Digital Technology
1A)'Digital technology turns media consumers into media producers.' In your own experience, how has your creativity developed through using digital technology to complete your coursework productions?
In year 12 we produced a film opening, the EZ life. In year 13 we created a cross promotional campaign for a new artist, our artist was C.DOT. This included a music video, a website and a digipak. As a digital native, I have always being a media consumer. My A levels media studies course has given me a wide range of creative skills at which has turned me into a media producer. This has helped throughout the last two years as I have used a variety of digital technology such as different software’s, the internet and the online and presentational skills.
Before starting A level media, I used a small amount of software’s that I had basic knowledge on. Therefore my creativity was limited to the amount I knew. PowerPoint at this stage was the software which I used the most as it was simple to use. However after taking media at AS level, I used a new advanced software known as Photoshop. I had no experience using this software when I first took media as I was used to creating posters on word or PowerPoint, which was a simple form but not as effective as Photoshop. Photoshop allowed me to have a variety of different layers at which I could all mix together. To practise on this software I created a moodboard for our AS film opening. This process took me a long time to figure out as I was intrigued to find the right effects and make sure that when I uploaded a photo and merged it onto another photo, that it was in pristine condition. I did this by using a variety of tools to blur an image onto another one, aswell as colour correcting certain parts of the image in order for it to look like a shadow behind our star in our film. I continued to use Photoshop for my AS and A2 posters. This gave me vital experience on this software and now after my first year of using this software, I felt very confident. At A2 I combined Photoshop with a variety of different software’s in order to enhance the effect and improve the overall quality of the media product. One software which I combined alongside Photoshop was Graffiti which we generated the text for our magazine article, something at which made the font match our genre of our music video, hip hop. This was a website which allowed me to personally write the text in the method which I wanted aswell as having a series of effects, like changing the opacity of the text and you could have up to three background effects behind or on top of the font. This website also allowed me to place this onto Photoshop and I was also allowed to enhance the font itself, on Photoshop. This has enabled me to explore various methods at which could improve my media product. For our digipak, I used Photoshop alongside adobe premiere after affects at which I created a parallax, the 3D effect was created by putting our artist into a crowd, with the camera panning left to right getting a different angle from the artists view. I then added the parallax to Photoshop to create our digipak.
When I started the course I had no skills in editing using the software Adobe Premiere Pro. However, from AS to the end of my coursework in A2 my creativity skills have developed due to my knowledge of technology being broadened. I used a new software Adobe Premier at which over that year I progressed my skills and teached myself various different editing skills, from creating a dancing bear sequence which required cutting a variety of blackouts between scenes at which had to be timed to a perfect rhythm in order for the shots to flow into a nice controlled pattern. We also created aa Juno task, where we had to create a identical 30 second clip of the opening sequence. This was challenging at the time as we had to change the background to a cartoon effect and this was done by continuously working out the different style of effects which can work together to enhance the image and portray a similar opening sequence. Also in AS we created a prelim task at which we had to colour correct certain shots in order to increase the quality which took a lot more detail, as we used two main effects, the three way colour scheme, aswell as brightness and contrast. At the beginning of A2 my ability to use premiere was at a good level and I felt confident in trying out new methods. Although this year we felt as though we wanted to increase the amount of effects as in a music video there are a higher amount of shots which we would incorporated. I did a banana phone task at which I created a stop motion animation alongside a cloning shot. This turned out to be very useful for our music video at which we used a cloning shot for our CCTV shots in our music video alongside a slow motion reverse shot which our artist C.DOT moving forward and backwards in time with the beat of our song.
As a media consumer before I took Media at A level, I used to use YouTube by just watching small videos. However over the last two years I have not only used YouTube as a way of watching videos, but also as a way of uploading various videos and tagging them in labels. The use of labels allows videos to be seen in a particular section such as the media tag on YouTube. This enables viewers to select a certain label and have a whole host of videos which target a specific audience. From this in A2 I am now using YouTube as a presentational device which can enhance the video itself this is through the use of annotations at which I have used to portray various messages across. I also played around with some series of effects which YouTube has like the enhancements which change the image through different colours. For my A2 coursework, I created a Director’s cut through the use of YouTube at which I could insert a running commentary on top of the video.
I used the internet before I took media although it was mainly used for research for educational or recreational uses, or for social media accounts such as facebook and twitter and in year 11 I was given a step by step guide at how to create a small website. In year 12 I began to get involved in presentational tools on the internet such as Prezi. Prezi was a tool at which it was a level above in anything I had seen before, it has nice transitions aswell as a variety of methods to show information on such as the variety of boxes. The layout on Prezi was very easy to use once I got the hang of it and it allowed me to be as creative as I wanted, I could make the transitions which I wanted. However, in year 13 I had to create a website which correlated with our music video, I used a website called Wix at which I had to create a website by myself without a step by step guide. This although I found difficult this allowed me to produce the website as I saw fit, it allowed me to be more creative. In the past as a media consumer I would have been looking at other websites however after the last two years I have been able to create a website.
