Research and Planning 1st draft Essay

Research and planning was very important throughout both year 12 and year 13 , it was the key to making our productions run smoothly.

In year 12 our research was focused on film openings. We researched film credits and titles and also looked into what a film opening was and the components that created a film opening. We looked at other films and the order of their titles so that we could establish our own titles and the order they would appear in our film opening We also researched fonts and names for our film opening. Once we had decided what genre our film opening was going to be and the narrative we wanted to follow. we looked at other similar genre films such as pride and prejudice and Jane Eyre. When looking at other films we looked at the type of fonts used for the titles and also the titles of the films this was good inspiration for our own film opening. Once we had settled on a few font types and film names we did. Survey with the rest of our peers. This was done on survey monkey. Survey monkey was a key aspect in our research and planning as it meant we could get feedback from a vast audience from our peers, family members, friends and other teachers to cover different audience types.

 We also researched different institutions, distributors and looked at how a film was consumed, and who the main film consumer audience was. This was important as it helped us plan how we would distribute our film and which audience we would direct our film at.

In year 13 we created a music video with ancillary texts this took a lot of research before we could begin. Creating for our final products. Firstly we had to research and establish what a music video was, and how each genre of music differed with their video using performance, concept and narrative. We looked at different genres and decided to use an indie song, we then had to research different music videos within this music genre so that we could accurately represent our genre and artist. We did this by looking at other indie artists music videos on youtube, we also explored black honey who were the original artist of our chosen song. The research was important in the conduction of or us video and ancillary texts as we had to ensure we continued cross media connections throughout our music video and the ancillary texts that went with it. We not only did research for our music video but also for our digipak. We looked at other digipaks within the indie genre and found that they were either very dull and monochrome or very abstract we subverted this and made our digipak bold with bright colours and clear images this was because our artist is an upcoming artist and we were establishing her image and brand. We also researched sizing and layouts of a digipak so that we could make it look as real and as professional as possible. As well as doing research for our music video and digipak we also had to look at other artists websites, and each page within that website such as their merchandise, their tour, and the layout of their website in order for us to construct an effects aesthetic web design. Amongst our main ancillary tasks we also did lot of back ground research to establish and promote our artist. We looked at other artists social medias, interviews, magazine articles and covers, their photoshoots and how they promote their music within the industry this was all in preparation to construct and promote Isla who was our artist.  It is clear that we researched much more for year 13 as there were many more aspects which we could be creative with in order to show our artist and her single in comparison to year 12 when we had less components to research, looking back we could have included much more research into year 12 had we had the knowledge of the importance  of establishing our actors and film the way we have our artist and music video.

Once we had done our research we had to plan for our productions. In year 12 to plan for our film opening we first had to complete tasks to get us used to software and styles of filming and editing. We completed tasks such as composing a video of dancing animals, so that we could experiment with cutting shots, editing and adding music. We also copied an opening sequence from Juno so that we could familiarise ourselves with the style of a film opening. Once we were familiar with this we created our own mini film to get us used to using our imagination, creating and planning for our own shots and narrative and then also to get us used to being creative with our editing.  Once we had planned for the filming and editing aspect of our film opening we planned for our film genre. We chose historical drama we planned how we could make our genre clear by using our research constructing ideas e did this by creating storyboards of our narrative, this allowed us to develop our ideas and plan how we would make our narrative clear to our audience. We also planned our setting using our research of where we wanted our setting to be we made a risk assessment to ensure that filming would run smoothly and not be hazardous.  We planned for the props we used again looking into our research we ordered props online and ensured and planned ahead to make sure they came in time, we also planned to ensure anything we were hand making such as  the votes for women sign were made in plenty of time so that the pin was able to dry we also planned our costumes in advance so that on the day of filming we were prepared, again this was something we took influence from, from or research into to other historical dramas similar to the one we were creating. Availability was also something we had t plan ahead for to ensure on days of film the whole group was free and available for that day so that we all had equal participation and also because we were all going to appear on camera we all needed to be there on the day to film to ensure we got all of the shots that were needed. A lot of our planning was able to be done because of the research we had done before hand, this meant we were able to be prepared and organised throughout the creation of our film opening. The tasks we did prior to our film opening meant we were more experienced with filming and editing therefor were ready in advance for when it came to film and editing our film opening.

