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.
I think my skills have developed in creativity and use of digital technology in the from AS to A2 as I have learnt to use more of a range of software and digital equipment which helped me use more creativity in my work. We have had to produce a film opening in the first year and a trailer with a magazine front cover and also a film poster in the second year, both of these use a range of digital technology and helped develop my creativity. I am going to structure this essay so that I break it down into pre-production, production and then post-production.
For first year, I was using a lot of the technologies for the first time and found myself developing my skills through the use of various examples of experimentation. In pre-production, I used technologies such as Google in order to research different genre types and to influence the direction in which I would take my product. As I began to take influences from various different directors and films, I took my inspiration to iMovie which allowed me to experiment with different editing styles, and tweak my visual style and remove any bad parts within my work. This software was easy to access for someone who had never used an editing software before and it helped me dramatically when I moved on to the production stage with more complex editing softwares such as Premiere Pro. As I planned aspects within my film opening, I tested certain experimental aspects within my film such as the use of whip pan and pass by transitions within iMovie, allowing me to break down the process of film directors such as Edgar Wright. This allowed me to remove anything which did not look good while also allowing me to think how to better film for the editing process by leaving in longer shots to cut shorter and to transition. For second year, I used a similar process. I instead used my editor of choice, Premiere pro, in order to confirm different visual styles that I would take on to use within my film trailer. For example, I began researching the different uses of aspect ratios within films using Google and what effect they can give and what genres they typically lend themselves to. I found that using thicker black bars at the top and bottom of the screen would cause the film to appear more serious in tone and more cinematic, while a comedy may use minimal black bars in order to give a lighter tone to the film's appearance. I looked at a film which had a visual style and tone which I felt would reflect well into the genre in which I was trying to develop. I used a frame from Skyfall and placed the image directly into Premiere Pro. As Premiere Pro would only crop using percentages, I used the frame from sky fall in order to reflect the exact aspect ratio of the film by placing two images side by side. As a result I found that the percentage to crop would be 30% from the top and bottom. I was now aware of how I should be composing my images in-camera in order to make sure that I did not remove too much visual information within the editing process.
Digital technology was crucial within the use of my production phases. In order to film my footage, I utilised a Canon 70D. For my first year, I was not very experienced with this technology and was not aware of how to adjust all aspects of the camera in order to achieve the best images. As a result, a lot of the images were not as good of a quality as they could have been due to the lack of light getting into the lens in some locations. I also used only one lens, which did not affect my production greatly but I lacked the knowledge to plan shots with the use of an appropriate lens. In second year, my knowledge became increasingly more vast as I was able to experiment with my camera more. I realised that I could control the amount of light that gets into the camera in order to compensate for bright or dark situations by adjusting ISO, f-stop and shutter speed. I also was able to understand the use of different lens'. Where in first year, I only used a zoom lens, in second year I was able to understand and use a zoom lens, wide angle lens and a prime lens. I was able to use new additions such as the wide angle lens in order to widen interiors and present distorted close ups. I was able to avoid bad quality within my film by using my expanded knowledge however in some cases I was limited by the low-light capabilities within the DSLR.
In post productions, some of my most essential experimentation in order to create a good quality product. I relied on Premiere Pro within my first and second year. I used Premiere Pro in first year to experiment with cross dissolves in order to hide shot transitions. I experimented with colour grading in a way which I had previously not within my first year prior to my film opening. I used Google in order to research different methods for colour grading and attempted to apply some of them to my work. I used the three way colour corrector, RGB curves and brightness and contrast in order to create a cinematic style. I took inspiration from Edgar Wright again and looked to apply genre-specific colours to my film, much like he had done to Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End. I used the colour grade as a result to highlight green tones within the film as it offered connotations to the Sci-fi genre. In second year, I became heavily more experimental within the editing process as I felt that I now had enough knowledge within the software of Premiere Pro in order to use different assets and tools within the software in order to take my film trailer into different creative directions. I developed my idea of colour connotations and applied them through the use of red in order to imply violence within the tone. I also experimented with the use of film grain in order to remove the clean digital appearance of some shots and replace them with film grain that is popular within the crime genre in order to give the film a more gritty appearance. I was also able to improve the stability of many shots which may have been unusable through the use of warp stabiliser which is a tool which was completely new to me.
To conclude, I was able to dramatically develop my skills with the use of digital technology in a way that critiqued aspects of my first year work while developing aspects which did work. I was able to take full creative advantage of the different technologies as my knowledge of them became more expansive.
