STRUCTURE:
pre-production: research and planning, ideas, planning structure of the filming day.
production: filming trailer, taking photos, (ID, Publisher)
Post-production: editing, manipulating images, finding and putting in sounds,
In my progression to my AS to A2 coursework, i started from developing a 'rock' music magazine to finishing my coursework making a short 'thriller' teaser trailer including a magazine and poster to compliment it. Technology played an important part throughout this whole process. I learnt various new technological methods to making my whole pieces much more creative to my best abilities.
Digital technology has impacted certain important parts of my decision making for my AS to A2 media coursework's. From the start of my AS it was the base of holding all my coursework together using 'blogger' this held all my images, written analyse, information, research and final pieces. My AS blog only had images and written analyse, but by A2 my blog had videos imported from you tube that we had created for our analyses and different media approaches. This blogger helped me show my coursework in a neat, organised and professional way with media aspects among it.
The internet was my source to all my findings using this technology i was able to research and find examples of magazines and teaser trailers on sites such as Google images and you tube. This helped my creativity as i was able to take examples and find ideas such as through my thriller trailer idea i could compare with other thriller trailers looking at the certain type of shots they used and include them in my teaser trailer to make it a more successful thriller. The trailer i found to have as my focus point and the base of my idea for my trailer was called 'Hard candy' this included diegetic sound and pauses to create tension it then finished with fast pased built up shots finishing on one long shot this created tension and this was exactly what i wanted from my teaser trailer and if you look at our final teaser trailer we have used various montage shots which then build up faster and shorter than a final long shot with breathing then a final non diegetic sound to create that lasting final tension to the last shot of the man's hand coming towards the wardrobe.
Using my photo camera cannon in my AS i had a focus edit on it so could change the focus point on my photos to make them more creative this expanded in my A2 coursework as this helped my ideas for angles and focus points for my teaser trailer and i could take my knowledge of images and adapt them to fit there genre. In my AS i did not use a tripod to take the photos for my magazine i just took them hand held, progressing to my A2 i still only took the magazine and poster photos hand held but when filming our trailer i had to have a steady base so my shots were clear and straight, not wobbly and eye straining.
In my AS i used publisher to edit and put together my magazine this was because i was not aware of Photoshop to well and i didn’t know any other photo editing sites, this left me limited and not as creative as i could be making my coursework not full to the potential i wanted it to be, for my AS i wanted to create a 'indie, rock' kind of look: i tried very hard to obtain this but because of my lack of knowledge to editing photos but images did not look as professional enough. By A2 however i had learnt simple editing tricks on Photoshop helping to put in contrasts and focuses into our magazine and poster, and the editing software 'final cut pro' was the teaser trailer editor, i knew how to use this and had the knowledge to be able to change my moving images lighting sounds and focuses to create the look i wanted.
Having all our work displayed on the computers we could show each other our work and get feedback in our A2 year so we could take the constructive criticism away and adapt it to our work to make it the best it could possibly be. During AS we still had audience feedback but it wasn’t as in depth and involved in the A2 progression.
Our magazine and poster was much better as we also used an editing site called picnik which has certain photo changing aspects that benefited our genre for our trailer.
For our sounds in our teaser trailer we were not allowed to use soundtrack music it could only be sounds that have label etc. due to copyright issues. The site was called ‘freesounds.org’; this had all the backing soundtrack sounds we used to create the tension for our trailer. To edit and put in my sounds i had to download them from this website on the internet and sync them to final cut pro to be cut and edited into their right slots we needed them for.
With my evaluation questions in AS I had just typed the answers out adding images where appropriate. However in my A2 coursework I used various different approaches for the questions. With one of the questions me and my partner took images about our process and actual coursework and put over it a spoken commentary, on another one of our questions I spoke directly to the camera answering the question as fully as possible. Other questions included typed up and also we did pie charts and tally’s to show our findings. My AS evaluation to my A2 is very different and you can see my more creative and experimental side come out once I was aware of how to use the technology I had been given.
