Explain how your skills in the creative use of digital technology developed over time. Refer to a range of examples from your media productions in your answer.

My skills in the creative use of digital technology has developed over the two years that I have been studying Media.

Before starting the Media Studies course, my digital technology skills were poor because I had not had many opportunities to use cameras or editing software. The only editing software I had used was Windows Movie Maker and this was only to put shots together. This did not include any effects at all and was, therefore, not creative. At AS, we started the year by practicing our editing skills in Adobe Premiere Pro. Our first editing task was to import some shots of dancing animals and edit them together into a sequence with basic cuts and some colour effects. This was not supposed to be a creative task and was only used for us to form a basic knowledge of the software. After this, we applied our skills to replicating a real film opening in preparation for making my own film opening later in the year. The film opening that we recreated in groups was for the film 'Juno'. This was a creative task to an extent because we had to use some effects to make the footage look like it is a cartoon, but it was not the most creative task because we were replicating something that was already made and so did not need to come up with our own ideas. We then used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit a film opening. We were given a genre to base our film opening on and then had to come up with a film opening to create. Our film opening was effective in some ways because the use of straight cuts were appropriate and moved the narrative along. However, no interesting transitions were used and, due to our genre being a serious historical drama, there were not special effects. This meant that the editing was not very creative and did not push me to my full potential.

In Year 13, we had many opportunities to be more creative with Adobe Premiere Pro and we were able to develop our skills to a much higher level. We started by doing a creative editing task where we had the opportunity to use many different new techniques such as cloning and screen within screen. This allowed us to become more competent with the use of the software and develop our skills. After this, we moved on to our preliminary tasks. Our preliminary task was to replicate approximately 30 seconds of a real life music video. We decided to use Charlie Puth's 'We Don't Talk Anymore' which involves a split screen throughout and the two shots cutting out of sync. This was an editing challenge because we had to ensure that the shots were timed perfectly and cut at exactly the right time. This meant that we needed to slightly alter the length of our shots post-production so that they matched the original video perfectly and cut in time with the music and the other shot on the split screen. This was an editing challenge because we never had to edit two videos, simultaneously, to music. This forced us to be much more creative and precise. This task gave us a great foundation for creating our own music video. In our music video we used a variety of different techniques, such as adding an overlay and using a variety of interesting transitions. Another huge difference between our film opening and our music video was the amount of shots that we included. In our film opening, we used 15 shots in two minutes; for our music video we used 66 shots in the same amount of time. The task of creating a music video allowed us to be much more creative than when we had been to create our film opening in Year 12. This is because a film opening has many more restraints and with our music video we were able to do much more that we were not previously able to do. With our music video, digital technology allowed us to use many special effects and overlays allowing us to make a much more professional looking product than if we were not able to use Adobe Premiere and had to use a program such as Windows Movie Maker instead, which provides many more limitations.

In Year 12, we used YouTube to research different film openings in order to get ideas for our own film opening, but also to develop our textual analysis skills so that we could apply this knowledge to the construction of our own project (for example, giving extra detail to our camera angles, editing, Mise en Scene or sound when trying to convey a point). We were then able to upload our film opening onto YouTube so that we could embed it into our blog. We therefore only used YouTube for basic tasks and did not need to learn much, other than how to upload a video. However, at A2, we used YouTube in a different way. We still used it to research music videos to gain ideas and to upload our videos, but this year we took our use of the website further. We used the video embed link to put the video onto our blog, like last year, but we also then used the link to share our video with the people in our school so that we were able to gain feedback on our work. We also were able to utilise the comment feature so that people could leave us feedback. This kind of digital technology was very important and, without it, we would not have been able to gain the volume of feedback that we did as easily or efficiently.

At AS, we used digital cameras to film our film opening and used our mobile phones to take photos for the film posters. We used very basic shots at this stage with some creativity but very little camera movement. However, at A2, we used a Canon 700D which provided much higher quality footage and we not only filmed on it, but also took any photographs that we needed for the website and digipak on the camera as well, rather than using our phones. This meant that the shots were much higher quality and we were able to do much more with them post-production on software such as Adobe Photoshop. Our use of the camera when filming was also much more proficient and we used a much larger variety of creative shots, both in angles and movements. The composition and exposure of our shots, both in the footage and photographs, was also much more professional. We had also learnt from experience and, instead of just filming the shots that were needed like we did at AS, we allowed ourselves to be more creative on location. If we saw something that we thought would work, we tried new things out to see what effect it would give. We also ensured that we filmed the same thing several times, even if it looked like it went well the first time. This was so that if there was a little something wrong that we had not noticed when we checked the footage or photograph straight away, we had a backup that we could use.

After taking the photos for the film poster on a mobile phone, we tried to edit them in Adobe Photoshop. We selected one character in the image and made the rest black and white. We then added the relevant text over the top of the image. However, we found that, since our photograph was taken on a phone, it was not very high quality, meaning that we were not able to crop it the way that we wanted to because then enlarging it again would cause a very poor quality photo. We were also not very experienced in using Photoshop and so were not able to produce a poster that looked very professional. However, our use greatly improved at A2 when we were able to use the software at a much higher level, having been practicing throughout the year in our own time. We were able to create a whole digipak in Photoshop and edit photos to maximise their quality and increase the synergy between our products. For example, we enhanced the colour red on our photographs of roses and removed the background so that we could add them to our website and digipaks. Adobe Photoshop was extremely important in the production of our digipak and, without it, we would not have been able to edit the photos the degree that we did. Our precise photo editing to create synergy between our products was vital and could not have been done without Photoshop.

Finally, there was a massive improvement in my use of Blogger and the way that I presented my work on my blog. We had to record all of our products and give updates on our work on a blog, this included: research, planning, constructions, feedback, evaluation and inspirations. In Year 12, my blog had a very simple layout and I used a 'image with text underneath' format for my blog posts. This was not creative at all and did not require much skill. However, in Year 13, I used a much larger variety of ways to present my work and format my blog posts. This included the use of online presentation software such as Prezzi, Emaze, Visme, Slideshare and then some of my own ways of presenting like edited videos. This needed more skill and creativity because I had to learn how to use all of these and then create the presentations. As well as this, it made my blog look much more interesting as every post was different. In Year 13, I also took the time to change the color scheme and the background on my blog to match the products that my group and I made. This made my blog look more aesthetically pleasing and took the synergy that I had to create for my products further. Blogger was, in my opinion, one of the most important forms of digital technology that I used throughout my Media Studies A Level. This is because it was the backbone of all of the work that I did and it was the thing that allowed me to bring all of my work together and present it. Blogger allowed me to include all of the work that I did no matter what form it was in, a photo, video, online presentation etc.