Exam practice

1. How has the internet helped you create your production work?

Using the internet to research existing products on the market has helped me a lot with all my media projects. In my AS production of a student magazine, preliminary project, looking on websites of similar magazines gave me a variety of ideas. I noticed that the conventional medium close-up shot of a student was used on most, as was a masthead, coverlines, straplines, price, barcode etc. So I included these in mine as to follow convention.
It was the same with my A2 music video research as we could use ‘Youtube’ to look into videos for a similar genre to ours and pick out the things we liked. The stop-motion used in a video by ‘The Cribs’ was really effective in conveying the music and went really well with the chosen song, also their childlike, homemade look was something we wanted to convey onto ours.
By using ‘Youtube’ I feel I have built my creativity considerably as, by getting inspiration from others, I can build up my own thoughts and piece together a really original, solid set of ideas. ‘The Cribs’ video I feel was an especially inspirational piece as it was exactly what we wanted to portray but in a slightly different way.
The sudden increase in social networking sites has helped in researching target audience as, for all our projects, we could go onto a member of our target audiences profile and look into interests, hobbies etc – therefore getting a good idea of who you are addressing.
Also by setting up a group on ‘Facebook’, pitching our ideas for A2 music video production to chosen members, helped us get feedback as they could look at our storyboard, listen to the song and write comments stating what they thought, and if we could change anything. This feedback has been useful, as most of the comments are good, so we know we are on the right lines in appealing to this audience. This was also a successful method in interacting with our target audience and bought an element of Media 2.0 into our project – giving the audience a feel of being involved in production and the final product.
Having the use of ‘Blogger’ – a social networking site – has helped in not only presenting work to my Media teacher but also to set out all my plans for both AS and A2 work and is a good way of getting it all organised.
In my preliminary A2 project we used the internet to research how to use ‘Flash’ – an animation programme. We found a full set of instructions so used them to create a small animation which made up part of the video. This was very useful to have as we could follow it through step by step – making it easier to make.

2. In what other ways have you used technology?

The use of the technology available to us has been a massive part of all my media productions. I had never used any of the cameras or software before, so being expected to create a student magazine in the first year was daunting but I learnt a lot through the use of ‘Photoshop’ – editing a picture taken with a DSLR camera, then creating the layout using ‘Qwark express’. Without the software ‘Qwark express’ I feel the magazine wouldn’t have looked as professional or finished.
I experienced a few problems with ‘Photoshop’ but I think this was down to my lack of experience with it. These included the pictures not cropping properly or being unable to cut out background I didn’t want. However when it came to my final AS production, of a music magazine, this went quite smoothly as I knew what to do. So I feel my knowledge and skills of the software and cameras have been considerably improved since September 2008 and I am much more comfortable with using them.
I now have a better understanding of what can be achieved with them, therefore extending my creativity and making my ideas more ambitious.
The use of DV cameras was also new to me so creating a simple preliminary project last year helped build my skills with these and the ‘Adobe Premier Pro’ software that goes with it. Having this knowledge gave me another option for what to do this year so was useful to know.
We have chosen to do a completely stop-motion video, so I need to be certain of how to create a series of movies with the DSLR cameras and use ‘Premier Pro’ to edit them together in post production. This should be ok because full instructions and teacher assistance are available at college.