BRIEF:

UAL Awarding Body

CREATIVE MEDIA PRODUCTION AND TECHNOLOGY

LEVEL 3 EXTENDED DIPLOMA

Unit 13:

Extended Project in Creative Media Production

Date Issued: 13th January 2020

Interim Deadline: 11th May 2020

Final Deadline: 22nd May 2020

Marking teachers:

Adam Jones; Sarah Wilson; James Ashford

Lead internal Verifier:

Sarah Wilson (All classes)

External Verifier:

UAL Senior External Moderator for subject

For my final major project I need to make sure that everything I have in my ideas is realistic and
possible to film. For example I need to make sure all the actors I choose to have will fit the role and
people I'm actually able to get for my production. I shouldn’t choose actors that are 25-30 years old
if I don’t know any 25-30 year olds. Another thing to take into consideration is the location. I'm not
going to choose somewhere that is difficult to get to. In my production I will most likely choose
somewhere very local with access to film such as houses, woods, alleyways etc. not places like
beaches or castles.

There is also a set time frame which I will need to keep an eye on and not try to include anything
that is too time consuming. In the time that we are in now, people get offended about pretty much
anything so I will need to try and not include anything that will offend people too much, some
examples of this could literally be wearing a Canada Goose jacket or even eating meat! The props I
will need to make my production look professional could be anything that relates to my story line
and helps tell more of a story without having to say anything. For example if my character was an
alcoholic I could include dirty clothes on the floor, empty beer bottles lying around etc. as props to
show the audience what kind of person they are without having to say that they are actually an
alcoholic.
I will also give myself enough time to go over everything that I have filmed in case I need to re shoot
anything multiple times. This would be helpful as I can improve certain aspects and make my
production better without having to worry about going over the set time frame. I have had
opportunities to enter competitions or work for a client however I have chosen to turn them down
because I feel like it would put restrictions on what I can do. I will come up with 3 ideas to start off
with and put them all out to receive feedback on platforms such as survey monkey or personally ask
people for feedback.

IDEA 1:

My first idea starts with a guy who is walking through woods, fields, grasses with an empty duffel
bag. He looks like he is trying to find something. He finally finds what he is looking for. A crop of
plants. He picks one little part of the plant and smokes it. His vision immediately becomes enhanced
and he can feel every part of his brain functioning. It then cuts forward to a time where he is in his
house about 1 year later on. He is going to sleep when his house gets broken into and he is tied up
whilst the robbers take all of his plants. After they leave he uses his last stash of the plant to figure
out a plan on how to discover who robbed him and how to get it back. The story ends with him
finding the robber to be his best mate who had noticed him being a lot smarter and knew it was
something that he needed.

IDEA 2:

My second idea is about a man who is an alcoholic that becomes a different person when he is drunk
and can’t remember any of the activities he does when so. He grew up with split personality disorder
but it wore off when he was in his late teens. Little does he know he still becomes that person when
he's drunk, but just a lot worse. He commits crimes in a different persona and wakes up on the same
sofa he drinks at the night before as if nothing ever happened.

IDEA 3:

My third idea is about an 18 year old boy who is an aspiring DJ who is into old school music like
garage and jungle. It's just him and his mates trying to set up a pirate radio and get garage popular
again until they clash with another group trying to do the same thing, they have a rivalry for a while
until they give up fighting and decide to join together and get recognition.

Final idea
From the age of 8-16 a boy called Sam grew up having multiple personality disorder from trauma as
a child. His dad was a major alcoholic and killed his mum when he was 6 years old. Lucky for the boy
he grew out of the personality disorder at the age of 16 but found it very hard to cope with his dad
in prison and his mum in a grave. Although he knew he shouldn't, he started to turn to alcohol to
take his mind off everything which is effectively the same thing that his Multiple personality disorder
did. Little did he know, he became his old second personality whenever he gets drunk but an evil
version. Every bad thing he does when drunk is something related to what he has seen his dad do
when he was younger. The second personality will be different in the way he dresses and his accent
will be very rough. He walks around the street and kills people that remind him of his dad. Sam will
put a bag on their head and take them to an underground room where he shoots them in the head
and then hides their body. He wakes up the next morning without knowing what he has done each
time and goes about his day normally. Until one person he does it to manages to escape and does
the same to Sam but keeps him alive. Waits until he is sober and tells him what he tried to do. Sam
doesn't believe this but then starts to think and think until clues start adding up and he realises this
isn't the first time. He fights the guy that is keeping him somewhere, manages to grab the gun and
shoots himself dead. That's how the story ends.

