Describe the most important post-production decisions you made for your media productions and why these decisions were significant. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills in post production developed over time.
There were many significant decisions which took place in the creation of both my AS and A2 productions. My AS production was a film opening for a sports drama called Cohen. The story was about an elderly man reflecting on his career as an international football player. My A2 production was a pop music video, we created star profiles and formed a band called Avenue to act in the video. Processes from editing the production to creating posters and magazine covers ere included in the significant decision making in these projects.
For Cohen the editing process consisted of using simple cuts and transitions. The hardest part of the edit was creating the titles, this was a significant part of the edit as all film openings have titles. We decided to use a bold white font to make it easier to read. The colour white offered the most contrast between the shots which were mostly green and the writing. The editing process in my A2 production was much more technical, there were far more cuts being used throughout the entire video to keep up with the upbeat tempo of the song. This contrasts with the film opening as the style was a lot slower and emotional and therefore required less cuts. The higher amount of cuts being used in the music video was an improvement on the film opening as more precise cuts needed to be used to match the beat of the song. If the cut was slightly out in the music video it would have looked clunky however in the film opening it would have been fine.
In the post-production stages of both of the productions we created, we made posters which would be used in the marketing campaign of the product. For the film opening Cohen, we simply took a screen shot from the finished film and added titles around it to create the poster. This was achieved using Paint on windows PC's. The process was very simply and gave a mediocre result. For the music video however, we created posters advertising a tour of the band which was much more advanced. The first big improvement was the software programme we used to create the poster, we used Adobe Photoshop which is used by many companies in the media industry. Due to the use of a better programme we were able to use more effects to create a more professional looking poster. One of these effects includes 'cloning' which we used to take the smoke from the music video and put it into the poster. This was significant as we wanted to create synergy between the poster and the music video. We also used an image from a photoshoot rather than a screen shot which allowed better quality to make the poster look more professional.
We found that it was difficult to create synergy between our film opening products. We found that there were no symbols or features which were shared by all the products. For our music video we improved on this by using a type writer text creator which we used for all of the text throughout all of the products. The title on the music video used this along with the Diji Pak, posters and magazine covers which we created in the post production stages of creating the music video. In was significant that we included this synergy throughout all of our products because we wanted to create a band image which could eventually be manipulated into a brand.
In conclusion, significant features such as editing footage, making posters and creating synergy were improved over the duration of this course. We found that we payed more attention to detail in creating the music video which lead to an all around better final product.
Monday, 10 April 2017
1A Research and Planning Essay
1A) Explain how your use of research and planning developed over time. Refer to a range of examples from your media productions in your answer (25 marks)
Over the last two years of this media course I have made improvements in research and planning which will seriously impact the final productions of future projects. I improved on aspects such as boarding, risk assessments and research. For my AS project, I created a film opening for a sports drama about an old man reflecting on his career as an international football player. For my A2 project I created a music video for a pop song, we created star profiles for a band called Avenue.
To create Cohen, we used storyboarding to create a shot by shot plan of what the film opening was going to look like. We felt like this plan was very rough as many of the shots we were planning to get depending on the environment we were filming in which was not completely controlled by my group. For example, we know we wanted to get close-ups of boots, water bottles and people talking etc however, we weren’t sure if everyone was going to have the right equipment because some peoples football boots didn’t look old enough and the scene was supposed to be a flash back. We were not precise enough in our editing. On the other hand, my A level production was a lot more precise in terms of storyboarding and general planning also. We could write down our ideas about what we wanted to do to pair with the lyrics on a lyrics sheet. Adding this step into the process before story boarding gave us a much better idea of the shots we would get. An example of good planning was taking the lyrics of the song “spreadsheet files and coffee pouring” and incorporate it in an action sequence. As the lyrics are sung two band members come into the shot, one with spreadsheet files and the other with coffee. These links to the lyrics were consistent throughout the production and it was due to the planning involved. This planning was an improvement because it was much more detailed in its use of props and actors.
