Question 1a

1a) Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

Digital technology still continues to drastically improve as years go on, with more to offer on pretty much everything. This is one of the reasons why we found our digital technology did improve by A2 as well as the fact we were more experienced in this area.

In AS the technology we used for making our opening two minutes was Adobe Premier Elements on PC. With this we could do a variety of editing to make our opening two minutes look more professional as we were able to trim and cut shots down which provided seamless shots. This is efficacious as it allows the audience to benefit from the good quality as if it had increasingly noticeable jump cuts this would make the audience less intrigued to watch our film as it would look low budget. Adding transitions such as additive dissolve made links with the cutting and again allowed our opening two minutes to look more advanced. We also used the fade in and out transition with the credits as it again made the opening two minutes seamless. As well as this we could add soundtracks in which we edited to fit the film helping us to create the build-up and reach the climax at the right time, creating an eerie atmosphere. When creating the titles it allowed us to follow the codes and conventions of a horror as we could choose background colour, a type of font, and the font colour. Overall, this helped adapt our film to its final product, looking experienced and polished. However, the disadvantages of using this are that we found it reasonably difficult at first so it was very time consuming and hard to get to grips with. This meant we couldn’t do as much editing as planned which could have affected our final product.

We used a Canon 1200D camera. This came to an advantage to us when filming as it had high standard quality. However, the camera was quite large and heavy therefore it was harder to transport to different locations of filming. Again, as it was our first time filming we were unaware that this would make us more tired walking to the location therefore having shorter time to film. The camera had manual focus, which allowed us to change the depth of field, blurring the background and have a sharp focus on our chosen characters and surroundings. This could have provided tension and suspense at certain points of the scene as it would enable us the focus on certain characters such as the victim, but having the antagonist in the blurred in the background with only the audience aware of his existence. With the camera we used a variety of shots such as match on action, low shots, and high shots to tell the audience who was vulnerable in our trailer, taking away the power from the young girl victim. However when doing hand held shots which we used in our opening two minutes it was much more shaky than expected due to the camera being large which made our opening two minutes look less advanced.

I have developed these skills at A2 by using the Sony CX 405 Handycam. This camera was lighter and therefore more efficient as the camera could be easily transported to different locations. As well as this some of the shots were quite spontaneous. For example, if we went on a day trip it was easy to take a few shots of the location to add to our trailer, for example, when we were in London. This is efficacious as it makes our trailer look high budget which would result in a wider audience watching our film. This year we used a tripod regularly in our shots to create a steady film as last year we mainly filmed using our hands which made our opening two minutes look less polished. Last year our filming was taken all outside, therefore we were dependent on the time to affect our lighting. This was not successful as we couldn’t use the lighting to create an ominous atmosphere. This was different in A2 as we filmed inside therefore we could change the lighting to affect our trailer. For example, in the eerie scenes the lighting was more dimmed; we could place lamps in certain areas in the room to put more light onto the main characters, implying to the audience which characters had the most prevalence. We researched this by watching the trailer of Taken 3 where throughout it is set in two houses and the effect of the lighting used to create suspense and tension. This year we used Premier Pro instead of adobe elements which is a much more updated and advanced version. This was a huge advantage as it has updated tools and much more high tech which ended up making our trailer look more advanced as we could incorporate new things such as transitions, more texts and fonts which would fit the conventions of our genre.

When it came to tools such as Adobe Elements and photo shop, we were already much more advanced and knew our way around the tools therefore could edit things faster as well as trying new things which made our trailer more successful. For example, we incorporated a range of soundtracks, were able to put these together and trim them in order for our trailer to create a build up as one soundtrack didn’t give the satisfaction of a climax that we were looking for. Photoshop was helpful for our poster, where we edited around a photo in order to enhance the eyes. The black but soft gradient effect meant that the poster looked professional and more eye catching which would have been an expectation. We also highlighted the eyes, by selecting the specific area and enhancing it by adding brightness and contrast allowing them to be a key feature for our poster. The eyes created mystery which relates to what our trailer is all about.