Rationale

I started studying media in year 10 at Great Marlow School for GCSE's. Since I started Media at
Henley, I have achieved many skills and learnt many new techniques. Starting this course I have
learnt many new skills and believe I have improved the way I work in many ways. The skills I have
learned involve filming and editing as these are a couple parts that I have done before but not to a
high standard and I didn't know how to do either skills well. I believe I can now film my productions
to a higher standard as I have developed a good understanding on how to make sure the shots are
framed correctly. This helps to make the image and shots much more clearly for the audience.
Another aspect in filming that I have learnt is the camera angles and movements, by knowing what
movements suit what kind of production and what angles to use in certain parts of the production
allows me to improve the quality of my productions.

A skill that I have improved a significant amount on is editing, when I first started the year I didn't
really know anything that I was doing as I had never used Premiere Pro and was used to editing on
iMovie on my phone. Now I feel more confident with using the software. I am almost at the end of
my second year doing the creative media course and in my opinion I feel like I can efficiently use
Premiere Pro to edit and that I could edit multiple complex tasks if I put my head down and worked
hard. A strength that I have is editing and not only do I actually like doing it but I find it fun and
wouldn't mind pursuing a career in it. However a skill I feel I can definitely improve in is my written
work. I don't really enjoy writing but I will learn to overcome this with time. For my final major
project I have decided to make a short film as normally i choose to do music videos but i would like
to challenge myself and do something I don't usually do.
Concept

In my project, all 3 of my ideas are short film ideas, with two ideas being in the crime/action genre,
and the other being comedy genre. The reason i have chosen to do a short film instead of a music
video is because most of the time I choose to do a music video and i personally feel that if I d o
another music video I will not be showing my full capability of my abilities to create short films as
well. I'm aiming to create my short film to be between 5-15 minutes however i think around 7
minutes will be a very good time. When making my short film I can include techniques like using
different camera angles such as the Dutch angle to show confusion or a low angle to show power
and dominance. I do like filming short films but everything seems a bit like you know exactly what
you need to film even without planning to the highest standard.

By this I mean that when filming a short film, quite a few aspects are already laid out for you such as
the storyboard, script, sounds. Meaning that most of the work is done within the planning and you
cant experiment as much when actually filming it. That's why I like editing short films because you
can really experiment with effects and techniques to make the production look a lot better. I'm
doing this so I can push myself to see what I am capable of and challenge my organisation, planning,
filming and filming/editing skills. My ideas for this came from researching many Netflix films and
short films on YouTube. My main inspiration was a film called limitless which is about a drug which
accesses every part of your brain so that you are the most clever person on the world whenever you
take it. But then I thought that would be quite difficult to portray whilst filming so I decided to
reverse it so that the main character still does something to turn him into someone else, but maybe
like a criminal.

I then researched some more about changing personalities and came across two films called Jekyll
and Hyde, and Split. Both about people with split personality disorder. I put a twist on my idea so
that my character used to have split personality disorder but doesn't anymore. To his knowledge.
However whenever he gets drunk the personality comes back and does bad things but he cant
remember anything in the morning. I will probably be using the college studio to record the dialogue
and certain filming equipment like shoulder mounts etc. To make the finished production look as
professional as possible.

Evaluation

The ways I will evaluate my work is not just when it is finished. This is because if I only look back on
my work after its done then I will have to make too many improvements on work which will be
extremely difficult. Therefore, I am going to use many different ways of evaluating my work as I go
along the unit. For example my first piece of evaluation would be peer feedback on my ideas. With
my 3 ideas I am going to make a short survey explaining all the ideas and send it to people for a
response to tell me what would be the best idea. I will also talk to my teachers for any advice on
how I can improve my work as the unit goes on. I can also self-evaluate my work or ask friends to
look at what I have done and give feedback or criticism.