Post Production – Progression From AS to A2

There have been mainly two types of text that I have worked in for my AS and A2 coursework pieces; Print and Film. To begin with, my progression of the post production stage for Film has been a lot better than that for Print because I have produced and editing four pieces in this course (Preliminary ‘Door Opening Sequence’ and ‘Busted Music Video’ and then my own music video in A2 and my own film opening for AS). This has meant that I have been able to develop skills in postproduction throughout the two years and especially my skills with Adobe Premiere Elements has improved because I used that piece of software for both of the coursework pieces (and using them in different contexts with the film opening and music video).
   Also, I have worked in a team while editing for the two preliminary tasks and this has helped my research and planning to be more precise as I knew that the editing stage is just as importance as the filming itself. This allowed me to learn before the Music Video that the Storyboard in planning is vital for the postproduction stages especially because it allows you to follow and keep organised with the footage that you are editing. Through teamwork, I have also developed that criticism is a good thing for audience feedback because it helps with the postproduction stage and allows the text to keep to the target audience and be more focused towards the overall impact that the text should have.
   Furthermore, I have also worked as an individual for my Print pieces and have constructed and designed three pieces of Print in this course (Preliminary ‘School Music Magazine’ and Ancillary ‘DigiPak and ‘Advert’ to go with my Music Video for A2). This allowed my personal progression with the Adobe PhotoShop Elements to develop because my editing and manipulation skills with images became a lot better for the DigiPak and Advert for A2. I have learnt that the key skills with PhotoShop are to use it as frequent as you can and ‘mess about’ with the editing features on an image in order to gain confidence with the software. It then allowed me to develop and enhance my creativity because I was able to use it with confidence and try new effects to make more eye-catching texts that will suit the target audience.

In order to widen my knowledge of the conventions of Key Media Concepts within Print and Film, I researched into the common conventions. These Concepts applied to both areas of the media:

·         Representation (Film: Representation of Characters, Character Roles, Stereotypes, Cinematography associated with representation such as high and low angled shots; Print: Representation of Artists, Male Gaze, Manipulation of Cinematography such as harsh and soft lighting in the photograph).

·         Media Language (Film and Print: terms such as Mise en Scene, Cinematography, Editing and Sound enabled me to focus on those key areas and develop my creativity through each of the four aspects).

·         Audiences (Film: BBFC certificates for films to give me an idea on the target audience; Print and Film: Direct Target Market Research, Reception Theories and Audience Theories).

·         Institutions (Budgeting, Logos and Branding for the Production Company and Artist).

For example, I used the conventions of using close up shots of the characters’ faces in my Film Opening sequence because those are one of the generic features of horror cinematography. This enabled the audience to decode the film opening as a horror and enhanced the representations of the characters.

Post-Production Mindmaps for AS and A2

Mindmap on Post-Production (AS and A2)

Research and Planning Questions

Organisation of Research:

Referencing all of the internet sites that I had visited to find the research was easy because I could just place a link from my blog to that website. Books could just be referenced on the blog by writing out the author and where I got the book from.

My organisational skills did develop over AS and A2 because I found the blog easier to use as I went along and because all of the posts were in chronological order so if I needed to refer back then I could easily find it. Also, I included a ‘Search Posts’ feature on my A2 blog because that made it even easier for me to find previous posts, keeping it organised and easy to access each post.

Planning (Pre-Production):
For the pre-production stage of my coursework pieces (planning), I researched into a more variety of different planning methods in order to help with the organisation on the day of the shooting. For example, in my AS coursework for my film opening, I produced a script and researched about call sheets that were used in the real film productions in order to make sure that the cast knew where they were at the correct date. It also helped for preparations with props and the locations (especially when I needed to use make-up for the witch character).
Drafting was extremely important because it allowed for audience feedback to be more precise and teacher feedback was more appropriate/direct towards certain aspects of my text. I collated audience feedback by keeping ‘feedback sheets’ with audience members’ feedback on it. For AS, I used a simple questionnaire to evaluate whether or not the film opening was appealing to them and how they think it could be improved (which helped point out that the inside shots were too dark and should be re-filmed).

Organisation of Time, Personnel and Equipment/Working as an Individual:

Communication and organisation of personnel (the cast in my case because I was working on my own) was improved because of the use of planning (call sheet for example) and the storyboarding allowed me to know what cast member would be in which shot (and so when producing a music video with many shots it made it easier to organise the people into the right places and pre-tell them the next shots that we were going to film). What I did learn through organisation of personnel was that sometimes cast members sometimes do not get along as planned to (for the music video the musician and the female character were supposed to be in the same shot but didn’t get along so I filmed them separately to try and get around that). What I could have done better with the situation was tried to get them to meet before the day of shooting and so I knew for definite on whether it would work or not.
I learnt that there are advantages and disadvantages of working on my own (such as being able to be more creative and not having conflicting ideas with others) but also having the disadvantage of having more work to complete on my own instead of sharing it out with a group.

Organisation/Presentation of Research and Planning Materials:

In order to make it easier to read (because I was working with children for my AS), I made sure that the script and call sheet were Word Processed so that they were easily readable and also I could print out several copies of each document to give to each cast member in advance so that they knew what they were saying/doing. I also gave them a ‘brief’ before filming telling them exactly how it would work and what I overall had in mind for them to do when acting. This made it a lot easier to move quickly through the production stage and they knew what I wanted them to do.
I posted ‘diaries’ of how each shooting day went and this helped to reflect back onto what I had done previously and compare on what I should re-film (especially with my A2 music video). To enhance with the presentation of my planning/research I used digital technologies and a variety of software (such as Animoto and Prezi) in order to show my creativity through presentation.

Research and Planning - Key Terms (Pros and Cons) Table

(Click to Enlarge)

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?

Creating a CD Cover - With Limits on Creativity

The trick is you have to create it from 'found' materials, again following a set of rules.
1. Generate a name for your band by using WikiPedia's random page selector tool, and using the first article title on whichever page pops up. No matter how weird or lame that band name sounds.
2. Generate an album title by cutting and pasting the last four words of the final quote on whichever page appears when you click on the quotationspage's random quote selector tool. No matter what those four words turn out to be.
3. Finally, visit Flickr's Most Interesting page -- a random selection of some of the interesting things discovered on Flickr within the last 7 days -- and download the third picture on that page. (Even better: Click on this link to get a Flickr photo that's licensed under Creative Commons.) Again -- no cheating! You must use the photo, no matter how you feel about it.
4. Using Photoshop (or whatever method you prefer), put all of these elements together and create your very own CD cover.

Name Generated by 'WikiPedia': Rock Rabbit
Album Title Generated by 'QuotationsPage': Don't Fool With It

Final Product:

The decisions that were made for me was the Name of the Artist, Name of the Album and the Image used for the CD Cover. The only thing that I did have freedom with was the Font Style, Size, Colour and the Positioning of the Text.

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.