Another way we improved on the research and planning over the two years of the course was using a steele-o-matic. This is both a planning and research task where you take shots and ideas from productions of a similar genre and compile them into a video. We did not use a steele-o-matic when making Cohen, I feel as though if we use this process then there may have been more conventions of the genre in the film opening. We did use this process to create our music video and we found it was very helpful. For example, we knew we wanted to use smoke bombs in our production but couldn’t work out which shots would make their usage most effective. The steele-o-matic showed us diverse ways we could film it.
In terms of research, for our film opening we recorded all the editing which occurred in film openings of the same genre. This included when title appeared, shot lengths, shot types ect. Film openings are very different to music videos however we still used this process. However, to improve we thought about why they had used the editing techniques and the meanings behind them. We looked at a B.O.B music video and he appeared in the bottom corners of the shots, we took this to mean that the topic he was singing about was more important than himself. This research made us take a lot more care in choosing each shot when we moved into the planning stages. The thought process was improved through this process.
In conclusion, the planning and research was improved in this process through new techniques such as the steele-o-matic and through enlightened thought processes. The main improvement was in the story boarding which had more detail due to more preparation.
Over the last two years of this media course I have made improvements in research and planning which will seriously impact the final productions of future projects. I improved on aspects such as boarding, risk assessments and research. For my AS project, I created a film opening for a sports drama about an old man reflecting on his career as an international football player. For my A2 project I created a music video for a pop song, we created star profiles for a band called Avenue.
To create Cohen, we used storyboarding to create a shot by shot plan of what the film opening was going to look like. We felt like this plan was very rough as many of the shots we were planning to get depending on the environment we were filming in which was not completely controlled by my group. For example, we know we wanted to get close-ups of boots, water bottles and people talking etc however, we weren’t sure if everyone was going to have the right equipment because some peoples football boots didn’t look old enough and the scene was supposed to be a flash back. We were not precise enough in our editing. On the other hand, my A level production was a lot more precise in terms of storyboarding and general planning also. We could write down our ideas about what we wanted to do to pair with the lyrics on a lyrics sheet. Adding this step into the process before story boarding gave us a much better idea of the shots we would get. An example of good planning was taking the lyrics of the song “spreadsheet files and coffee pouring” and incorporate it in an action sequence. As the lyrics are sung two band members come into the shot, one with spreadsheet files and the other with coffee. These links to the lyrics were consistent throughout the production and it was due to the planning involved. This planning was an improvement because it was much more detailed in its use of props and actors.
Another way we improved on the research and planning over the two years of the course was using a steele-o-matic. This is both a planning and research task where you take shots and ideas from productions of a similar genre and compile them into a video. We did not use a steele-o-matic when making Cohen, I feel as though if we use this process then there may have been more conventions of the genre in the film opening. We did use this process to create our music video and we found it was very helpful. For example, we knew we wanted to use smoke bombs in our production but couldn’t work out which shots would make their usage most effective. The steele-o-matic showed us diverse ways we could film it.
In terms of research, for our film opening we recorded all the editing which occurred in film openings of the same genre. This included when title appeared, shot lengths, shot types ect. Film openings are very different to music videos however we still used this process. However, to improve we thought about why they had used the editing techniques and the meanings behind them. We looked at a B.O.B music video and he appeared in the bottom corners of the shots, we took this to mean that the topic he was singing about was more important than himself. This research made us take a lot more care in choosing each shot when we moved into the planning stages. The thought process was improved through this process.
In conclusion, the planning and research was improved in this process through new techniques such as the steele-o-matic and through enlightened thought processes. The main improvement was in the story boarding which had more detail due to more preparation.
