Daniel West conducted a personal skills audit to assess his abilities for his A2 project. He identified skills in digital technology from using a camera and Photoshop. Post-production skills were gained from using Final Cut to edit footage. Research and planning skills were acquired from investigating the target audience and genre conventions for his film noir. Analyzing the film Se7en helped him understand camera work and other conventions to apply to his own work. While his first project adhered heavily to genre conventions, he recognizes understanding conventions will help make his A2 music video fit its intended genre.

1. Personal Skills Audit
Name:___Daniel West
Skills acquired
How did these skills
contribute to the creation of
your product?
How will you develop these
skills during the A2 project?
Digital technology
- What
equipment/software
packages did you use to
produce your
production?
We used a camera mounted on
a tripod, Photoshop was used
to create our company logo. We
acquired the skills to get good
camera footage and shots.
Without the camera we would
not have been able to gather
footage, without decent camera
shots our film would have been
poor quality.
These skills will help me to gain
the skills I need to get good
camera shots when we are
filming our music video, this will
make it of high quality and thus
get me a higher grade.
Post production
- What software did you
use to create your
production?
- Discuss specific features
of the software.
Final cut was used to edit our
footage from the camera
together. We learned how to
edit so that the film would
seamlessly. In the lip sync task
I used final cut and it made me
gain confidence and skills.
From the lip sync task I gained
a basic understanding of final
cut and how to edit.
These skills will help me to edit
and be able to help more during
the editing stage as I have
gained some skills.

2. Research and Planning
- What tasks did you
complete when
preparing to film your
sequence?
- How did your planning
help the smooth
progression of your film?
Some of the skills I gained
where through research of
audience, we researched the
target audience to gain an idea
of what type of people would
want to watch our film. We also
researched the conventions of
the genre as to gain an idea of
what to put in our film to make it
a true Noir.
Using conventions of real
media texts
- Which texts did you
analyse?
- Did you take any
inspiration from the
conventions found from
your research?
I analyzed se7en for my micro
analysis, there was interesting
camera work which I hope to
take forward into A2. We found
conventional things shown in
this media text e.g. mise en
scene, which we took forward
into our film task, which we
used in our short noir film.
Creativity
- were our ideas for your
portfolio imaginative and unique
or did you adhere to
conventions?
We adhered to a lot of
conventions in our film, such as
clothing, camera shots and
even the storyline was quite
conventional. This helped me to
acquire the skills to make a
We discovered what type of
audience would watch and
based our film around that,
having a femme fatale included
in our film. We found out the
conventions of a noir, which
made making one very simple.
Planning made it a lot easier as
well as we knew what shots we
would be using and made
filming run smoothly.
The conventions that we found
inside the media texts we
analysed were invaluable to our
production of our film noir. They
helped us to make a foundation
of which to make our media text
on as without knowing the
conventions of the genre we
were trying to make, it wouldn’t
truly be a noir.
These skills would help us to
know who to aim our music
video at, which makes it easier
to advertise. Researching the
genre will make it a lot easier to
know what is conventional and
what to put into a music video.
We followed conventions quite
heavily, which made making
our film a lot easier than it could
have been if we didn’t follow
conventions.
Knowing conventions will help
us in A2 as we could make a
music video which is inside of a
genre which we want it to be.
Also, if we know genre we can
go against it and make a music
If we analyse media texts in A2
it will help us to find
conventions inside the genre
we are doing. This will make it
easier to make a music video
as with knowing the
conventions, whatever we do
will fit into the genre we are
hoping for.

3. piece of media knowing the
conventions.
video that doesn’t conform to all
conventions.