Pre-production

One of the first things we were tasked with to start our pre-production week was creating a schedule for our project. I'd come up with a rough idea a couple of weeks ago, but I'm having to rearrange it as I didn't realise how long our pitch presentation was going to take. Below was the idea that I had beforehand:

My rough original timeline that I came up with

I now have a re-edited version of a rough schedule with what I hope to do in each week:

My new rough schedule idea for completing the project

But, I have also had a dilemma of whether to do a TV film or a podcast. I would ideally like to complete a TV film, as I want to have actual footage of the interviews I collect, and include b-roll of music venues in the local area. However, I fear this may be tricky as none of the venues are exactly close to the college, so getting there would be a bit of a timewasting process. I also think structuring a TV film will be a bit more complicated within the college as I have the risk of not being able to book out the TV studio for long enough, as I may need it for both interviews and recording green screen footage, which could mean that I would need to book it out for around 3 hours. At this time already into the project, slots are limited.

I think a podcast is easier to structure as I won't need to organise as much footage because I won't need any b-roll, and I don't want to stress myself out with the whole organisation of a making a short film independently. I also won't need to use the green screen or the autocue, which would save me some more time which I could use on writing my article or a basic script for my podcast.

Due to this dilemma, I talked to Matt about what I was thinking and we came up with a SWOT analysis for both the podcast and film to work out which one would be better for me to do.

The SWOT analysis I came up with for whether to do a podcast or film

After this analysis, I have decided I would rather do a podcast than a TV film, mostly to save myself more stress as I don't want to burn myself out with this project, and I feel like a podcast would be a calmer thing to do. I think I still might be able to recreate a visual feel even with the podcast, as I have a vivid imagination, so I would hopefully be able to come up with a good enough script to somewhat transport listeners into the world I am talking about. I also feel like I am quite expressive with my voice sometimes so I can use different tones to create different moods, which I could easily use to my advantage.

I have re-edited my schedule again so it now works for the podcast:

My re-edited schedule to fit in with my podcast

I now thankfully also have a response from the email that I sent on Friday, which has confirmed my first guest for my podcast.

I class him as my expert as the owner of a music venue, so I ideally wanted my other interviewee to be someone who has experience playing these venues and knew a lot about venues in the local area. Matt is part of a live music blog Facebook group, and sent them a message on my behalf to see if I could get any links or contacts with local artists.

On this Wednesday morning we started off with a recap quiz for the project so far so we knew whereabouts we were with it and tips for what we still have to do. I just spent the morning catching up on this diary and some of my other posts so I don't fall behind, but I'm a little confused on what to put in some of them so will leave that until this afternoon when I can get some more help.

My proposed podcast structure

In the afternoon, I went over my schedule again and decided it would be ideal to start making a draft script/structure for my podcast, and what I wanted to include in it. I started by writing up a structure idea, to give me some guidance of how I am going to write my script. I'm leaving the script just for now as I haven't got a clear idea in my mind of what I want the whole overall podcast aesthetic to be, but I am going to try and figure that out over the next couple of days so I can start writing my script imminently.

In terms of the other elements of my schedule, I still have not received a response from my first confirmed interviewee of when the interview will be taking place, so I haven't started to come up with any questions for him as of yet, but as soon as I get a response that will be my main priority. Due to my struggles with the full project aesthetic, I haven't begun the podcast visual mood board as of yet but I hope as well to start that by the end of the week. By the end of today, this is what the first half of my schedule looks like, but I hope to make a lot of progress on it by Friday when I hopefully have a clearer idea of what aesthetic I would like to try and capture.

The first of my timetable as of the end of the day (black- not completed, red- completed)

On Friday, I decided that it would be ideal to see who else I could contact for an interview as we went into our 2 weeks of production, and start writing my podcast script.

The beginning of my podcast script