Thursday, 6 April 2017
1A Digital Technologies Essay
1A) Explain how your skills in the creative use of digital technology developed over time. Refer to a range of examples from your media productions in your answer (25 marks)
Over the two years of this media course i have made significant improvements to my understanding and usage of digital technologies. This ranges from editing software such as adobe premiere pro to physical camera usage. For my AS coursework I created a film opening for a sports drama about an old man reflecting on his career as a footballer, this project was called Cohen.. In contrast, for my A2 coursework i created a fast paced pop music video which was a completely different experience in most aspects of the process from pre-production to post-production. The music video had narrative aspects of three young men (the band members) rebelling against there working lives. The band was called Avenue.
The first technology which i feel i made the most amount of improvements from was the editing software Adobe Premiere Pro. For my film opening the editing was extremely simplistic as the style was very slow paced therefore i used a small amount of cuts, the mise en scene was more important to the opening than the editing was. For example, the opening shots were of an elderly man walking through a park, we had close up shots of his footsteps cross cutting with long shots of him walking. There was a high contrast to this when creating my music video a year later. We used a lot more cuts to match the intensity of the film. We used thought beats through the chorus to match the music. This was an improvement on the film opening because we used a lot more cuts and more precised cuts through the use of thought beats.
When shooting Cohen we used a compact camera with the standard filming settings. This gave us average looking footage which wasn't improved by colour grading because of the lack of knowledge about colour grading. However, when making the Avenue music video we used a much better Nikon D3300 DSLR camera which allowed us to use manual video settings so we could set up the shot how we wanted with the amount of colour we wanted.We wanted a hypodermic syringe of brightness, happiness and the camera allowed us to increase the exposure and saturation to do this. This was especially helpful for our first shot which was outside with lots of green trees which were slightly dark using the standard settings of the camera but were really highlighted by the manual settings. When we got the footage onto the computer I could edit the colours of the footage by colour-grading in premiere pro.This was achieved by practising on our practice footage. This was an improvement because i used better camera settings and colour grading which i hadn't used before.
I documented the creation of our productions on blogs using blogger. I improved my use of blogger in the second year as i used more labels to make the navigation of my blog a lot more coherent. The blog i used in my first year was a lot more confusing due to the lack of labels, I also used the embed function a lot more frequently. I embedded Youtube video, Emaze presentations and Slideshare presentations a lot more in the second year. This made the blog a lot more user interactive which made the information presented on the blog a lot more user friendly and accessible.
My overall improvements related to digital technologies mainly consisted of editing techniques such as colour grading and more precise cutting. However,i also improved in my use of blog maintenance and the physical filming of my productions by using a better camera and by having a better understanding of manual settings.
Tuesday, 21 March 2017
Representation of Teenagers in the News
Theorist
Louis Althusser 1969
Fremch
Developed Marx
Called ISA (media controlled by lawyers, politicians, ruling classes, proffessionals) sets classes such as poor, gay etc.
Interpolation
News Values
Gate keeping (News editors controlling what is put in the news)
Different news companies have different values.
News Values
1. Frequency
2. Threshold
3. Ambiguity
4. Meaningfulness
5. Consonance
6. Unexpectedness
7. Continuity
8. Composition
9. Reference to elite nations
10. Reference to elite persons
11. Personalisation
12. Negativity
Louis Althusser 1969
Fremch
Developed Marx
Called ISA (media controlled by lawyers, politicians, ruling classes, proffessionals) sets classes such as poor, gay etc.
Interpolation
News Values
Gate keeping (News editors controlling what is put in the news)
Different news companies have different values.
News Values
1. Frequency
2. Threshold
3. Ambiguity
4. Meaningfulness
5. Consonance
6. Unexpectedness
7. Continuity
8. Composition
9. Reference to elite nations
10. Reference to elite persons
11. Personalisation
12. Negativity
Tuesday, 14 March 2017
Quadrophenia
1. What are the defining characteristics of the mods? What attitude did they have towards authority figures - police, bosses, upper class etc.
Scooters.
Scooters.
Specific Music "The Who".
Specific Fashion.
Negative opinions of police.
They felt cheated by the system.
