post production essay 1st draft

In year 12 I had limited knowledge in editing and my only experience was on windows movie maker. A software which limited creativity and resulted in a poor-quality production. Coming into year 12 we began to learn different editing techniques on premier pro a software which was of a much higher standard in comparison to anything I had used before. I began my edification in editing by completing a basic editing task composing a video of dancing animals and adding music to it. This task lacked creativity and was a simple task to allow me to get used to the software which I would be using for the next two years in my course. Within this editing task I learnt to import videos and sound, use colour effects and transitions. This later came in handy when I furthered my skills copying an opening sequence from Juno a task which encouraged me to edit following a narrative to match an already professionally editing clips.  This task included basic cuts, with inserts, basic effect and also a layover effect so that I could compare my video to the sequence I as copying. I then furthered my skills in editing when creating my own narrative and sequence when I created a short film as a preliminary task preparing me for my film opening. This was a much more creative task as it allowed me to play with sound effects and edits to create and sustain my target narrative. When I finally went on to edit my film opening I had composed a variety of editing skills and techniques which were useful in helping me to develop my editing skills to make my film opening look as professional and well composed as possible.

I used straight cuts, and a black and white edit to indicate flashbacks within the film opening this was used to help portray a clear narrative to the audience. I added music on top of video as a subtle addition in order to set the scene I can now however recognise limitations looking back I could have played around with more effects making the black and white effect look grainier to add to the old effect. I can also hear how the music is of poor sound quality and could have been adjusted. I may have also chosen to use colour correction to further improve the quality of the video. These are all things however I have learnt since completion of my AS coursework of a film opening. The skills learn since year 12 have been usefully applied in my year 13 media productions. In year 13 I had broadened my knowledge on premiere pro abetting me to be more creative. During my preliminary task, I experimented with new effects. Copying catfish and the bottlemens music video of Kathleen. The effects used during my preliminary task in year 13 demonstrated improvement of my use of digital technology as there was a clear advancement in the professional level of editing, furthermore when completing my main task, I was able to transfer the skills learnt from previous projects.

In year 12 we created a poster for our film opening this was created on Microsoft word, this limited our ability to be creative as I had inadequate effects and tools which could be used to create the poster. Although we managed to create a poster which looked like a film opening advertisement it was of poor quality and we found after completion looking back now some of the text on the poster is hard to read, in year 13 we developed our skills and produced various print works. These print works included a tour poster, magazine covers and a digipak. We created these on Photoshop and program which was much more advanced than Microsoft word which was used in year 12.  We used photoshop for our digipak to play around with colour effects to sharpen our images and increase synergy to match throughout the rest of products, we added text and our artist logo and used the colour red for the boarder and texts to add to the synergy. We also used photo shop to create our magazine cover. We sharpened our chosen image and added text to create the look and appearance of a magazine cover. We also created our tour poster on photoshop this was the easiest out of all our print works to create as it included a basic plain background we used photoshop to insert our tour dates and venues and added the synergy of red again to match the rest of our products.

Our website was another contributor to our post production. We created a website for both productions in year 12 and year 13. Both websites were create on wix. Wix is an adaptive software which meant that in year 12 when we had little knowledge of how to create a website we were able to use a template and incorporate our own information and pictures. Although this was useful it meant that the level of creativity was limited, and the website did not match the synergy of the rest of our products. We also had a lack of pages and only included a homepage an about page and some images to show all about our film opening. We also incorporated a link to our Facebook page. In comparison to our website for year 13 we again used wix but developed our own layout and included many more pages so that we could promote not only our music video but also our other products and our artist. We uploaded more images and also created merchandise for our website, we made our video available to view and purchase, and also uploaded a page for our tour this took a lot more time, effort and skill in comparison to our year 12 website. We worked hard to ensure our website also matched the synergy o the rest of our product we recognised the importance of cross media branding to ensure all of our ancillary texts and our music video could be recognised as one whole product and brand. We did this by using and continuing the colour scheme red, we also added roses as a motif as these can also be seen in our music video. We used typography throughout or products and changed the font on our website so that it matched the rest of our ancillary texts we used the text folklore.

Our post production was important, we spent a lot of time making our products look professional, and continued the synergy to ensure all aspects of both our ancillary texts and our final edited music video could be seen as one brand.