Creativity in AS and A2 Coursework

Creativity has been an essential part of both pieces of my coursework because it has allowed me to develop my own skills and create a product that would be suitable for its target audience.
Firstly, research and planning has allowed me to be creative because I could take inspiration and inventiveness from other texts (such as conventions, use of mise en scene and cinematography) and create something original that the audience would watch/purchase. Planning has made me resourceful because I could prepare for if a problem would occur (risk assessment, backup alternative shooting dates if bad weather for example) and this allowed my creative to be better when actually shooting the film because I could concentrate on the filming. This contrasts to the theory "A project that is too well planned lacks opportunities for spontaneity and creativity because planning enabled me to be organised and so by creating a thorough storyboard for example, I could follow it and be more inventive with the time spent setting up and making sure that the camera angles were right and spending spare time at the end shooting a few extra shots that were unusual to experiment with in the post-production stage. This was especially useful in my A2 coursework because of the many shots needed for the cutting rhythm and lip-syncing to work.
Moreover, I was able to be creative with the way that I presented research and planning to gain audience feedback as a pitch/mood board. Allowing me to gain more direct feedback, the collage of images allowed my resourcefulness to be maximised—for example in A2, the overall ‘star image’ of the artist was not what the target audience thought looked right for the genre so that problem was dealt with earlier.
I could use ingenuity in my AS film opening because of the lighting decisions that I made and had problems with the indoor sequence of shots being too dark. I re-filmed the indoor shots though and overcame this issue and I also took inspiration from other texts when research and planning in terms of cinematography (the 180^o Rule or Camera Angles) which enabled me to be more creative with the production side of the film opening. Also, colour was very important to convey mood in my film opening and I was inventive with the schemes that I choose because I looked into theories such as Levi-Strauss (such as binary opposition like light versus dark) which were used in the outdoor and indoor shots to convey that the children were being mislead by the ‘grandma’ character. This also juxtaposes the theory "media producers can learn nothing from studying the conventions of old texts" because I took many inspirational conventions from completing textual analysis of different genres of film openings and learnt a lot in theory and narrative structure that I used in my own opening.
Furthermore, there was little restriction on the song that I could use for my A2 music video –such as, the length of the song needed to be no longer that four and a half minutes. Apart from that, we had a free choice of the genre of the song and so I was able to research a variety of songs and pick my personal preference and use my originality to the best that I could. However, there were restrictions to my creativity when choosing a soundtrack for my as film opening because the music had to be royalty free music. Despite this, I was resourceful with what options I did have and so chose the soundtrack that enhanced the mood of the opening the most.
The restrictions that were most apparent on both my AS and A2 coursework pieces were the funding/expenditures that I could use for different production equipment for example. If I was able to have a bigger budget, it would have enhanced the quality of my film opening because I could have used a microphone on a boom pole to avoid the wind from affecting the quality of the dialogue.
My originality was enhanced by the use of technology; especially for my A2 coursework piece. It made it a lot easier to playback the track to the artist when he needed to lip-sync for the music video. Also, the development due to technology between my preliminary task at the beginning of AS (continuity task) and my Coursework pieces has made the quality and originality better because in my preliminary task, we had to use simple editing software (IMovie) whereas for my music video I could use Premiere Elements to make the editing more accurate and more inventive because of the variety of features available.
Finally, I will take many of the creative skills that I have learnt throughout the course and that it is good to have some limits onto creativity so that the idea can stay focused and to-the-point – which I leant by feedback and accepting that criticism on my creativity is good sometimes for refining a better product and making it more inventive and inspirational.

Creativity Overview Table for AS and A2 Coursework

Rube Goldberg's Work - Very Creative and Inspirational!

I think that it demonstrates creativity really well because it is something different and needs a lot of imagination, resourcefulness, inspiration and originality in order to work effectively. It is good because Rube Goldberg’s concept has been used in advertising (Honda advert) because it is different and people recognize his work because of the originality and inspiration. A theory that contrasts to his work is ‘‘Technology has taken all the creativity out of media production’’ because adaptations and inspired ideas have included technology to make them more inventive (such as the Honda Advert whereby it uses cogs and gears, bearing and other mechanical parts of a car). This makes the advert more memorable and has a greater chance of selling the car. Another contrasted quote is ‘‘A project that is too well planned lacks opportunities for spontaneity and creativity.’’ Goldberg’s work contrasts this because in order for the idea to work, a lot of planning had to go into it in order for it to work successfully. However, it may be supported when ‘trial and error’ is used because the invention may not work the first time and so the designer makes changes to aspects and sees if that works – until they gain a successful idea.

Quotes about Creativity - Just Someone's Opinion?

Section A

I think that the set menu of tasks has had both advantages and disadvantages to my use of creativity in both of my coursework pieces. An advantage to having a set task with the music video is it allowed me to have a key focus point with my research and planning and meant that theories and narrative structures of music videos were easily taught to the whole class and so my vision of the whole task could be structured better. It also allowed me to extend my imagination because before the music video coursework’s research and planning, I had not really taken a massive interest in music videos and so my knowledge was developed further because I could apply my interest in film narratives to narratives in music videos.
   However, the disadvantage to having the set task of a music video was that the use of equipment for more creative shots (such as aerial shots or tracking) were not available because I didn’t have a large budget to purchase equipment and time constraints on the project meant that actually constructing the equipment cheaply was not possible. This disadvantage with the time constrains also applies to my AS coursework because I could have built a zip-line to have the camera fly down at the beginning to make the opening shot more ingenious.