First skills audit for the G321 Foundation Production

When this Preliminary Exercise was first introduced, I was really excited about it. The idea of filming a production of our own, and having the independance to decide every aspect of it was a major feature to me, as I love being left to be creative. I was a little bit uneasy about the thought of being put into pre-set groups, as I know I can be very demanding, and I have a very 'perfectionist' nature about my personality. But when I was put in a production team with Beth and Alex, I was elated. As well as the fact both of the members were very intelligent, as well as friendly, both of them had experience in some sort of creative media - Beth's being photography and Alex's on video production and editing. This added with my knowledge on film, all combined to create an outlook on our project that was very uplifting. We came up with a SWOT analysis to pin-point areas where we would excel, and where we could potential fail.
From the start, we had troubles coming up with an initial idea that; made sense, matched the conventions of our chosen genre and add an element of continuity highlighted within the script. After a lot of deliberation, our production team finally settled upon the final idea and a basic script for the preliminary exercise. We went through a number of ideas, some we did further develop enough to begin a script, but constant flaws and problems were found until we established our final and definitive dual colum script and accompanied this with a storyboard.
After choosing the final idea, we went on to start planning locations to shoot in. The first room we had in mind, had a really ugly and undiguisable fire door, which we think would of made our piece look more unprofessional and hardly believeable. Next we looked at the radio suite in the media department at the college, which we all really liked. It had a perfect balance of lighting and acoustics, as well as enough room for all the production crew and actors to be active in the room, and not be too cramped.After settling on this room as our definate choice, we did a
risk assessment to make sure every potential danger was covered and taken into account.
Having not filmed yet, it would be too soon for me to say that I feel we'll do brilliantly well on the Preliminary Exercise, but the detail and effort we have as a team all put into the initial planning, research and preparation makes me feel really confident that our outcome could be really good. Having over heard a couple of problems other teams have come across, we have listened and learnt from others mistakes, and really hope on avoiding them when it come to the recording next Tuesday.