Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Task 1-Summer Work

When I first started my AS media coursework, I wasn't very good at using blogger, or any technical software used to make our opening film trailers. However, I watched lots of youtube tutorials and I was good at applying myself to succeed. After a week I was able to use blogger, final cut express and photoshop confidently.

However, I did find it difficult to organise my posts on my blog and make sure i had everything I needed, in date. Although my blog work wasn't awful, I believe that if I'd have organised it better I would have had all the posts I needed for an A. I learnt a lot in my AS practical tasks, many of which were technical things, with camera angles and shots, and lighting. Another main thing I learnt was the importance to communicate with your group members regarding the organisation of filming. I began to learn that planning ahead with every detail was vital because so many things had to be taken into account, e.g, weather, props, costume, location, general availability of people/rooms etc. With this knowledge I was able to put it into practice and write up lists of things we needed, deadlines, and date, shot lists, costumes and props. After realising the importance of planning I went back onto my blog and added all the planning posts I was missing.

The research side of things I found really interesting and I enjoyed learning about the real process of making films, and all the reasonings and justifications behind them. It was useful to learn simple, but fundamental things like, credit orders and film conventions. Because I enjoyed it I took lots of detail in, thus learning a great deal.

I learnt that the majority of your research had a direct influence in your planning for your opening film sequence. This is what opened my eyes to the importance of research, especially when our product had to be as real and authentic as possible.

At the beginning of my A2 coursework, I felt much more confident than I had the previous year. I had learnt a great deal from year 12 and I knew it would be very useful for year 13.

When we were given our genre for our album covers, my group was given Country and Western. I was pleased because immediately I had many ideas. Because of this I really enjoyed doing all the research into my genre. I learnt a lot during my planning. By the end of my initial research and planning for the album cover, I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve, however, putting this into reality I found more difficult than I had imagined, and I wasn't as confident using Adobe Photoshop. With the help of my group and youtube tutorials I was able to edit the album cover successfully. Although it wasted time, having to get a grasp of how to use Photoshop, and this used up practical time, in future I will prepare myself and be ready before starting a practical task.

Research and Planning was really important for our re-creation of a chosen music video. Because of my previous AS experience I knew we needed to plan everything to be ready to start filming.

Something I need to improve on is posting progress updates, so that I can be aware of what there is left to do and what I have already achieved.

I will make sure I take all I have learnt into my A2 practicals, and develop and improve in areas I am weak in.

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