Over the course of a two-year media studies course, the student learned important skills for filming, editing, and designing media projects. In the first year, the student gained basic skills like operating a camera, editing footage, and using software through preliminary tasks. These skills were applied to subsequent projects, including an opening sequence that required various shot types and advanced editing. In the second year, the student took on new challenges like designing a magazine cover and movie poster using Photoshop. Experience capturing footage with a DSLR and editing projects in Final Cut Pro allowed the student to improve and complete a culminating crime thriller teaser trailer. Through continuous practice across various assignments, the student became proficient with different media technologies and platforms.

1. Exam Question 1st Attempt
For my AS level course work I created an opening sequence to a movie which was a thriller, we
ended up calling the movie insight. The main project that was done for my A level was a teaser
trailer we called it enigma and it was a crime thriller that had different phycological elements.
At the start of the course I was completely new to using apple software and different media
software such as garageband, photoshop and illustrator. All the skills where developed as the
course went on and gradually began to develop new skills and become more competent with the
technology.
As I started the course during the year I started the A's level in media my skills where extremely
limited. Helpfully for me as the course started the course teacher began teaching the class basic
skills and tasks, one task was the prelim task this task was extremely useful to me because this is
where for the first time I got to use a camera for filming where I got to see how the camera
works, after this I got to upload the footage that was created in the prelim onto one of the college
mac's. Making sure that I did this was vital as I knew it would be beneficial to me in the future
where I would need to upload footage for more significant projects. Editing was also another part
of my learning curve, I got to use final cut pro and get to grips with the basics such as uploading
the footage and putting it into a sequence. The prelim task helped me to learn the essential skills
in capturing footage and editing footage. During the Arlington road practice video task, I was
able to implement the skills that I learnt to help me create the Arlington road video but along the
way new skills where developed. During the Arlington road practice video task my confidence
grew. The basic skills aided me but I was also able to develop skills such as using special effects
on final cut pro X that made the video appear more interesting and standout a bit more than it
would have from basic raw footage. Transitions were also another skill that I developed during
the course of the video, transitions where useful as they helped to create different effects that
made my video appear more fluid and seamless. All the practice I got from the prelim task and
Arlington road video practice task had suddenly become extremely useful and apparent as the
biggest task of the A's course was about to begin. The opening sequence required me to use all
the skills had in order to create a piece of media that I was done to as high of a standard as
possible. The opening sequence required me to use different forms of camerawork from close
ups to over the shoulder shots. Making sure that I included a variety of different shots was
essential to ensure that we created the effect that we wanted is are opening sequence was a
thriller it meant that we had to incorporate different shots to give to an edgy and eerie feeling one
particular shot that comes to mind is an over the shoulder shot when the character in the opening
sequence is looking directly at one of the people he has killed in the opening sequence the over
the shoulder shot gives the audience a sense of how the assassin would see things through his
eyes. My editing skills were also further developed as a result of the opening sequence task.
Adding titles and credits was a new skill that I had developed through using final cut pro getting
rid of the noise background noise was also another skill that I developed during the time that I

2. was editing the opening sequence this made the video cleaner and more precise by removing any
distractions that could have been created in the background.
The second year was a new experience for me, I felt a lot more comfortable using the technology
that was needed in order for me to create videos from the footage to uploading and editing the
first year helped me to establish the skills that I needed. During the second year I began a fresh
set of new projects that would enable to use the skills I learned and also gave me the opportunity
to develop new skills. In the second year a lot of focus and emphasis has gone to creating the
teaser trailer which also required us to create a poster and magazine front cover for the movie
that we are trying to create. The teaser trailer which was called enigma and was a crime thriller
required me to put forward all the media skills I had from capturing footage and up until editing.
The equipment we had for capturing footage was new for the teaser trailer he had a canon 80D
this meant that we had to come to grips with technology which was new to me, I had never used
a DSLR before so I had to learn how to use it. Luckily for me there was an automatic mode, this
enabled us to capture footage without any special effect but eventually as we got more
comfortable with using the DSLR and we got deeper into the footage we ended up using manual
features that let us adjust features such as the exposure enabling us to capture more interesting
and unique footage that would let us create a more attractive teaser trailer. Creating a magazine
front cover was a completely brand-new concept to me and is something I had no experience in
doing this having never used photoshop before it took me multiple attempts to create a draft
version of my magazine front cover, I was able to use YouTube where I found tutorials on how
to create magazine front covers this helped me a lot at the time as it gave me step by step
guidance. As I now had a better understanding of how photoshop worked I began looking into
other magazines to find a design that I could base my magazine front cover off of. The poster of
are movie was also a new concept and took me many attempts until I could become satisfied
with the final draft that I made the draft wasn’t perfect however I was much more confident by
this stage that I had the ability to make the corrections needed to create the final version of the
poster. Although I had to learn new methods and technique's in order to complete the Media A2
coursework previous knowledge when editing the footage was used on media platforms such as
final cut pro I was able to use my knowledge from the previous year to favorite footage, shorten
clips and add special effects to the clips that we had got during the recording.
The work and projects done over the 2-year period have introduced me to new technologies, this
has made me more versatile and capable of dealing with different media platforms from editing
to capturing footage.
Self-Marked
Mark: 16/25
Level 3

3. Improvements to make
 Improve on terminology
 Vocabulary
 Be more specific
 Write more clearly and to the point
 Time management