th
February – 23rd February). Within these, there
are bullet points which explain the tasks of the
week, and the Cast/Crew section highlights how
will be doing them. As this is all planning work, it
will be completed by myself (as stated). Finally, the Evaluation column explains that I will be
doing a weekly diary to show what I have achieved and what I have learnt throughout the
week. This will either be in the form of a blog, such as this, or a video diary. The daily
production schedule is a little more detailed than the weekly one, with the Evaluation column
being removed. Instead, the four headers are
Week, Day, Plan of Action and Information. This
allows me to group each day into the week, linking
it back to the weekly production schedule with the
colour coordination. Each day has its own plan of
action, which comes together at the end of the
week to form the weekly plan. The ‘Information’
column is there to explain exactly what each day
will consist of, and any extra details in the way I
want it to be carried out. For example, if my ‘Plan of
Action’ that day is to get some feedback, the
information section establishes if I am going to use a survey, or face-to-face interview, or
focus groups, or all three mediums. Having that extra bit of information allows me to better
schedule my time as I have thought ahead and can get on with the task at hand. Finally, I
produced a production schedule for after the
submission date. While most of these days
are spent doing the exact same thing, I just
wanted to be sure that I everything was
accounted for.
The second thing that I did was create my second proposal for the concept tab. The first
proposal was created in the first week, while I was on half term, and consisted of my
rationale for the Final Major, as well as the first idea concept and the evaluation. The second
half of the proposal was to basically recreate that, with more detail about the client or
competition that the Final Major Project is being made for as well as the fully planned
concept and an explanation as to why the production should be commissioned. I am
producing my short film for the competition UK Film Festival, which aims to bring work from
less well-known filmmakers into the public
domain. I wrote about the competition using
the information they gave me on their
‘Mission’ tab through their website, which
allowed me to understand that their work
does not only reach a large audience, but a
lot of their winners go on to win Oscars and
BAFTAs. As part of the competition section,
I discovered the deadlines for the festival.
The earliest entry is the 1st May 2018,
which was obviously too close for me to
submit any decent work in. However, the
th
regular entry to the competition is the 24 July, which would allow me to have completed all
the work, do the exhibition and even receive my final grade for the production before
entering. There are seven categories for the competition, each having a different price to
enter. I made a table which explains simply the cost of each entry date for each category. If I
enter on the 24th July in the Student Shorts category, it will cost me £25. After that, I had to
show the process of the idea development. As this
was done early in the week, there was quite a lot of
development missed out as I changed the concept
later. However, once my idea has been solidified
(possibly the end of this week or the start of next
week) I am planning on adapting this section of the
proposal so that it is more up-to-date. The outline of
the idea was quite simple; the basic concept in twenty
words or less. The result of this was the following
sentence:

. I think that this fairly

summaries up the most important parts of the short
film. Following that, I had to state my concept in as
much detail as possible. The photo that I have put up
is the current concept (as of 22nd February 2018).
This idea is quite different to the original one that I
posted on the first proposal, as I made changes after receiving some insightful feedback.
The final section of the proposal was to explain why the product (in my case, the short film)
should be made. This was an opportunity to put across why I believe that my short film was
worthy of being entered in a competition of this calibre. I stated that I would like to bring my
own style of filmmaking to a quite limited genre of short film production, and to be able to aid
anyone who is going through (or knows of someone going through) a situation similar to that
of the production. Fantasy films are typically hard to produce, and whilst I know that it will be
a lot of work, this is something that I have been thinking of for a while and would like to see
flourish. If nothing else, the short film might
be able to raise awareness of a very serious
topic that it often misrepresented in
mainstream media and needs to be talked
about more often in order to destigmatize
the issue.

The third item of this week’s agenda was to

get feedback from my concept. On 21st
February 2018, I sent out a quick SurveyMonkey to my classmates and teachers, asking for
their feedback on the original idea for my short film. The questionnaire that I sent consisted of
5 questions – two of which asked about the participants age and gender to gain a better
understanding of target audience, and the other three identifying the positives and negatives
of the concept. While many of the responses were good, I had a couple that highlighted valid
points in my idea that I had not fully addressed. One example of this is a response that I
received from a teacher, who stated that the part of the narrative where the boy teaches the
girl what to do through his own narrative arc of his mother did not relate to the girl’s own
experience. While personally I disagree, it raised an interesting point that there should be more
characters with authority that relates to the storyline. This could be ‘even someone as
mundane as a social worker or teacher’, which helped me to understand more about how
positions of power help out in this situations, and the guidance they provide. To counter this,
I adapted the concept of the ‘lost boy’ in the book with his ‘fairy-tale dragon mother’ so that a
‘wise man’ speaks to
the girl from her book
and guides her into
understanding what she must do. From there, with help from staff, I developed the idea into
the ‘wise man’ being a social worker, but the audience and the girl don’t know that until the
very end of the production when he turns up. The other comment that I received was that of a
female aged between 11-20, who said that the concept belittled the severity of the situation
that is domestic abuse. The section about the dragon being slain caused justified uproar, and
the anonymous participant made clear points about how it implied situation was over, even
though often ‘just calling the police’ does not solve everything. While this was not the angle I
was
attempting
for, as I
wanted a
more fantasy ending, but I realised that it still needed to have some realism for the story to
make sense. To resolve this problem, I changed the ending of the short film. Instead of having
the book fall open to the words ‘and the dragon is slain’, the production finishes with the social
worker handing the girl a sword. This is in-keeping with the fantasy theme, whilst also
symbolizing that the fight has only just begun. This
destroys the issue that the problem is solved just by
getting the police involved, but instead represents
that the fight will still go on, but this time the girl is
ready to fight back. By the time this was complete,
I adapted the questionnaire to fit the new concept
and sent it back out amongst peers and the public
using social media such as Facebook. As well as
using online surveys to gather the first bit of
feedback, I also have produced some face-to-face interviews. These consist of my interviewee
being sat down and read the concept, and their initial thoughts about it. I found this form of
feedback most helpful as I was able to ask each person more personalised questions based
on their answers of the previous ones. Once I had collected about 30 responses on the
updated concept, I analysed the results of the questionnaire on my website. A lot of the
responses were obvious and did not need much explanation. This was helpful, as it took up
less time and makes it easier for me to understand the exact point that each participant was
trying to put across. After I had analysed the questionnaire, I put all the information that I had
collected from the SurveyMonkey and the face-to-face interview into an infographic. This
would help me to clearly display any information that I had gathered, including (but not limited
to): facts, statistics, images etc.