Limitations and Strengths of our Planning Documents

I found the planning process fairly difficult as there was so much to take into consideration. I was also worried that there would be a lot more on our shoulders, being A2 students, and that we would have too put a lot more into our productions and this pressure made it hard for us to even come up with a storyline, but once we got into it, everything fell into place.

Luckily the swot analysis allowed us too realise where our strongest and weakest points were and by noting them on paper, they become far more apparent to us. We realised that as we both live quite a distance from the college it may be difficult to film as we needed indoor environments such as houses as much as outdoor, but luckily we happen to live fairly near each other anyway so that meant we could film around the area we live rather than Weymouth. Unfortunately, we also came to an agreement that it might be challenging as the nights are now getting shorter and by the time we get back to ours from college it could be dark. As well as this, it will be hard to use actors from Weymouth whose timetables we are familiar with and we can rely on, as it may be hard for them to travel the distance but luckily we have been able to get around these problems by using the days we finish early on, to shoot and trying to shoot as much as possible in Weymouth so we don't annoy our actors.
Due to the lack of ability to go certain places, as my team mate is wheelchair bound, we would have to only film in places as flat as possible as she might struggle with hills etc. Luckily for us, most of Weymouth and other areas we want to film are flat so we won't have much difficulty.
On the other hand we were grateful for have prior experience with filming and editing during our As years, therefore we weren't complete beginners and knew what we were doing and what to expect. As well as this, we have software available to use from all over college such as Adobe Premiere Pro for editing, cameras and tripods for filming, and recording suites if we want to do voice overs etc. which meant we werent going to struggle finding equipment to use.

By presenting our planning powerpoint to the class, we were able to recieve feedback from other groups which meant we weren't solely relying on ourselves and had outsiders perspectives. We recieved both positive and negative feedback, the positive being that we had thought out the limitations that could affect us well, and that we had a good plot and believable storyline. We were also told that we the audience would be able to relate easily as the characters used are based around the same age group as well as the narrative being very contemporary, means that the teenage/young adult target age we set it at will have a better understanding of the context.
On the other hand, we also recieved feedback telling us that we need more research into demographics and archetypes which came in useful when we were creating the proper storyboard as it meant we knew where to focus on and we tried to use the right continuity and shots to portray this.
We were also told that we didn't have enough background narrative, but we didn't have the opportunity to actually provide our draft storyboard to the members of our class, which in fact shows the girl (Ella) being verbally abused in the beginning, which allowed us to set the trailer up for the audience to understand the rest of what is going on, without giving too much away. As well as this, we were told that we told to acknowledge the quality of the actors, but I believe this is a hurdle everyone has to face and we have gone out of our way to try and find the best actors possible that will be available.

In the beginning we were completely unsure about where to go with our storyline and plot so we just drafted all our ideas onto a piece of paper and came up with the basic storyline. At first I was convinced that, although we came up with a starting point and very basic storyline, we would end up doing something completely different eventually, but much to my surprise we stayed with the idea and have created a script and storyboard out of it. By drafting our initial ideas, it allowed us to see what ideas we each had and incorporate them into one idea, or come up with the best solution to overcome problems if there was a clashing of ideas. For example: I wanted to do a horror and also thought this would be the best genre to cover as we had the right weather conditions and lighting, or lack thereof, for it. On the other hand, my teammate Nina isn't a fan of horrors so we came up with an idea to do a thriller which didn't incorporate such a scary plot but meant we could still use the lack of lighting and short days usefully.

The draft storyboard and final storyboard meant that we could plan our shots to the best of our ability because they are going to be used to position our shots as correctly as possible. The difficulties we faced were that, whilst we had ideas about the location of each shot, we weren't sure of the precise locations and this means that we might need to rearrange some of the shots somewhat to suit the surroundings. On the other hand, it also means that we don't need to spend a long time sorting out the positions or remembering what we had planned to do as we have it all layed out in front of us.