Sunday, 29 April 2012

Extra writing on the digital technologies I used


In my development throughout the Media Studies course I have used a range of different digital technologies that has influenced my coursework. I began by doing an AS Preliminary task that involved a short conversation using shot-reverse shot, the technology involved was simply a camera, tripod and iMovie. I then fore fronted amongst a group of four the main task that was to create an opening sequence to a tame thriller that was a maximum two minutes long called “Wheelchair Bound” using a better video camera, tripod, sound recorder and Final Cut Pro. Following this going into A2 the task was to create a music promotion that involved two ancillary texts; a digipak and a website for my chosen artist to back up my main task a music video, it centred the artist “Plan B” and song name “She Said”, for this incorporated many of the technologies mentioned above but also using others like ‘I Can Animate’ for added creativity.
I have been a student of media studies now for 3 years after initially completing it at GCSE level, my starting point coming in the AS level course was limited to production tasks centred around Adobe Photoshop that I am fairly accomplished at using coming into the course. But my capabilities did not span to the digital film creation, here I was a beginner, my camera and editing skills were limited and I found the preliminary task a great starting point for developing my competency with the Canon XM2 DV Tape and iMovie eventually moving on to Final Cut.
My development was particularly prevailing when I look at my use of titles in my AS and A2 tasks. In the making of my AS thriller opening sequence where I used Final Cut Pro to make simple, basic titles with very little emphasis on its importance to the product. Using basic Final Cut effects such as ‘fade in’ and ‘fade out’ was simplistic and quite unimaginative, in my opinion not using the full use of my media technologies at the time to create an even better opening sequence.
However moving in my A2 main production, learning more and more about the digital technology on the software side in the creation of my music video, I broadened my scope of media technologies by using title specific software called Adobe After Effects. This was a brilliant piece of media technology because it allowed advanced, powerful title manipulation, even though I was a beginner at this software technology I quickly began more proficient at it (by experimentation and the digital technology Youtube) that led me to create a moving animated title sequence that would compliment my music video well, using 3D incorporated transitions and effects like glow.
In AS, our first experience of practical media production came in the preliminary task, to coincide with my limitations our class were given basic video camera’s, called ‘Canon XM2 DV Tape’ this was a simple to use hardware that allowed us to create a film, but the great limitation to this was the its size and the DV tapes quality and inability to delete unwanted shots on the spots, which I believe is one of the main strengths of the Canon 550d SD card video camera I used in my A2 task to create my main music video. The SD card holding video camera allowed me to instantly view shots I had just recorded and delete them if they weren’t correct and reshoot the shot, saving shooting time and more importantly editing time and resources on Final Cut Pro.
In the A2 production my range of technology went further than AS, I used more software and hardware to create my work, for example in the ancillary texts, I had to use software like Photoshop to create my digipak, this is something I did not have to do in the past productions but I enjoyed it thoroughly as I had experience of Adobe from GCSE media, another example of my expanding variety of talent built up in Media was in the internet based software ‘Wix.com’ that I used to create my website ancillary text, the was free but powerful user friendly digital technology that allowed me to experiment with layouts, colour schemes, images and fonts.

No comments:

Post a Comment