Pre-Production Evaluation

The coursework task was to create a new television drama of our choice; the pre-production stage was to write a script of 10-15 minutes of any selected part of one episode.
Firstly I decided it would be good idea to write down my favourite existing TV programmes and decide which parts I like about them and why so I could begin to consider what would happen in my TV drama. This is how I came to the conclusion that I would create a reality TV show.
Once I had decided on the content of our TV drama, I wrote a brief describing my idea in more detail. I had decided that I was going create a reality TV show showcasing the talent of household Zombies, set in the near future. This of course would be more of a mockumentary than anything but will have many elements of Drama within it. I decided that I would write my script for a sequence from the middle of the final episode.
Next I created my questionnaire, I asked open questions to people from my target audience so I could get a better understanding of what they would like to see from my TV drama, I asked people about their television habits and what their favourite shows/channels are and I asked them what they thought about my idea. This allowed me to shape my drama around my target audience more effectively, however I found one massive flaw in my plans, I found that people did not understand what I was trying to do with my tv drama as I had merged too many different genres into one, I found that I would either have to explain myself more clearly or make the programme more simple. In addition to this I analysed the data I was given back afterwards. As I asked open questions, it was hard for me to turn my data into a graph so I evaluated all of the answers I was given and simplified them into a list of criteria that would improve my idea.
I then created my first draft of my script, I had no knowledge of how scripts were structured as I had done no analysis at this point, so my script was unprofessional and massively simplified. After I realized this, I began researching scripts, I looked at one American and one British TV script for comedies and found that they were very much alike. After I had researched this I applied the basic principles of the script to my own, mostly focusing on the layout and appearance of my script.
After I had done research on the layout of the script, I focused on researching actual TV programmes, I analysed 3 TV shows and looked for elements in the mise-en-scene and cinematography so that I could use these in my stage directions to improve my script further.
After much research, I took my script once more to be analysed by the public, I created a focus group of my target audience and asked open questions so I could find out their response to my script . This was better than asking questions in the form of a questionnaire as I did last time as it allowed me to ask questions openly and converse with each person to get a more detailed response.
After this I looked at how to make my script more visually appealing and carried out research into how to make my script look more professional by using fonts and layouts. I also added a lot more stage directions as it would increase the success of my next step, which was to have a focus group act out my screenplay so I could evaluate it and see if there was anything that needed to be changed for my final draft. Before I did this however I quickly spell checked and proofread my script to make sure everything was accurate and spelled correctly
Whilst my script was being acted out, I found that a few lines were hard to be read through and some of the stage directions were too vague or too open to interpretation and this meant that it didn’t look the way I wanted it to in some parts so I tweaked my script once more and had my actors try again, this time it was more of a success and everything could be followed smoothly and lines could be read correctly.              
My script had now reached the end of the Pre-Production process and all I had left to do was spell check the script once more and make any small tweaks to it, resulting in the final outcome of the script.
The majority of my research used came from internet sources, all of my research was taken carefully into consideration as it can be bias or unreliable as internet articles are not always written by professionals. Also, in order to evaluate my own work, it was important to listen to responses from real people who come from my target audience so that I could create what they wanted. In conclusion, I think that the success of my script comes from listening to the views and opinions of others, otherwise my script would not be appealing to my target audience at all.