Conventions and existing media

Explain how far your understanding of the conventions of existing media influenced the way you created your own media products. Refer to a range of examples in your answers to show how this understanding developed over time. 
Through my time as a media student research and planning into real media texts was very influential into how i created my media products.  

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Digital Technology

'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?

From a young age I have always been a media consumer through peers and family. At the age of 17 being a sixth form student I started to develop into a media producer. Through my time in year 12 and 13 I created a film opening and also a music video.

Year 12 was a brand new experience for me as although I’ve grown up being a digital native I haven’t explored many different forms of technology. I developed my creativity in the very first few lessons as I was set the task of how to create a blog and upload video’s onto this very blog that was coursework related, I also analysed these videos in reference to camera, editing, mise en scene and sound. The blog was an effective method of presenting information on how I was learning and developing as a media student. I learnt how to put video’s on this blog through obtaining the embed code from YouTube and pasting it onto the blog.  Very soon after I got the hang of the blog I was developing further by using a brand new piece of software called ‘Premiere’.

Premiere was an effective editing software that allowed me to express myself and be creative with lots of different images, sounds and music. My first editing task was the ‘Dancing bears’ video. I think this developed my creativity as I was using a brand new software where I could play around with different effects to what I thought was best suited. The effects I used were straight forward cuts and wipes as I was unaware of any other types, I also had to speed up and slow down certain aspects of the video to make it look professional.

Shortly after this task I was given the opportunity to grab hold of a camera and film in my Juno task. This was an effective task as I could put together what I learnt from premiere and the skills I was learning from filming. As camera-man I was creative in the number of shots I was taking. This would give me inspiration for the upcoming prelim where I would get a real taste of making a storyboard, planning creating a script and uploading a final version onto YouTube. In my Prelim task I began to explore more effects on Premiere such as additive dissolve and fade to black which shows a development from my previous tasks. My other group members also used Photoshop to create a newspaper article which was another software that wasn’t used previously. This developed my creativity as I had to start a script by scratch with my team members for our given genre and research other types of openings with the genre to get ideas. My genre was urban teen drama so I watched a number of these on YouTube to gain some knowledge of the character images and environments.

In A2 there was a big step up in the number of technologies used. I used a brand new programme to create a website called Wix. In the creation of the website I had to arrange around a number of sections of a blank page and add appropriate colours to our bands image. I also used a social media gadget bar to allow people browsing our website to direct to our Youtube page, twitter page and Facebook. Vista print was another website I used to enhance my website as It enabled me to add our bands logo to a number of different products such as a hoody, bag t shirt and phone case.   

Post production

As my time as a media student I have produced 2 main projects including a brief film opening and a music video. Over this period I have learnt a number of new skills of which I hadn't experienced before my time as a media student.

When I began I had no real digital technological skills and very little understanding of key media terms such as production, post production etc. This means i had no skills of premiere, photoshop, wix, slideshare and many more. Learning how to use these skills has therefore improved my ability in post production which developed a lot from year 12 to year 13.


I very quickly began to learn some key skills of post production although they was very basic. My first real taste of post production duties began on a task where I had to use Adobe Premiere to import a number of images and short clips, cutting to another image and adding music into the edit. I had no real idea of colour correcting or rendering video's to stable the camera shots which I would learn in a later stage. My skills then developed further from this 'Dancing bears' task in my next task which was 'Juno'. I now began to develop my camera skills as well as further editing qualities. I now began to the effect of cross fade and cross dissolve. This was a more interesting way than just a straight cut and was also needed to replicate the video of 'Juno'. In my Prelim task my skills developed again as now I would be using mp3 converter to add sounds into my video as well as some basic editing effects such as fade to black and additive dissolve. This showed a slight development from the dancing bears task as i gradually began to build up my knowledge of the number of effects. We made many little mistakes in this task which we didn't know how to correct in post production - out of focus shots and music out of time with the video. In my final task of making a short film opening I then began to pick up some key skills in post production which still were very basic compared to what detail I went into in my 2nd year. On this final task there was a big step up in skills than my previous prelim task. Our group now began to Photoshop a newspaper design and incorporate this into Premiere. As we had the genre of documentary our research showed us we needed many titles to allow the audience to feel it was a documentary. I now began to use Fade to black in the post production editing stage rather than just straight cuts which were used in my previous prelim and Juno tasks.

