CONTEXT
IDEAS DEVELOPMENT 1.1 1.2
INTRODUCTION
This is the introduction to my ideas development which is the first stage of my FMP 02. During this stage I will explore my basic ideas for what I want to base my project on. For this I will include mind maps, mood boards and SWOT analysis on my ideas. I am doing this to help narrow down my idea to a final plot and help flow my idea into the research stage.
MONDAY 6TH FEBRUARY 2023
Today is the first day of Unit 13, which is FMP 2. Since it is the first day of the project, the brief of the project was explained. This set the base for the project as a whole. Compared to the previous FMP, Unit 8, this project is twice the size, meaning that the work that needs to be put in is far more substantial than last year. In this project the Proposal Document needs to be far more detailed than last year, meaning I need to go into more detail of my project. From Unit 8 I have gained the understanding that writing is one of my weakest areas when it comes to projects, so I need to focus heavily on the writing in order to achieve a distinction. One thing I did today was I looked at my previous feedback from Unit 8, this has given me a better understanding of areas I need to focus on. As well as this, we looked at the marking criteria of Unit 13, this helps me to put the project into perspective and gave me an understanding of how I am going to plan the entire project. After today I am going to begin working on the written project proposal, working towards the deadline of the 20th of February.
TUESDAY 7TH FEBRUARY 2023
Today I began to work on creating the proposal for my FMP 2, and looked into creating a new website for the project. In order to begin writing my written proposal I needed to first come up with an idea for my FMP. Since this is a big part of my college year, I have already spent some time thinking of potential ideas for the project. This made it a lot easier for me to come up with ideas for the project, however it was still a struggle for me to come up with a storyline. One thing I wanted to improve on from my previous FMP was my storytelling, and dialogue, as I think these were weak areas of my previous projects. From looking back on my feedback of FMP 1 I noticed that my ideas development was one of my weakest points, so I need to work on writing more on my ideas process, and creating mind maps, mood boards, and writing more.
INITIAL IDEAS
For FMP 2, I looked into multiple ideas, however, all surrounding the idea of the project being a short film. Since my previous FMP was a mockumentary, although I still was able to be creative with the storyline of the project, it was not shot in the style of a short film. So when looking into FMP 2 I want to film the project as a short film, as this is my strongest area within media, and is my most passionate subject.
When looking into initial ideas for the project, my previous project Unit 12 Specialised Study, helped to influence my FMP 2. In this project I experimented with recreating colour grading from The Batman, as I was most interested in this style. However, after seeing a tiktok creator by the name of Drei, I discovered a brighter style of cinematography, following a series of shots set in the summertime. This style is a polar opposite to the style of The Batman however I am still intrigued as it will give me a chance to shoot a project in a style that I do not usually aim for in my projects. When looking into genre’s for the project, I was extremely interested in the conventional hollywood style drama, following all the codes and conventions of a typical hollywood drama. This is because with my previous project, there was a lack of dialogue between characters, and it was not possible to shoot a scene blocking scene within the film since it was meant to follow the style of a documentary. So for this project I want to prioritise dialogue and script, shooting conventional scene blocking scenes. For the genre of the short film, in order to meet the style of the batman with the colour and cinematography, I think choosing to create a thriller would fit extremely well, as it combines with the dark cinematography of The Batman. On the other hand, in order to fit the style of the content creator Drei, I think a drama would fit quite well, as this genre covers a wide area of cinematography styles and allows me to be creative with the visuals of the production.
THURSDAY 9TH FEBRUARY 2023
Today I did not manage to complete much work on the ideas development stage and written proposal as I was working for most of the day. However, I spent the evening creating the website for my FMP 2. Unlike FMP 1 I have to create a separate website for the project, since this is the final deciding grade of my two years at college. When creating a website, I normally use the website creator “WIX”, but when trying to add work onto wix there is now a limit to storage, so I wanted to use a different site. To tackle this problem I am going to use the website creator, WordPress, because it does not have a limit to storage. This site is a lot different from wix so creating the website is going to be difficult, and take a lot of learning to find the controls.
