Maisy - Hands - Digital Technology

The development of the use of digital technology really improved from AS level to A2 as I became more aware of the digital technology that I could use and what I could experiment with. In AS, in pre production, the use of digital technology was minimalistic. I used final cut pro to edit the final thriller film opening and also an animatic but my knowledge was basic and so the animatic didn’t help us much further in production because it was not edited to a certain time or soundtrack. However at A2, to create a music video, the animatic I created had to be much more accurate as the shots needed to be cut to time perfectly for the shots to be sequenced and to make sense in accordance with the song. I was able to be more creative with the shots I filmed because of a thoroughly planned animatic that allowed me to be more spontaneous in production when shooting because I knew I had a decent shot list to rely on. Although I used blogger and other sites on Web 2.0 throughout pre production, production and post, I advanced in my knowledge and skills from AS to A2 because in AS, the research and planning I did was very basic and I presented it in basic ways compared to A2, where I used moving presentation site Prezi and Go! Animate to show more creatively my preliminary and initial ideas. In AS, I used a limited amount of software – just literally Final Cut Pro and the internet – compared to A2, in which I also used Adobe Photoshop and Wix in Post-production to create a digipack and a website for my artist. In progression of A2, I had learnt a lot more about Photoshop having seldom used it before and this allowed to be a lot more create and expressive as I could experiment freely and try out textures and tools I previously hadn’t had a need to use. I had not used Wix before at all, and so it was a definite learning curve and a step up from AS in which Blogger was the only platform I used to present my work. I was able to draw together a complete website from little knowledge or my own skills, based only on the other existing media texts of the same medium which I had studied.  Although the cameras I used in AS are the same ones I used in A2, my personal development of the skills needed for them definitely has improved. For my AS thriller film opening, I filmed basic close-up and mid shots and was not very expressive in how I filmed, only wanting to portray the narrative, where as for my A2 music video, every shot needed to be crafted to make the song work, and so they needed to be more aesthetically pleasing and exciting. I was able to do this by experimenting with types of shots including pull focus and more interesting angles. My cinematography skills were more advanced by A2 as I had had time to experiment with the equipment and felt more in control of the camera because I had had the experience of using it before, for AS.  I also used a variety of equipment to edit the footage and manipulate photographs in Post-production, including SLR which I had not used in AS and also iPhones to capture certain shots which were more effectively interesting to do as they were more spontaneous than the set shot list I had created for use for the Sony HD video camera. In conclusion, my skills from AS to A2 media really evolved through how creative I could be when using digital technology ranging from websites to developing software and how this knowledge affected the way I made creative decisions to make the film I was creating in A2 more visually inviting and interesting than the one I made in AS.