High-level Storyboard planning
I had intended to start High-level Storyboard planning this week, but I realised that I need to be further on with my script than I was planning on being at this point, and further on than I am. I tried to work out why this was. As I have put in my other blogs, I had been finding that as I did research it changed and informed various directions that I need to go in, rather than my research being exactly as I had planned it. So, it made sense to me that had I done all the research completely as my Daily Schedule said then maybe I would have been ready to start a High-Level Storyboard. But because of how I was adapting what I was researching, I was ahead in some areas and behind in others.
On reflection, I am still feeling that this is the right way to approach my research, even though my script is maybe a bit behind where I had planned and hence I am not ready to start my High-Level Storyboard. Currently I am not worried about what may seem like a delay because I have built a lot of contingency time into my Schedule, and I feel confident that once it all comes together in my mind then I will get my script done pretty quickly.
I was thinking about how, when I was writing my Official Proposal, once I got everything together in my mind then I got it into words pretty quickly too. I wondered if this thought could help me to find a solution to the challenge that I discussed in my last blog of getting thoughts from my mind into words. I made a note of that thought so that I don't forget it when I spend some time analysing that challenge.
One concern that I do have about delaying my High-Level Storyboard is that I am not a quick drawer, I am a very slow drawer, I find drawing challenging, maybe because of the pen control aspect. I do want to practise drawing but I don’t think I could make enough of a difference in the time available for my FMP.
I decided to try my analysis technique again, and to ask myself some questions and see where that got me.
Why is a Storyboard useful? Answer – because it would allow me to see the progression of my film visually before I start filming. But, once I have my idea together, I can usually already see the film in my head anyway. However, my films have been short enough that I can still see it in my head, a maximum of about 30 minutes total of edited film in a project so far, but it may be harder to see it all in my head for a longer film, I don't know yet. But I'm not planning on this film being over 30 minutes. On the other hand, it is useful to be able to show other people my plans, e.g. other people who are helping to plan the film, make props, find locations etc. But, since we are in lockdown this is not a joint film, it is just me organising it.
But then I realised something. I have said how much I would like feedback in this project, and it is easier for a tutor to give me feedback on my filming plans if they can have something visual to see. I usually do a shot list, but that can be harder to visualise. I'm trying focus on the purpose of a Storyboard rather than just on what most storyboards look like, so it occurred to me that it doesn't necessarily need to be drawn, I could achieve the same purpose by taking photos at a High-Level of how I see the final product looking. For example, photos of me standing where I will be standing talking to camera, showing the type of shot I plan e.g. mid-shot. Another photo of me pretending to be demonstrating camera movement. Shots of examples from films, even if I haven’t chosen all the clips yet I could draw a box and write "clip showing example of…type of camera movement".
I felt that I was identifying a way of doing a High-Level Story board that could potentially work better for me, be quicker than trying to draw everything by hand, and achieve the desired result of getting feedback.
Plan Primary Research
Some Primary Research that I wanted to do was to ask some people about 2 particular areas. They are questions to help me to decide on the format and style of my film, and questions to do with their existing thoughts about camera movement in Films and TV shows.
I had done Primary Research for previous projects, and I had learnt the difference between Quantitative research and Qualitative research. Quantitative research tends to be based on numerical answers or with answers that can be tabulated or turned into numbers. The questions are often closed questions with a choice of answers from a pre-determined list, like multiple choice questions. They often take the form of a survey, and an advantage is that people can generally fill them in pretty quickly, so they often don’t mind doing them. With Qualitative research the answers can't really be converted into numbers, they tend to be sentences and discussions. It often involves open questions which invite further discussion. This difference is why it is often easier to get a large number of people to do a Quantitative Survey than a Qualitative survey. I did a Quantitative survey for my Toast advert and had no problem getting a lot of people to complete it for me. I had tried a mix of question types for my Podcast, and that was harder to get people to do and the Qualitative answers tended to be quite short, and not as helpful as I felt they could be.
I knew I wanted to do Qualitative research not Quantitative research since I didn’t want to ask questions with predetermined answers, I wanted to encourage people to really think about how they felt about certain things and to possibly come up with original thoughts that hadn’t occurred to me. If I had asked questions with pre-determined answers, I would probably have stifled the "original answers" that I was after. I had wondered at one point whether I could get the same response by making one of the answers choices "any other answer, please explain what and explain why "or a similar type of option. But I remembered that when I tried to do something similar in a survey in a previous piece of Primary research, it didn’t really work and people either ticked one of the options given or only wrote something very brief.
After talking with some of these people, the conclusion that I drew was that in the rest of the survey they had got into the mindset of answering simple questions where the answer options were fairly simple. Questions have to be relatively straightforward have when you have answer options because if you make the answer options too complicated then people tend to not know which category they fit in. I realised that this means that when you add in a question that they need to think in more depth about then they are not thinking in that way. Also, a couple of the people that I asked about this said that it was hard to come up with more "wordy" answers when they were answering it by themselves. And a couple said it took too much time to write down long answers, so they kept any answers short, which was honest, I guess, and to be honest is what I would have felt too.
I noticed, when I was chatting to people about this that they didn’t mind talking to me about it, and some told me the answer that they would have given if they hadn’t have needed to write it down. So, I asked them if they would have preferred to just chat about it rather than do a written survey. They all said yes chat, which is the conclusion I had been starting to draw from this.
So, I decided that rather than send a survey round to people, I would arrange to chat with them over the phone, record the conversation and then go over the recordings and take useful information from them. A negative is that it would take me longer to do than just sending round a survey. But I figured that there is no point sending round a survey if it isn’t going to provide useful answers.
I realised that it would take me longer because of the time talking to them on the phone, longer to listen back to the recordings, and longer to contact individual people to ask if they would be happy to do this then to arrange a suitable time that was convenient for them and me, since it would take longer for them to chat to me than for them to put some ticks on a word document. But I concluded that it could still be time well spent.
I wasn't sure how I was going to get the conversation going on this topic. I decided to write myself a rough script. This was because I felt it would get me started talking with each person, and also it would make sure that I didn’t miss out anything important, which I might have done without a script. But I decided that I didn't need to be too rigid to the exact words of the script because it would be OK as long as I got the right ideas across.
After analysing all this, I felt happy that I had a plan to get useful Information from Primary Research.
Overall Reflection and Evaluation
I would have liked to be able to do my High-Level Storyboard planning, but I realised that the decision to have a certain flexibility to make my research successful had knock on effects such as not being ready to do a High-Level Storyboard. One reason I would have liked to be able to get started in it is because I am not a great drawer so it could take me some time. I am pleased that my analysis of the issue has hopefully put together a possible way round that. Once I get a bit further with my script I will start to experiment with photos for a storyboard.
My Primary Research planning is going well, and I have started a script for talking to people on the phone. I need to confirm my list of interviewees and check when they are available.
Despite the odd wobble and little concern, I am generally happy now about how my research is going.
My Key Learning: I realised that changing one part of my plan, e.g. the way I am using my Daily Schedule regarding my research, can have a knock-on effect on other areas of the plan such as the High-Level Storyboard. I should make sure, when I make alterations, that I look at the rest of the plan to check the effect in other areas. Fortunately, I am able to plan round it this time.
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