2. How is this attitude shown in the film? Find – mods attitudes towards older generation and – older generations attitudes towards mods
Jimmy tells his boss to “shove his job”.
At Brighton the mods smash up a café and terrorise the town, and they also beat up police officers.
Jimmy is watching his favourite band performing on TV and his dad tells him to “stop watching that rubbish”.
3. Quadrophenia deals with collective identity and personal identity. How does the film illustrate the collective nature of mod culture? Can you think of specific examples? How does Jimmy change during the film? What do you think this change symbolises?
The group are different as a collective than they are individually. The fight scene at Brighton the mods smash up the town and it represents them as a collective identiity. They are all different as people which is there personal identity. The change represents growing up.
4. Could you make a modern-day version of Quadrophenia? Is there such a definable youth culture as the mods today?
This film was about teens wanting to get into the media by being bad. But nowadays most youths are trying to stay away from the media if they are being bad, because there are links to police with media. There is also a lack of definable youth culture. Fashion isnt even based on class anymore. Rich people dress like chavs and chavs dress like rich people. Its all very confusing.
2. How is this attitude shown in the film? Find – mods attitudes towards older generation and – older generations attitudes towards mods
Jimmy tells his boss to “shove his job”.
At Brighton the mods smash up a café and terrorise the town, and they also beat up police officers.
Jimmy is watching his favourite band performing on TV and his dad tells him to “stop watching that rubbish”.
3. Quadrophenia deals with collective identity and personal identity. How does the film illustrate the collective nature of mod culture? Can you think of specific examples? How does Jimmy change during the film? What do you think this change symbolises?
The group are different as a collective than they are individually. The fight scene at Brighton the mods smash up the town and it represents them as a collective identiity. They are all different as people which is there personal identity. The change represents growing up.
4. Could you make a modern-day version of Quadrophenia? Is there such a definable youth culture as the mods today?
This film was about teens wanting to get into the media by being bad. But nowadays most youths are trying to stay away from the media if they are being bad, because there are links to police with media. There is also a lack of definable youth culture. Fashion isnt even based on class anymore. Rich people dress like chavs and chavs dress like rich people. Its all very confusing.
Wednesday, 8 March 2017
Audience Essay
Discuss how you applied the concept of Audience to one of your coursework productions.
I applied the hypodermic syringe model to my film opening. Through the use of long cuts and emotional non-dietetic music, Cohen injects an instant emotive feeling and tone. The music is emotive so it instantly forces an empathetic feeling to audience. This is played at the same time as the protagonist is on screen this was so the audience knew who to feel this empathy for. The long cuts made the pace slow and instantly showed the viewers that this film was going to be emotional.
I applied Halls Reception Theory to my film opening. A dominant symbol is used near the beginning in the film opening. We used a old, dirty, flat, England football to symbolise the characters life as it is in the future. This symbol is dominant because there are clear links between the character and the football. For example they are both old and they both live flattened unenthusiastic lives. The football is also England themed and some viewers would know that Cohen, the protagonist, was an England footballer.
Uses and gratifications
You getting something from the media for you.
Diversion
Escapism
Information
Pleasure
Watercooler
Maslows Hierarchy
Pyramid
Self-actualisation
Esteem
Love/belonging
Safety
Physiological
Marxist Hegemony
There was a powerful elite and below were passive masses.
Liberal Pluralism
Active.
Allowing anyone a voice.
Avenue- 3 different personality so they can cling to them.
Messages which were encoded
For my AS media studies coursework i created a film opening, called Cohen, about an old aged former football star who reflects on his career and life through flashbacks. The audience that i specifically wanted to make this for was teenage boys between the ages of 13 and 19, this was from the knowledge that high amounts of teenage boys love football. There is also a secondary audience for this film which is people who lived through the period the flashbacks are set in. For example, the first flashback in the film opening is to the England football team in the dressing room before the world cup final. I wanted to convey the life footballers used to live to the audience so they could compare it to today. The audience would get and education on the football hero, they will also get enjoyment. Other older audience members would get a feeling of nostalgia from the film as they were alive during this era.
