Digital Technology Essay 1A

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?

Throughout my two years in media my skills within digital technology have dramatically improved whilst working on my media coursework. I was able to improve my skills on digital technology by practicing different techniques and products. 

Whilst completing my coursework in year 12 and 13 I had to keep a record of my planning, 

research andI used an online blogging site called Blogger, for both of the two years. I had basic skill in year 12 where I was able to do the necessities, such as posting a blog post, imbedding a video or presentation and uploading photos in a post. In year 13 I understood how to change the layout and the design of my blog, to make my blog more eye-catching. I also began to understand that to needed to add more, relevant information to make my blog more successful. As well as this I had to create double the amount of blog posts for year 13 rather than year 12, I needed 100 instead of 50. I was able to upload more advanced presentations such as prezis and emazes into my posts, this made them look more impressive. My skills definitely improved from year 12 and 13 and I can now use blogger successfully.

In year 12 I created a short film opening using a school video camera and then in year 13 I was able to use a DSLR Cannon 1200D whilst filming my music video, which gave me a greater advantage. For my film opening I did not need to use as many short cuts, or different styles, this is because most of the shots were longer which enabled me to create a narrative within the film. Therefore, I did not show much skill with my use of camera work as it was not needed. In year 13 the task pushed me a lot more and it was definitely more challenging within the use of digital technology, because we needed a lot more extreme and complicated shots, such as short cuts and moving shots to make the music video more upbeat. I had a huge progress of camera skills from year 12 to year 13 because I learnt new ways to use it to improve my work. By using a more complex camera in year 13 pushed me to understand how to have good camera skills, which was definitely needed to do well in my project. Without my higher level of camera skills I feel as though my work wouldn’t have been so successful. 

In year 12 and 13 I had to create and edit posters and other products to advertise the work which I had created. In year 12 I originally  attempted to created my film poster in MS publisher, which is quite an ammature application to use for this type of product , but however I was not experienced or skilled in using any other software to do this task. This software was an easy way to create posters, but however it did not create great results and it did not look particularly professional. In year 13 I decided to attempt to use Adobe Photoshop, which I had played around with in my other A level subjects but not at a detailed level. YouTube was a brilliant way for me to achieve the harder effects on the program because I was able to watch tutorials on how to do difficult things on the application. I used photoshop to edit photos for the Digipak, tour poster and magazine. I was able to use complex skills which I was not able to achieve in year 12, such as edit the colours, backgrounds and alter the perspectives. I am now a lot more capable and skilled at my photograph editing and would feel more comfortable doing so in the future.

For the actual editing of my videos I used Adobe Premiere for both years. My skills definitely improved from year 12 to year 13 after having practice and using different methods to become better. I experimented with Adobe in year 12 by doing some basic editing tasks. We firstly practiced editing through doing the dancing bear task which was where we put lots of different pieces of a video together and put it with music on premiere. I was able to learn how to cut videos, speed them up and add basic effects which ended up helping me in my final piece. I also learnt how to add titles to my dancing bears which really helped when it came to my final opening as I needed to add text through credits at the beginning. I also copied a scene from Juno in year 12, this was key because it enabled me to understand the effects and cuts needed to create a short bit of a film. I was also able to become more skilled and work out the basics of the camera I was using. Therefore, when I filmed and edited for my film opening I already had knowledge in filming and also editing in Adobe Photoshop. The use of all of those practices really helped me in year 13 with my music video as I was able to become more advanced. I created a stealomatic in year 13 before making my music video, this was brilliant and really benefitted me as I was able to cut to the music and take inspiration from current musicians. My skill in premiere really improved from year 12 to 13 and the basic tasks really helped to do so.

In conclusion the use of digital technology really helped me to create a successful music video. My skills from year 12 and year 13 dramatically changed. Digital technology is an important stage to all media products currently.