Exam Work

Section A

Digital Technology

- During my A2 piece, I have become much more familiar with iMovie, as I have a years more experience since my AS piece and I have now learnt that you can create freeze-frames, which I had to do to combat an issue of shakiness, I now know that you can digitally change footage in terms of cropping a frame to produce a close up. I am not much more familiar with the stabilisation setting and I have been using it a lot more due to the nature of the footage that I have had to film because when we were filming in the woods during the summer, my camera women had to walk backwards and unfortunately, whilst we created a steadicam using the tripod on the bottom of the camera, the shots were still extremely wobbly and unsteady. So by getting to know the software a lot more, I have been able to do a lot more and get around a lot more obstacles that have occurred. 

- As well as getting to grips more with the software, I have also been able to use my wider knowledge to slicken up my editing techniques and I have learnt how to edit more to the beat of the background music to ensure that the flow of the video is not jarring for the audience as that can break the conventions of the music videos that I researched. 

Creativity

- I have been a lot more experimental during my A2 year in terms of using a wide variety of different shots instead of just hoping that I would have enough footage to work with during post-production. I am now filming each scene that I shoot in LS, MS, CU and sometimes from different angles, so like the phone scene I filmed from in front of the mother and behind the mother:

This enables the footage and scene to become more inventive and exciting, as there are a range of different shots and angles used. 

- I have also produced a lot more rough cuts during my A2 piece, which has shown skills of creativity as I have included new pieces of footage within the different rough cuts, or slickened up the editing to make it tighter, thus making changes constantly to try and make it the best piece that I can create. 

- During my AS final piece, I had to re-shoot one of my scenes and I was extremely wary of doing so as I felt like it wouldn't go to plan; however after I completed this, I realised that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and during my AS piece, I have filmed more than has been needed to ensure that the video meets the needs of the audience, in terms of adding in the extra phone scene to make it clear to the audience why the actress wasn't answering her phone.

Research and Planning

- My research and planning has stepped up dramatically since AS, as I have had to complete much more extensive and in depth research to ensure that my final piece and ancillary tasks show direct links to the research that I have produced. Throughout this project, I have also conducted research as I have gone so that I can ensure that my pieces are the best they possibly can be. During this exercise, I have had to research numerous different things such as the size of a digipak, watch music videos over and over again and even during filming to ensure that my actresses knew what I expected from them. This worked extremely well as I didn't have any problems during filming in terms of how my actresses acted, as they did exactly as I wanted. 

- Although during AS I gathered together some audience feedback, I can't even explain how much more I have conducted during A2. I have gathered feedback on almost everything, including the colour that my album should be, to feedback on the very final rough cut. This shows that after experience, you realise how important audience feedback is and how much it can influence your decisions. All of the decisions that I have made during A2 have been as a result of audience feedback because I really wanted to make sure that my decisions met the needs of my target audience. 

Post Production

- Post production has been a long process as I have had to film extra pieces of footage, create a large variety of different cuts; however during my AS piece I think I only created a few rough cuts over the whole project an didn't gather much feedback on it during the post-production stages. I learnt from this mistake during A2 and have now realised how much audience feedback can influence decisions during post-production.

- I had an issue with continuity during post-production because I realised that during the phone scene I had left some pictures up that weren't up during the bedroom scenes with stephanie, so I had to keep re-shooting the phone scene once I realised that there was an issue:

As you can see from the above images, the calendar in the shot in 'slightly' different; however I haven't taken a CU or a straight on shot of it during the phone scene, which makes it hard for the audience to realise that there is a continuity error there. 

As you can see, I had to film the above scene numerous times because I left the images up during one of the shoots and when Stephanie's shots were being shot, the pictures had been taken down:

Conventions of Real Media Text:

- I have managed to use a lot of conventions from real media texts, which I display using this blog post, Comparisons, as I have shown how I have adapted real media texts to fit into my own final piece throughout the research that I have conducted.