I applied the hypodermic syringe model to my film opening. Through the use of long cuts and emotional non-dietetic music, Cohen injects an instant emotive feeling and tone. The music is emotive so it instantly forces an empathetic feeling to audience. This is played at the same time as the protagonist is on screen this was so the audience knew who to feel this empathy for. The long cuts made the pace slow and instantly showed the viewers that this film was going to be emotional.
I applied Halls Reception Theory to my film opening. A dominant symbol is used near the beginning in the film opening. We used a old, dirty, flat, England football to symbolise the characters life as it is in the future. This symbol is dominant because there are clear links between the character and the football. For example they are both old and they both live flattened unenthusiastic lives. The football is also England themed and some viewers would know that Cohen, the protagonist, was an England footballer.
Uses and gratifications
You getting something from the media for you.
Diversion
Escapism
Information
Pleasure
Watercooler
Maslows Hierarchy
Pyramid
Self-actualisation
Esteem
Love/belonging
Safety
Physiological
Marxist Hegemony
There was a powerful elite and below were passive masses.
Liberal Pluralism
Active.
Allowing anyone a voice.
Avenue- 3 different personality so they can cling to them.
Messages which were encoded
Saturday, 4 March 2017
Section 2
Explanation 20
Examples- 3 different types of media- 20
Terminology - 10
Headline, caption, graphics, strap-line for newspaper article.
'Quote question'
or
'How is the your group represented.'
Collective Identity (British Youth and Subculture)
-Historical Context
-Cross media (At least 3 different types of media)
-Representation of case studies (Who made it, Purpose, Audience)
-Theories/ Critics to be quoted/ argued against
-Future representations in the media, your thoughts?
Subcultures are united by similar taste in clothing, music, hobbies.
Slang
Political
40's
kids used to go straight to work at 13.
Education Act
50's
60's
70's
80's
90's
00's
Now
Theorists
Stanley Cohen
Mods and Rockers- exaggeration of conflicts and terror.
Greg Philo
Hoodie cinema reflects middle class anxiety.
If you're not middle classed you're a thug or a chav.
Case Studies
Ill Manors- Song/ Film
Built an entire Olympic village.
"Oi look there’s a chav
Examples- 3 different types of media- 20
Terminology - 10
Headline, caption, graphics, strap-line for newspaper article.
'Quote question'
or
'How is the your group represented.'
Collective Identity (British Youth and Subculture)
-Historical Context
-Cross media (At least 3 different types of media)
-Representation of case studies (Who made it, Purpose, Audience)
-Theories/ Critics to be quoted/ argued against
-Future representations in the media, your thoughts?
Subcultures are united by similar taste in clothing, music, hobbies.
Slang
Political
40's
kids used to go straight to work at 13.
Education Act
50's
60's
70's
80's
90's
00's
Now
Theorists
Stanley Cohen
Mods and Rockers- exaggeration of conflicts and terror.
Greg Philo
Hoodie cinema reflects middle class anxiety.
If you're not middle classed you're a thug or a chav.
Case Studies
Ill Manors- Song/ Film
Built an entire Olympic village.
"Oi look there’s a chav
That means council housed and violent
He’s got a hoodie on give him a hug
On second thoughts don’t you don’t wanna get mugged"
Bernardo's -Advert
"Demonisation of youth"
Distiny Ekaragha-
Gone too far, young pour black people in an estate.
Dizzy Raskel
Love this town 2013
Subverts stereotype- "Saving cat, washing shops, dancing with the police, smiling"
He’s got a hoodie on give him a hug
On second thoughts don’t you don’t wanna get mugged"
Bernardo's -Advert
"Demonisation of youth"
Distiny Ekaragha-
Gone too far, young pour black people in an estate.
Dizzy Raskel
Love this town 2013
Subverts stereotype- "Saving cat, washing shops, dancing with the police, smiling"
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