1. 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.
During my time enrolled in a course of A Level media studies I have developed many
skills within digital technology and used them effectively to further my creative
decision making. Over the two years I have created several videos however my main
two projects were a short film introduction in the style of Film Noir (AS) and a music
video to the song Misery by Maroon Five (A2), during the course of this essay I will
first talk about digital technologies used and applied in AS production, and then in
A2. I will then highlight the differences between the two, how I developed my skills
and why (if applicable) I chose to use different techniques between the two projects
and how this fed creative decision making (especially in the second year)
During my AS coursework I was initially told to portfolio my work on a website
called blogger, this is an online blogging account that supports many Interfaces such
as Microsoft Works, Prezi, Slideshare and Videos such as YouTube. I initially found
this hard to work with and this is obvious when in comparison to my A2 blog, which
is far more developed. To film our footage we used a Sony Handicam, and a tripod,
both these equipment’s were easy to use however they did limit our filming to a quite
basic field, we then uploaded what we did using the USB cable that came with the
camera. After uploading footage we used iTunes movie maker to edit our footage, our
editing techniques were quite basic however we still used cross cuts, text on video,
filters, sound over picture, placing still photos in the film and fade outs. I also briefly
created a still using Photoshop software and a still image from the video in order to
place this into our video. Whilst using Photoshop I learnt techniques such as dodge
sponge and burn, and then applied them to our still making the photo grey and also
slightly blurred (giving the effect I desired). For our final cut we then uploaded the
video onto final cut and used that to export it to Quick-time, no techniques were used
in final cut during this project. In order to put audio into our video we used
GarageBand to create a soundtrack, during the process of using this we learnt
techniques such as sound replacement, how to make a sound fade in and out, we
learnt how to splice sounds and cut them, also we learnt how to edit sound into a
video. In order to place audio over the film that was not a soundtrack (speech) we first
used a Flashmic to record the sound we desired, then used a USB cable to upload it to
our editing software and then edited it into our video, manipulating the sound as we
desired.
During our second year we were tasked with creating an authentic music video to the
song of our choice. Immediately we decided to develop editing skills, as we now felt
confident enough to use Final Cut Express in order to create a higher quality product,
whilst using Final Cut we developed many skills such as the razor, in and our
markers, video filters, text over video, we layered several layers of film, edited in
stills, created motion tasks, lip synced audio to fit visual, exported to QuickTime and
used Video filters. Furthermore we choose to have a huge portion of our video as stop
motion, this meant we had to use a Nikon D20 camera, this was a stills camera with a
high level of zoom, the ability to multi-take several pictures at once and a high
resolution. We then uploaded the 7fps two minute long stop motion to our Final Cut
Express programme, edited still viewing time (at a 7th of a second each) and edited it

2. into our video making a rather impressive stop motion element. Furthermore whilst I
still used blogger as before I improved and developed my skills which made me much
more confident in the presentation of my portfolio, I used Slideshare many times, for
not just word products but also for PowerPoint’s, I used Prezi multiple times to
present my storyboard and my evaluation and also embedded videos/Slideshare
products into my Prezi. Something I had never done before. Furthermore I was able to
use embed to place many more videos (such as various stages of editing) onto my
blog in order to keep the person who was marking it well informed. In order to create
my ancillary products I used Photoshop once again, however now much more
confident with the layout of the program I was able to use it in much more depth,
using tools such as the lasso, drag, cut. I layered my product at several different stages
and then condensed the layers into one during other stages. I used other tools such as
paint dropped, paint brush, I edited still images into my ancillary products (both
original and not), I placed text into the image, used the magic wand, and on more than
one occasion applied a filter. For filming our video we used two different types of
camera as we felt much more confident, for filming outside of the studio we used a
CanonXL2, a large camera with a very high definition, a large microphone attached to
it and a tripod. Whilst in the studio we used SonyHD cameras, which we also used to
help film our green screen footage, this allowed us to apply anything we wanted to the
background of our studio footage whilst in the editing stage using Final Cut.
Furthermore whilst doing two of our evaluation questions in the studio we used the
Autocue that was attached to the bottom of the SonyHD cameras in order to read out
evaluation questions out to the camera without needing a sheet.
I feel that during the course of my two years my skills have developed greatly over
time as I feel more confident using more complex editing software (such as Final Cut
Express as averse to iTunes MovieMaker) I feel I have the ability to use a video
camera in order to create footage that I desire, furthermore my ability to use
Photoshop proficiently has increased greatly as I feel I am now fully competent in
using it and all the available tools with ease, as averse to when I could not layer, and
could only use dodge burn and sponge (AS). I feel that the development of skills in
these areas has lead to a much wider use of creative decision making for my second
year product as it allowed me to try new techniques such as Stop Motion, something
that has helped me gain many marks in my second year piece, furthermore the
developed skills in editing allowed us to make a much better overall piece, it also lead
me to be able to lip sync audio to video, a task that would have been much more
difficult during my first year. Finally my developed skills in the use of Blogger and
presenting my work online has lead to my portfolio for my second year gaining full
marks for ‘Research and Presentation’ as I felt much more confident in my ability
to present my work in forms such as a Prezi and more able to upload things such as
videos and SlideShare presentations.
David Leighton