media

1. Looking back at
your preliminary
task, what do you
feel you have
learnt in the
progression from
it to the full
product?

2. A2 vs. AS
TECHNOLOGY
Having been introduced, and explored ‘new’ technology in my AS production, I have been able to expand my
creativity skills, as the access and ability to use ‘new’ technology allows greater advantage of expressing and creating
new ideas and skills. For example in AS, I have found a good photo editing website ‘picnik’, that I thought was the
best you could get, however in my A2 production I had discovered a more up to date photo editing website called
‘Pixlr’, this allowed me to choose from a variety of edits enabling me to be more creative. This is also links to the
‘platonic theory’ as I thought ‘picnik’ at the time was ‘perfect’ and could not find better, however after finding ‘pixlr’
I look back at ‘picnik’ as a starting block into photo editing.
New technology skills have been created through my A2 production. For example creating a website from scratch on
the website ‘Wix’ was extremely challenging, however I feel that I can confidently create a website, which is a great
skill to have for future mediated products. Using iMovie for the first time, was again a challenge, however I can now
confidently create my own film, after creating GoldBloom’s promotional video. Creating my own Digi-pak required
my creative skills to be very precise and involved a lot of prototype testing for image inside the fit perfectly for the
album cover, interior and back cover. In my AS preliminary task, my project was creating a magazine music cover, this
involved using pages as the main source of computer technology, whereas I now feel from A2 that I have gained a
wide range of technical skills that I feel confident in using for future use.
To make my blog a bit more appealing and interesting to read, I had been introduced to a variety of ‘new’ types of
technology that I could evaluate my development process onto. For example in my evaluation, I have used
‘SlideShare’ as a new way to convey my evaluated process of my A2 production. Using iMovie in my A2 advanced
production, I felt confident to use it in my evaluation, as another way of me personally talking, and discussing my
thoughts and opinions evaluating my decisions throughout.

3. In my A2 production, I have introduced a narrative and
genre perspective element to my media product.
For example, as I was creating a music promotional video for an unsigned music
band, at first I found it difficult in knowing how to bring in a narrative element,
as originally I thought that Narration = Films. However after discovering
theorist, ‘Carol Vernallis’, I had become aware that narration can be seen through
the pace of the music track. This opened my eyes to a whole new aspect of
narration that I had never explored or discovered.
In AS, I would have never understood the meaning of genre, and the large impact
it has on the cinematic society of today. It wasn’t until near the end of A2 when I
fully came to terms with the meaning of genre and it’s purpose in my A2 music
project. After deeply analysing ‘The introduction to Genre’ it has shown me that if
we didn’t have categorised sections, e.g. Westerns, Horror, romanticism, then
naturally as humans we would divid them into sections anyway. I would
definitely categorise the band ‘GoldBloom’ into the ‘Indie Genre’ of music.

4. Deeper analysts into theorists and how you can apply
them to reflect your own work...
In AS, I had not really involved many theorists to my work, as I was unaware of the importance of
theorists beliefs, as they back up the information that you have either mentioned or used to back up
the media product.
For example, throughout my A2 process I have mentioned Andrew Goodwin’s
theory that music videos nowadays are purely promoting the star’s positive
persona rather than the music. He believes that the importance of ‘image’ has
overruled the importance of the ‘music’.Goodwin’s theory of Video’s being used to
advertise the singers positive persona. I have challenged his conventional belief, by
making GoldBloom’s music more important to them and their fans than their image
is. I have taken ‘The Gorillaz’ as a prime example of a band who want their music to
be heard rather than for their real identity to be seen behind their animated fronts.
In the sense of music narrative, I have taken Carol Vernallis ideas for video editing to
portray how the narrative element would fit within.
As Carol believes that a Music video is more like listening than viewing, Goodwin
believes that the videos are promoting the ‘artist’ rather than the music.

5. Semiotic Codes
In my AS production I understood roughly the meaning of
‘the semiotic code’ but I did not know how to apply the
meaning to my magazine.
Since discovering deeper into semiotic codes, and how important they are in
every day life, even if it is just a street sign, or bar code. I was able to develop
since AS, by applying the meaning to my media product. For example, the
band GoldBloom’s logo consists to a ‘Golden Sun’. The Golden sun is a
semiotic code, as it has connotations that link to the band. For example the
band are fun, bright and positive, which links to the sun, and the use of
‘GOLD’ can link to sign of wealth (the success of the band) but also links to the
world GOLD in GoldBloom.

6. Challenging or following Conventions?
In my AS production, I always found myself taking the safest option, always
following the way things were supposed to be, following traditional conventions,
however since knowing more, and having more freedom to explore into a different
side to Media, I have taken more risks, and have discovered that you can break and
follow conventions and it will still be acceptable.
For example, I have not included female representation within GoldBloom’s
promotional video, as I didn’t want to follow the stereotypical image of
female involvement. Meaning the female would act as a sex-object to the
‘power loving man, which is portrayed in traditional music video’s. I wanted
to back up GoldBloom’s belief that they wanted to express their music and
their fun, care-free persona.
I did follow conventions by using the style model of current indie band ‘The
Wombats’ promotional video to base GoldBloom’s video upon.