Like in year 12 our research came in handy when planning out music video. We firstly created a preliminary task where we copied a section of another music video this enabled us to be more creative in comparison to our film opening. It broadened our editing skills as our editing was much more advanced and not continual the way our film opening editing was. It also allowed us to recognise the difference between creating music video and creating a film opening.  In order to make sure we had the best possible performer in the group we also filmed a lip-syncing task, everyone in the group lip sync a clip of our chosen song, this was so that we could planning advance who would be our main artist. This helped our final production as it meant that we would have the best outcome.  We also planned in a similar way to how we planned for our music video. We looked at our research and took inspiration from that. We constructed. Storyboard of clips we wanted to incorporate and evaluated risk for the places we wanted to film. We created an availability sheet so that we could plan different tasks around each group members availability. We also created a stealomatics so that we could plan for different shots and ideas again this was created using our research from other music videos.

Our research contributed a large part towards our planning for both our fil. Opening and music video, the difference between year 12 and 13 was the depth of our research. In year 13 our research was in far more depth which enabled our planning to be better≥ we also learned from our planning mistakes in year 12 which helped us be more organised and forward thinking in year 13.

Research and planning essay plan

Explain how your research and planning  skills have developed over time and how this has contributed to your media  productions out come.
(before filming)

Research 
year 12 
Film opening
film credits and titles
what is a film opening


year 13
music video with ancillary tasks
what is a music video
différent types of music video- performance concept narrative.
stealomatics


planning 
year 12 
dancing animals
Juno
preliminary task
genre research
DISTINCT
storyboards
risk assessment
props
avalibility

year 13

preliminary task 

lip syncing 

Using conventions from real media texts essay plan.

DISTINCT

In your experience how has your understanding of conventions developed through creating your product?

Main paragraphs

• start by writing about the concept of genre. what is it? why is it important?
• Talk about the importance of genres for both audience and institution
• what research have you done into real media texts? what did you find our?  From this research what are the conventions of the genre. for example examples from real films. how have you been influenced by producers/ directors. 
• what enigma codes did you include?
• How have you used these conventions in your own thriller

• Have you challenged the conventions of the genre? How?
• is your work generic or postmodern or both?

• Then consider the music video- what research did you do ? what are the conventions of these two forms?
• How have you used these conventions in your music video, advert and digipak?
• Have you challenged the convention? if so how? 
• To what extent have you used digital technology in your research into the conventions of the thriller/ music video/ digipak? 
• which digipak, websites influenced you?

Conclusion 

• how has the consideration of technology allowed you to develop other skills?
• what have you learnt about using = conventions from real media texts?

1a overview

Question 1a
Describe and evaluate the skill development over the course of production work from our film opening and music video.

1. digital technology 
2. research and planning 
3. post production 
4. using conventions from real media texts 
5. creativity (-will never come up on its own) 

Show progress over time- from AS to A level; start to end 

Be reflective and self critical. 

how has the progress made your work better?

specific examples from your work e.g. how many cutes, what edits ect. 

reference real media examples. 

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.

digital technology essay 1st draft

I began year 12 with a basic understanding of editing software and my initial knowledge was limited to programs such as windows movie maker. This type of software was not professional and limited creativity. Coming into year 12 I had never used premiere pro. One of the first tasks completed in year 12 was a basic editing task where we combined clips of dancing animals. This task enabled us to begin to learn that basics such as importing clips of videos and mp3 to go with the videos. We also altered and cropped the length of videos. This task did not really allow for any creative input and was simply to get us used to a new software.

We also practiced editing with our preliminary task copying an opening sequence of Juno. This enabled us to practice our editing skills further as we had to match the narrative and put the clips in order. That was later an effective tool for our film opening as collectively throughout the tasks we got more familiar with the software. Upon creating our film opening I was still unfamiliar with many aspects of premiere pro. Through trial and error of editing our film opening was created using tools such as effects for black and white, straight cuts for the scenes in order to keep the editing continuous. 

 Something which I can now look back on is how the editing was of poor quality something which could have been improved on would have been how smooth the editing appeared to the audience and how the effects were used for transition. The black and white effect used could have been editing further to appear grainy to further highlight the flashbacks. The sound quality is poor and could have been changed as well as this now I have more experience with premiere pro our film opening could have been editing with colour correction to make it look better quality.

In year 13 we used that same editing software which I had familiarised myself with in year 12. Upon completing another preliminary task, I found YouTube was a great source to learn new editing skills. I used YouTube to learn new skills, manipulating the colour to match the music video we were copying. This was useful as it allowed me to be more creative with my editing in comparison to editing a film opening. The quality of editing can be recognised throughout all of our editing tasks as our experience and knowledge broadened. When editing our final music video a variety of effects were used to change the colour, we used matte track key, qaussian blur, brightness and contrast, warp stabilizer and many others to make our music video looks as professional as possible. We also used skills initially learnt in year 12 such as ordering our clips to create a narrative, slowing down the video and making them faster to ensure of lip sync matched. All of our editing skills throughout year 12 and 13 have combined and contributed so that I could create the best possible outcome for our final music video, all the skills learnt were useful in allowing me to recognise what effects and edits match my target genre of video and how to use the tools to my advantage to make my video aesthetically pleasing to my audience.

