Thursday 25 April 2013
Front cover main image.
Despite this, i am still happy with this image. I edited the saturation on the image, making the colours paler and i also adjusted the contrast and brightness to give it a dark shadowed tone.
Monday 22 April 2013
first essay - Use of digital technology
Digital Technology
Digital
technology was likely the most important factor in my work for AS and especially
in A2. In our foundation portfolio we were given the task of creating a music
magazine which consisted of a front cover, an index page and a main article
page. Where as in our advanced portfolio we had to create a promotional package
for a film, made up of a film magazine front cover, a movie poster and a film
trailer, created with chosen parts of our film plot that we wrote over the
summer and tweaked through the beginning of the year.
Our
introduction to relying so heavily on digital technology was at the beginning of
our AS course when we created our media blogs, though I was used to using blogs
before year 12 I found this an interesting new way to display my research and
planning for my work.
It wasn’t just research and planning that would be posted onto our blogs, but also our finished work pieces, which was useful when it came to getting feedback from others as I could then access my blog through my phone and show my friends and class mates my work and ask them what they thought of it, quickly and easily.
In our advanced portfolio we were asked to use the blogging site again for the same reasons as in the previous year, and therefore we were able to get into using our blogs a lot quicker this time as we already had a years’ experience. Our comfort with using blogger came of much use in A2 as we were introduced to new mechanics on the site like posting videos and linking HTML’s from external sites like slide share and prezzi, which we had previously not needed to do in our foundation portfolio.
It wasn’t just research and planning that would be posted onto our blogs, but also our finished work pieces, which was useful when it came to getting feedback from others as I could then access my blog through my phone and show my friends and class mates my work and ask them what they thought of it, quickly and easily.
In our advanced portfolio we were asked to use the blogging site again for the same reasons as in the previous year, and therefore we were able to get into using our blogs a lot quicker this time as we already had a years’ experience. Our comfort with using blogger came of much use in A2 as we were introduced to new mechanics on the site like posting videos and linking HTML’s from external sites like slide share and prezzi, which we had previously not needed to do in our foundation portfolio.
Through AS
and increasingly more in A2, blogging was certainly not the only reason for
using the internet. During our foundation course, besides blogging we only really
used the internet for researching into magazines, looking at images of front
covers and index pages etc.
However, in A2 we used the internet in many more ways, like social networking for example. This was used for our group to organise certain shoots between the people we had in our trailer and to also create an event inviting as many people as we could get to be zombies for certain clips. I also used YouTube a lot during the research stages of my advanced portfolio, mainly to search for film trailers which I thought related to my groups plot, I could then give feedback on these trailers and post this onto my blog with services like slideshare. Slideshare was a site that I could rely on to turn any presentation that I created in PowerPoint into a format that allowed me to post it onto my blog, by copy and pasting the HTML code provided by slideshare into a feature on blogger.
Prezzi was also another presentation style website which allowed me to display my research in a more aesthetically pleasing format than an ordinary PowerPoint presentation, letting me show a lot of information in a small area with its zoom in and rotation method it uses to get to the next slide.
However, in A2 we used the internet in many more ways, like social networking for example. This was used for our group to organise certain shoots between the people we had in our trailer and to also create an event inviting as many people as we could get to be zombies for certain clips. I also used YouTube a lot during the research stages of my advanced portfolio, mainly to search for film trailers which I thought related to my groups plot, I could then give feedback on these trailers and post this onto my blog with services like slideshare. Slideshare was a site that I could rely on to turn any presentation that I created in PowerPoint into a format that allowed me to post it onto my blog, by copy and pasting the HTML code provided by slideshare into a feature on blogger.
Prezzi was also another presentation style website which allowed me to display my research in a more aesthetically pleasing format than an ordinary PowerPoint presentation, letting me show a lot of information in a small area with its zoom in and rotation method it uses to get to the next slide.
Through the
creation of our products during AS I used two different pieces of software
which where Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. I already had some experience with
using Photoshop before I began my A levels, but I only really scratched the
surface. My foundation portfolio helped me expanded on those skills within the programme,
by increasing my knowledge of text manipulation and photo editing while
creating my magazine pieces.
Because I was more comfortable with Photoshop I created the majority of my magazine within that programme, making parts like the mast head, banner lines and editing the main images was a lot easier to do with something I was used to, as I then transferred these over to Adobe InDesign anyway to take advantage of the column alignment and page structuring it uses. As Adobe tend to design most of their programs rather similar I found getting used to InDesign came a lot quicker than it would of if I hadn’t been familiar with Photoshop already, though it certainly was a bit of a learning curve having to use an older version of the software but I feel this gave me more of a broad range of skills surrounding the adobe programs.
