ideas development
evaluative journal
Week 1 of this project was dedicated to ideas development. During this time, I came up with 5 seperate ideas, developed and collated 4 of them.
I felt that organising my ideas in a spreadsheet with colour coding allowed me to clearly express and evaluate all of my ideas, as well as present my work in a way that made it visually obvious why I was making the creative and technical decisions I had. Being restricted to the college limited the scope of my ideas, but with faith in the flexibility of the studio I allowed myself leniency in what types of set I might produce, at least at this stage in development.
The first of the ideas is one I'd been developing for 6 months already, CN3.
The cn3 planning/ideas document
The cn3 script
CN3 is a Sci-Fi tv show, of which I was planning to create the first episode as a self contained short film. Despite all the planning and development that had already been produced for the idea, a lot of it would need to be re-written for a smaller production, and the project would have required custom sets and costumes, at least 6 actors, use of CGI and green screen, and overall the materials required would have been too hard to produce effectively, and I would likely have neglected my paperwork for the project.
The second idea was Ali's Meteor, which was inspired by the children's book Out of this world, where a boy finds a rock that gives him telekinesis.
This idea received considerably less development, as it was just the beginning of an idea. Ali's meteor was just too simple and small of an idea for this project. It had simple shots cut to music, a simple story, and no ending, and while it would have been easy, I needed a project that could challenge me, and one that I could show my creative skills in. I am glad I did not invest more time into developing this idea.
In 2019 I came up with an idea for a script, imagining a demon leaving hell and a man entering hell being trapped together and forced to cooperate. By adapting this idea for my constraints, I created A Walk in Hell.
A Walk in Hell seems to be the most ideal production for my requirements and constraints in this project. It allows me to show my skills as a writer and director, while maintaining a reasonable workload. I am moving forward with this idea for this project, and I am glad I chose it.
In my opinion, my ideas development was very successful. I spent time developing ideas that were helpful to consider, and did not spend unneeded time on unhelpful projects. One thing I did differently to others who are doing similar ideas development to me was the spreadsheet. This way of organising my ideas allowed me to visualise and analyse my ideas.
In the ideas development stage, I made a few key mistakes. One of those was my lack of visual aides while developing. All of the ideas I developed would have benefited from the addition of an annotated mood board for locations, but also character developing.
During this stage I also feel I did not character develop enough. All of my projects have characters, but none of them have visual aides, costumes, personalities, or considerations of representation. This is something I hope to improve on in future productions.
Another thing I did not develop as much as I would have liked was my practical considerations. Other than cn3, all of my new concepts have little to no thought put into what would be needed in order to pre produce them; where I could film, what kit would be needed, etc.
Overall I feel I did well in developing a range of ideas that fit my knowledge of filmmaking and my constraints working within the college and as one person. In future projects I hope to spend more time on character developing and visual design during the idea development stage.