Presentational software was a large contributor throughout both years as it allowed us to plan, research and evaluate and then represent what we found.

In year 12 my use of presentation software was very basic, and was limited to emaze, slide share and PowerPoint these were much less advanced in comparison to the software I used in year 13. The software’s were very basic and many of the layouts used were a pre-set template, although this made creating a presentation quick and easy it was less creative and less aesthetically pleasing and was simply created to present the information. In year 13 I explored more ways to present my work using new presentation tools such as prezi, visme and also create videos and screen casts. Screen casts were great to help develop my work in detail as it allowed me to talk over the thing I was presenting. Screen casts and videos also meant that my presentations were more personal and in much more depth allowing the audience to fully understand the points which I was making. It can be seen throughout year 12 and 13 that my presenting skills have adapted to be more advanced as I investigated new ways to show my work. This has contributed to my media production outcomes as it has allowed me to research, plan and evaluate my worth in much more depth with further analysis.

In year 12 I mainly used YouTube to upload editing tasks and my preliminary task as well as my film opening so that I could later add the links to my blog and make it accessible to the rest of my group as well as friends and family and other peers so that we could get feedback. I recognise now that this was not an efficient use of all the things which I could have taken advantage of from YouTube. In year 13 YouTube played a much larger par in my research and planning of creating a music video.  I used  YouTube to find a song which didn’t already have a music video I was able to take inspiration from other music videos as well as from other student videos for when I was planning my music videos sequence. For planning aspects of our music video, we created stealomatics where to took clips from YouTube and put them together. Similarly, as in year 12 I also used YouTube in year 13 to upload y videos so I could then add the link to my blog, it also made the video assessable to the rest of my group and like in year 12 made it easy to gain feedback as it was online anyone could watch it at their convenience.

The camera used in year 12 was a school camera. It was of much lower video quality in comparison to the camera used in year 13.  We used a ….. in year 12 to film our film opening. We also used an iPhone to take photos for our film poster and found that the quality of the image on iPhone was much better than using the camera which we had access to from school. In year 13 we had access to a much better camera we used a cannon….. to film our music video and also to take photos from our photoshoot which were used for our print work we also used the cannon…. To film our artists interview, the digital technology used from year 12 to 13 was of a much higher standard and has contributed to our media products as the quality can be seen to improve making the videography and photography look more professional.

The software’s used in year 12 to create our print work were of a much less professional standard I used tools such as PowerPoint and word to create our film opening poster the outcome although looked like film opening poster was of much lower quality in comparison to if I had, had the skills I have now to use Photoshop. The images used were pixelated and although represented our film opening well could have been created to appear more synergetic with the rest of our products. In year 13 I worked hard to ensure all ancillary texts and our music video was portrayed as one product with the synergy used. For this I used Photoshop to create a digipak, poster, digipak advert and tour poster.  The images used throughout showed a strong synergetic comparison and can be viewed at a high standard as the program used created a more professional finish. We used Photoshop to ensure all fonts, colours and sizes matched throughout our products. Our digital technology use can be seen to develop throughout our print work from year 12 to 13 as the standards can be seen to improve this has contributed to our media products making them more aesthetic and improving the quality of our work.

I used wix to create a website in year 12 however I used a pre-set template which was a basic layout there was no synergy with the rest of my music video or poster and the website did not have many pages, the website was not specific to the film opening as I didn’t know how to change it.  My digital technology skills had developed in year 13 as when creating a website for our music video although I still used wix I developed my own layout and adapted pages in order to suit my target brand and artist image and to also include multiples pages of information about my artist and her music. Our website was created to match our synergy, it was created overtime and was continuously added to so signify our artist. The website appeared more advance and professional in comparison to the way our website looked.

Blogger was a large part of digital software which was used throughout both year 12 and 13 to keep track of our work and for our work to be accessible for our teacher’s peers and examiners. In year 12 I was getting used to using blogged to upload posts although it was a simple layout I realise now I have more experience that I didn’t fully take advantage of all the gadgets which could be added to make my blog easier to navigate. In year 13 I recognised and had come to terms with blogger from my year 12 coursework I now acknowledge how the online resource made it easily accessible from anyway so that I could keep on top f my work and upload frequently after becoming more familiar with blogger I was able to make my year 13 blog more convenient and also matched its synergy with the artist I was creating and the music video construction I made. In comparison to my year 12 blog my year 13 blogger was much more organised and presented in a more mature aesthetic way.  

Throughout year 12 and 13 my digital technology work can be recognised to improve and develop over time this has contributed to my media products out come as they can be viewed to be more polished and developed with a more professional finish.