In our advanced portfolio our use for image manipulation software wasn’t so great, as our most used programme was soon to be Adobe premiere, which we used to edit our film trailer together. I still used Photoshop to create my poster and magazine front cover, editing images captured on set of some of our shoots for the trailer, to create these pieces which was made a lot easier in A2 with the experience we gained from our foundation portfolio. However video editing software was something completely new and exciting to me, as I have only ever really played around with lower end software such as windows movie maker, Adobe premiere took a little more getting used to. This software allowed us to add multiple layers of sound which was useful as in times during our trailer we need to fade in music with dialogue and vice versa. Adobe premiere was also useful to my group during the research and planning stage as we used it to create our animatic for our trailer, which proved to be a very useful method of deciding what would and wouldn’t work for our finished trailer.
Because I was more comfortable with Photoshop I created the majority of my magazine within that programme, making parts like the mast head, banner lines and editing the main images was a lot easier to do with something I was used to, as I then transferred these over to Adobe InDesign anyway to take advantage of the column alignment and page structuring it uses. As Adobe tend to design most of their programs rather similar I found getting used to InDesign came a lot quicker than it would of if I hadn’t been familiar with Photoshop already, though it certainly was a bit of a learning curve having to use an older version of the software but I feel this gave me more of a broad range of skills surrounding the adobe programs.
In our advanced portfolio our use for image manipulation software wasn’t so great, as our most used programme was soon to be Adobe premiere, which we used to edit our film trailer together. I still used Photoshop to create my poster and magazine front cover, editing images captured on set of some of our shoots for the trailer, to create these pieces which was made a lot easier in A2 with the experience we gained from our foundation portfolio. However video editing software was something completely new and exciting to me, as I have only ever really played around with lower end software such as windows movie maker, Adobe premiere took a little more getting used to. This software allowed us to add multiple layers of sound which was useful as in times during our trailer we need to fade in music with dialogue and vice versa. Adobe premiere was also useful to my group during the research and planning stage as we used it to create our animatic for our trailer, which proved to be a very useful method of deciding what would and wouldn’t work for our finished trailer.
I think out
of all the digital technology we relied on the most through both our foundation
and advanced portfolio, the one that stands out the most is the digital cameras
we had to use.
Through AS I used my own digital camera to capture images to use in my music magazine, I already had a lot of experience using my own camera as photography had always been something I enjoyed, so taking these images came naturally to me. These images could then be used later on in the editing stage, but the key part of the cycle always came down to the use of the camera.
My experience with my own digital camera came of no use however this year, when recording our film trailer, as my camera only captured still images and was unable to record. It wasn’t difficult to learn the basics of what we needed to use on the camera to record and transfer footage, but I found it was an interesting process as it increased my knowledge of the usage of cameras as a whole, especially due to the fact that I was use to using a memory card in a camera, making transferring images to a computer a lot easier, where as we were provided with cam recorders which used tape instead, so using a fire wire connection to transfer footage was something new to me, which I was a skill I was more than happy to learn in case I needed it again in the future.
Through AS I used my own digital camera to capture images to use in my music magazine, I already had a lot of experience using my own camera as photography had always been something I enjoyed, so taking these images came naturally to me. These images could then be used later on in the editing stage, but the key part of the cycle always came down to the use of the camera.
My experience with my own digital camera came of no use however this year, when recording our film trailer, as my camera only captured still images and was unable to record. It wasn’t difficult to learn the basics of what we needed to use on the camera to record and transfer footage, but I found it was an interesting process as it increased my knowledge of the usage of cameras as a whole, especially due to the fact that I was use to using a memory card in a camera, making transferring images to a computer a lot easier, where as we were provided with cam recorders which used tape instead, so using a fire wire connection to transfer footage was something new to me, which I was a skill I was more than happy to learn in case I needed it again in the future.
To conclude,
digital technology played a vital role in my media studies A level, very much
so during AS and increasingly more demanding through my A2 course. Along the
way I felt like I gained much skill in many different mediums, which were able
to be applied to my work through the course and could also be used in the
future situations if I needed them.
Film trailer first draft.
This is the first draft of our film trailer. We created this to show in the focus group and so we are aware that the music is copy righted, we are currently in the progress of creating the finished soundtrack and shall have it ready by the end of this week.
Monday 15 April 2013
Finished poster
This is my finished poster as of now, it is subject to change after i have been given feed back on it, and also the white square in the top right will be a QR code leading to the film trailer when it is uploaded to youtube.
In its current stage I rather pleased with it.
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