In A2 post production depth was much deeper and contained more elements. Whereas in AS post production mainly consisted of editing and making a film poster A2 included a website, Digipack, newspaper article and also Adobe premiere and Adobe after affects. I was given the role of making the bands website which included using a few gadgets such as a release date timer and also a social media link bar where you can access our twitter and Facebook page from the website. This showed much more depth in the post production through the number of different software's and websites we explored.  Steve also had a huge role in the post production stage in the form of the band's Digipak which he designed on Photoshop which involved a lot of drafting and trial and error to created the best photos suitable for our genre of Indie. All of these was not used in AS showing a development of different skills as i had never used Wix before (website creator) and i ended up making a full website. The quality of our editing also improved a huge amount with a whole new range of effects being used including a couple after effects which was a brand new software to the whole year. Some of the new effects used in our Music video that wasn't used in A2 included colour correction which enhanced the quality of individual shots giving a smooth transition. Reverse slow mo was also used for us as we thought this was effective to our concept narrative as it's unique. Using brightness and contrast effects also show how we have become more creative and critical of our product as it shows a eye for detail and perfection where in AS it was more about exploring basic effects and making sure they look professional. Time lapse was another new effect introduced which allowed us to either speed up or slow down certain shots.

Research & Planning

Explain how your research and planning skills developed over time and how these decisions contributed to your media productions outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in your answer.

Over my two years as a Media student i planned and created 2 media projects. In my first year me and my group worked together to make a brief film opening for a chosen genre, which for us it was a documentary called 'Locked up'. In my 2nd year we planned and created a music video for our genre of Indie. Our song choice was 'Falling for you' by Indie band: The 1975. Research and planning was a key element in creating an effective project and there was a clear difference between this in my AS and A2 production.
In terms of research into genre, my AS project was very basic and no real use of broad range of sources. The research into my genre of a documentary involved watching a number of youtube documentaries such as 'Madeline Mccann The true story' and the Elizabeth Smart documentary. This gave us a brief idea in how to present the film opening and what components were specific to this genre. No real research was done into the titles of a documentary but one thing we did pick up on was use of eye witness accounts which we looked to bring into our production to help portray our genre to the audience. Recreations of real events were also used in much of our research so this gave us further ideas on how to make the documentary obvious to the audience.
My skills into researching genre developed when looking at my music video project. The research was in much more depth and really got us to understand our genre of Indie very well which made it much easier when creating the video. Instead of just watching youtube video's that replicated our genre me and my group really got an insight into the image of Indie bands and how they conduct themselves in live performances, this was very effective as it showed us how they perform together and gave us a better idea of the personalities of each band member. This helped us gain knowledge into what outfits and locations we could look to use. Image ideas were gained by looking at similar bands websites such as Alt-J and 'The Artic Monkeys". Me and my group went much more in depth to portray our genre that we even looked at specific camera shots and specific themes used within our genre to make the audience believe it was a real Indie video. Themes we found were dark and conceptual. We then researched a number of dark and conceptual ideas to see how we could implement these into our video.

In the planning stage of my AS production no real depth was put into our locations, outfits or camera shots. We made a brief story board in a short amount of time and effectively made up many of the shots and locations as we went along. We completed risk assessments for the locations we would be using but we only used one location outside of school showing a lack of ambition and effort.
The planning stage of my A2 project was a much longer process and required a lot more effort and time. When planning our locations, instead of just listing them and filming like in our AS production we visited these locations a number of times to see if they would be appropriate for our video which made our project much more accurate and efficient. We showed much more ambition in the A2 project by using a broad range of locations as we really wanted to portray to the audience that we was an Indie band.
The group used a Survey monkey to ask questions such as "what themes should be present in an Indie music video" to allow us to gather data and plan how we would incorporate certain themes into our video. This showed much more attention to our audience than in AS.

Exam lesson 1

In our first exam lesson brooksy broke down the whole structure of the exam.

Section A

1a) We have to write about both our AS production and A2.

•        What we've learnt from AS to A2
• Example questions - froms and conventions, post production (effects, editing), research + planning and digital technologies.

1b) 

• Chose either AS or A2 production and talk about them relating to one of the 5 choices
• Genre
• Narrative
• Representation 
• Audience
• Media Language

Section B

We have to talk about British youth in 1) past 2) present 3) future

Examples need to be given from 3 types of media

• Film
• TV
• Internet

Theories we learn over the next few weeks have to be included and future has to be down to our own opinion.