MIND MAP
For this mind map, I was already set on the idea of shooting this project in the format of a short film, so when it came to creating ideas I knew I could focus purely in the realm of a short film. To start off with I just gained ideas of what genres I wanted to look into. For this I just listed all the potential genres that would be achievable. Some of the genres that gained my attention the most were, sci-fi, specifically cyberpunk, thriller, and the horror genre. One thing I took into account was combining the cyberpunk and thriller genre
MOOD BOARDS
CYBERPUNK CITY
When creating this mood board, I specifically wanted to look into the idea of a cyberpunk world to base this project off of. This was because I believe that in order to push myself in areas that I have never experienced before, the cyberpunk genre would be perfect for me, due to its complex sets, costume and characters. When finding images for this mood board I wanted to keep a specific colour palette, so I chose the colour purple as I believe it is one of the most prominent colours to every cyberpunk world.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT ANTAGONIST
For this project I wanted to focus heavily on character design as it is a key factor in the cyberpunk genre. This mood board is aimed at the antagonist character of my story. This character is a cyborg, so my inspiration came from the fashion style "techwear", this style aims to represent the cyberpunk genre within style. As well as this, I was particularly interested in the idea of using a traditional Japanese oni mask, however with a cyberpunk twist using neon lights in the mask. Combining these two I think will fit the style of cyberpunk and match the character that I am looking to create.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT PROTAGONIST
When creating the idea for my main protagonist of the story, I wanted to frame the character around being an older male as it is set later in the story to the prequel film. With the protagonist, I wanted to stay further away from making the character look like a cyborg, as I wanted to keep him as natural as possible. I gained lots of inspiration off of Harrison Ford's character in the 2017 film "Blade Runner 2049" as this character supports the storyline and the style of the city.
MONDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 2023
Today I wanted to focus on creating mood boards for my ideas development stage. I wanted to not only create a moodboard for the whole project, but moodboards for separate areas of the story, for example the city and characters. When creating these moodboards I wanted to stick with a specific colour palette. For example when it came to creating the city I chose the colour palette of purple. In order to find the images I used in these moodboards, I relied on pinterest and an AI image generator DALL-E. Using an AI allowed me to create an image for my specific requirements of the city. I used the AI not just for the city but to assist me with character mood boards.
SWOT ANALYSIS
TUESDAY 14TH FEBRUARY 2023
Today I wanted to focus on creating a swot analysis for my idea for Unit 13. This is something that I did not do during unit 8 and something that I believe is a vital piece to my ideas development. When creating the swot analysis I found that there were quite a few weaknesses for the project, however I believe that there are definitely ways to overcome these problems. One of the main problems was that the project was ambitious so it required funding to create the full idea, so to get around this I plan to set up a gofundme in order to gain crowdfunding for the project.
When creating this SWOT analysis I found that the weaknesses over powered the strengths. However, in order to tackle these problems I set up a GoFundMe page in order to gain a large budget so the project is more achievable. When looking at the threats, the crowd funding also helps to tackle one of these points, however the first point is the biggest threat to this project as it relies on me and the amount of work I put in.
FORMAL WRITTEN PROPOSAL
WEDNESDAY 15TH FEBRUARY 2023
Today I continued with the ideas development stage of my project, specifically working on my action plan. With my action plan from unit 8 I realised I had not allowed myself for much breaks when scheduling my time, so the action plan became very unrealistic. So when creating my action plan for this year I did not want to repeat the same issue I had. This means that I had to schedule more breaks for myself in order to make the action plan more realistic.
ACTION PLAN FIRST DRAFT
THURSDAY 16TH FEBRUARY 2023
Since creating my action plan, I realised that although it had improved compared to unit 8, it didn't feel complete. This was because when looking at the action plan it appeared to lack a lot of detail. So today I spent my time redrafting my action plan in order to better fit the project and allow it to be a usable document, and a changeable document as I work through the project. The second draft of my action plan also uses colours in order to divide the sections like research and pre production, this once again makes it easier for me to follow the action plan.