Changed
I think my skills have developed in creativity and use of
digital technology in the from AS to A2 as I have learnt to use more of a range
of software and features inside of the different software packages which helped
me use more creativity in my work. We have had to produce a music magazine in
the first year and a teaser trailer with a magazine front cover and also a film
poster in the second year, both of these use a range of digital technology and
helped develop my creativity. I am going to structure this essay so that I
break it down into pre-production, production and then post-production.
In pre-production at AS I used digital technology for the
research and developing ideas of what I wanted to include in my music magazine,
this includes using Google for pre-existing music magazines which helped
develop my ideas and creativity for my own music magazine. I also used
Photoshop in my pre-production with my preliminary task of the college magazine
and this was useful as it gave me a basic idea of the skills and features that
I would be able to use in my main task. It helped me to see what I would be
able to add to my raw images for my music magazine and features such as
‘sharpen’ and ‘blur’ to make some areas stand out more and I could test these
on the preliminary task to find the best effect before I added it to my main
task. At A2 pre-production in the planning for my teaser trailer I used a lot
more links for the information that I have included in my work and this is
useful as it can show where different websites gave influenced my final teaser
trailer and how I have explored different areas of creativity. I also used
Microsoft Word a lot more as it can automatically find any grammar&
spelling mistakes which means that I save time and can spend more time on
creating my teaser trailer, rather than worrying about going through and
picking out all of the spelling mistakes. A third piece of digital technology I
used at pre-production at A2 is the Canon camera which I used to take pictures
of my actors, props, costumes and locations which meant that I was able to see
exactly what everyone was going to wear, and how it would fit in with the rest
of the scene. This meant that when it came to the actual production I had all
the planning for the teaser trailer covered and I knew where everything was
going to go, and how it would fit in with the horror genre, this helped my
creativity as I could work around conventions to explore different areas of
horror.
In the production stage at AS I used a range of different
digital technologies which I was capturing my images and this includes the
camera shots that I was using for my Canon camera as I stuck to mainly a
mid-long shot whereas when this advanced to A2 it seems as though I was more
able to look at a range of different camera shots, so that I could see what was
the most effective for the clips that I wanted to shoot which helped my
creativity. I also had a lot more practise of how to use the camera for A2
compared to AS as it seems that I was able to keep the clips a lot more precise
to how I wanted it, and could change features on the actual camera, whereas at
AS I just took the original photos and then left it to when I came to
post-production to what I had to edit on each photo which took up more time. I
think the reason I was more adventurous in A2 with the way that I filmed was
because I had looked at other practitioners such as Martin Scorsese and Francis
Ford Coppola as they had the same sort of ideas that I had for my teaser
trailer, with there being lots of dark and mysterious ideas so looking at
similar teaser trailer helped my creativity of my own trailer.
In post-production in the first year I used a range of
different software to create my music magazine and these include Photoshop and
In-design which advanced my creativity because of the range of features I had
available. I used a range of effects on Photoshop such as ‘Sharpen’ and ‘Blur’
to make some areas of my photos stand out more than the rest to create a focus
on the main image. These effects were useful on a music magazine as the focus
would be on the main artist on the front page, rather than what is around them,
I found this from conventions on an NME magazine which had the same layout
which mine did. I also stuck to a mainly mid-long shot for my music magazine
front cover as this is what I had seen from other music magazines such as
Chronicle and MixMag. This changed in the second year as I started to look more
deeply into what was being shown in a teaser trailer and I could test more of a
range of features in my own film and Adobe Premiere contributed to this as it
is a much more advanced program which uses features such as transitions,
titles, brightness and exposure which when are set at the right level, create a
very good horror effect. I also used much more creativity in my evaluation at
A2 as I used a combination of windows movie maker with the pictures& videos
and then added sound that I had recorded with audacity as I think that if
people can hear what you are saying, it becomes a lot more effective and shows
good use of digital technology, you can also put more creativity into videos
and voice-overs as you can talk about separate topics which relate to your
original point whereas when you just write out the evaluation you just write
what the answer is.
In conclusion, I think the bigger range of digital
technology that I used for A2 helped the amount of creativity I was able to
express.
Original
In the first year I used a range of different software to
create my music magazine and these include Photoshop and In-design which
advanced my creativity because of the range of features I had available. I used
a range of effects on Photoshop such as ‘Sharpen’ and ‘Blur’ to make some areas
of my photos stand out more than the rest to create a focus on the main image.
These effects were useful on a music magazine as the focus would be on the main
artist on the front page, rather than what is around them, I found this from
conventions on an NME magazine which had the same layout which mine did. I also
stuck to a mainly mid-long shot for my music magazine front cover as this is
what I had seen from other music magazines such as Chronicle and MixMag. This
changed in the second year as I started to look more deeply into what was being
shown in a teaser trailer and I could test more of a range of features in my
own film and Adobe Premiere contributed to this as it is a much more advanced
program which uses features such as transitions, titles, brightness and
exposure which when are set at the right level, create a very good horror
effect.
In the second year we were also freer on what we chose as in
the first year we could only do a music magazine whereas in the second year we
had more of a range of options for our teaser trailer as we could choose
whatever genre we wanted, I chose a horror film as it meant that I would be
able to explore more of the effects that can be used on premiere with our raw
clips, whereas in something like a comedy, the raw clips do not change very
much.
Throughout the two years I feel the main skills development
that I have had is that of that I went from editing still images to moving
image which is a big step forward and shows much more creativity in my work as
you have a lot more options on how you edit so there is a larger chance of your
trailer being a failure so you have to make sure that you apply the right
effects in the best places. This is why in my teaser trailer I included titles
in places where the tension needed to be built up and have used master volume
to make the tension even more dramatic. The sound effects that I have used were
overlapping and were in sequence with each other and this shows how I have
developed the skill of being able to time exactly where each sound effect
should go so that it sounds like one whole sequence, rather than lots of
separate tracks.
