We had our first Project Meeting on the 15th November 2011. Our aim to our first project meeting, our plan was to establish what we wanted to do with the brief that we had been given and how we wanted to go about it. We met at the Learning Café but Becky was held up due to University Maintenance in her flat. Until her arrival, we generally spoke about ideas of what we could do and how we would go about them.
Whilst waiting, Paige handed me the magazine 'Woman', in which they had an article by Martin Lewis, that is a part of the Independent Task force. This is something that I am to use as a starting point to better my research. It included a lot of key information and although it was concentrating very much on the financial aspects connected with university and the monetary gain expected it was still well informative and gave a lot of good and helpful information that a prospective student wouldn't find threatening or 'too much to handle'.
When Becky arrived, we recapped to her, the ideas and things that we had spoken about thus far. The main focus first of all was behind my role as researcher, as any research that I do would ultimately set a precedence for the whole project. We discussed different outlets of information and different ways these outlets could be utilised to our advantage, whether this be social networking/media or hard copy questionairres that one would fill in by hand. So from the get go, we have decided that a combination of primary and secondary research could be a viable course of action. I also made a point that it would be worth talking to employers who look, primarily, for graduates and their reasons for wanting graduates over someone who left school or college without entering or completing higher education.
We also decided that another good starting point for this research, to get us going, would be to look at official websites that act as the gateway into H.E (Higher education). These websites include Direct Gov, UCAS, STE (Student Finance England) but also that it would be worth looking into other student finance websites from Scotland, Ireland and Wales as not every English student will choose to stay in England. Which is something that could be stressed in the video.
We also established that the genre would need to be taken into account and broadly researched before creating the video so it is sure to reach our target audience and demographic. A way of making sure that the genre and content is audience suitable would be to look at other videos created and aimed at prospective students wanting to come to University but also, to what extent these videos are taken seriously.
It was also highlight during our first meeting that it is of great importance that fact checking occurs as we go along to avoid mistakes and errors in our work. Something that is completely avoidable if done during the process as opposed to afterwards. This would prevent irritating problems such as having to start the filming process again.
It was established that my research deadline should be the 18th November 2011.
After the research was discussed, the idea then came up about what sort of video that we should created. Paige then suggested a stop animation on a white board could be an affective and original idea. This was mutually agreed on and then we moved on to what kind of sound we would want to play over a stop motion. More specifically, a song or a voice over, or perhaps a culmination of both. It was decided that the video, if done correctly, could stand a lone and speak for it's self and we could use a hip song that people of our age group would be bound to recognise.
