What I have learnt from last year

So in year twelve we had the task of creating a noir OTS for our coursework. I feel that while my group's final product was good, we still made a few mistakes on the way, and I feel that I actually learnt quite a bit from this.

I think my biggest three mistakes were time management, organisation and having no storyboards.

Last year my group and I started pre-production in Decemeber, but it still wasn't early enough for our project. We found ourselves struggling in Janurary to finish up our OTS and we had to rush our final scenes.

To combat my time management problems, I am starting pre-production extremely early to keep ahead. This way if I do make any mistakes, I'll have plenty of time left to solve any problems. It also means that if I need to reshoot any scenes, I'll have plenty of time to do so. Finally it also means I'll be able to be more ambitious with my ideas, as I'll have the time to play with.

Last year my organsitation skills were rather poor. I managed to get all the actors to come at the location, but when they arrived they didn't really know what was going on. I failed to actually inform them on what we were doing, which meant that it slowed production and caused more problems.

To better improve my organisitaion skills I'm going to try better inform my actors, letting know before hand what they're doing. Also, since I'm working by myself I will have to assemble a small crew, so I'll make sure they have there own scripts and storyboards so they are well informed.

Finally my final mistake last year was having poor storyboards. Because of this, as script writer/co-director it made it very difficult to put across my image for the OTS. It also meant that the actors didn't quite know what to do without futher explanation.

Hopefully this year for my media product, whatever there may be, I will have storyboards for the entire thing. I'm hoping to create these storyboards before production so that when I come to actually film my product I will have everything planned out, so my actors and crew both know what I want to create.

So in conclusion I am try to take every precaution I can to overcome the problems I made last year. I think the hardest challenge will be the time management, because even with my head start I feel that at times I will struggle to juggle my media coursework and all my other A-level lessons.

Reflection:
In reflection I think looking at my previous works and the mistakes I made is going to help me in long run. While I'm sure I'll run into new problems as I start pre-production and then production, I feel overall that I will be better prepared to face any problems that I come across.