Post Production Essay 1A

Throughout my A level media I have had to use a range of post-production techniques to improve my pieces. My skills have developed throughout my course, I started by creating a film opening named Not So Die Hard in AS, as well as making a package which used synergy to fit along with it. I then developed in year 13 and created a music video for an artist called "Paleme". Post production was very important to make a final outcome.

I started my post production uses in year 12 when I had to create some practice tasks, this included editing clips from premade videos together and putting them together. I was able to play around with the different effects which were available on Adobe Premiere, which I used to edit this. I found Adobe difficult to use and only used basic effects and transitions, which looked very unprofessional. However, it did allow me to understand some of the basic effects which I would need for my final pieces in the future, for example adding titles and music to the background of a video. I needed to add both titles and music to my AS film opening. 

I also replicated a pre made music video in year 12, Juno. This was good because unlike the previous practice I was actually able to go out and film my own shots. I then saw how much editing was needed for each clip and how they needed to be cut down. I found Premiere difficult to use, however I used YouTube to help me to learn basic effects. My video looked very amateur, but however it did help me to learn how to cut up clips and edit them to fit in a sequence. As well as using basic effects once again. It allowed me to have more practice when making my film opening as I had already practiced putting different clips together.

In year 13 I created a Stealomatic, this is a video which included many premade music video clips, I was able to edit all of these together to give me ideas of what I wanted my music video to look like and give inspiration for the final piece. This really helped me for my final piece and I was able to go back and refer to the stealomatic throughout the course. It allowed us to be more creative and see how effective other pieces of music videos were. At this point I was a lot more skilled at using Adobe Premiere and therefore it was very successful.  

You can see my progression in post-production by looking at the increase in the amount of software I used in year 13 in comparison to year 12. In year 13 I used many different software applications such as Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, Slideshare, Emaze and Wix to create a cross media package, however in year 12 I only really used Adobe Premiere, as well as using PowerPoint to edit some of my pictures, which was a very armature method to do so. In year 13 however I used Adobe Photoshop to edit my photographs which I took during the course, this was a lot more professional and created more impressive outcomes. This really helped to edit my magazine cover, digipak and other photos which were taking in the photoshoots we did. I used Photoshop to make the digipack, I made sure to use cross media synergy in this by using colours and also some pictures which were actually linked to my music video. This was done to help the user have a connection with the artist. 

In Year 12 I did use Wix to create a basic website, however it did not include very much and mainly was just used to display our final video. Therefore, I did not use post production very successfully here, so therefore in year 13 I made sure to learn more about Wix. I was able to create a professional website from scratch, with interactive sections, this was great to advertise my music artist. As well as the website I also used different social media to increase my advertisement, I created a Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter  account for my year 13 music artist. I think this was a really good way to advertise, this is because my music artist was a young and up and coming artist, the audience was young adults. Young adults are the audience who would use social media the most and therefore he would get a lot of attention from his chosen audience.

Before starting my final film opening for year 12 I did a lot of research on the genre which I was doing, and was able to see what type of cuts and effects were featured on a typical film opening of my genre, which was genre. I saw that there were a lot of fast  cuts and not any major effects, rather than the extreme effects I had been doing in my practices. I looked at premade action comedy film openings to do this. I added text to the opening and colour correction in certain shots, where the camera lighting as not great. I did this on Adobe Premiere and really made an impact, however I still think that my skills from year 12 in my final piece were improved in year 13 from year 12 because I was able to have even more practice. 

I improved my skills in year 13 for my music artist across my cross media promotional packages. My skills when using digital technology really improved, this is because I had used them a lot more, and therefore had had more practice. It allowed me to be able to understand what was needed to create a successful music video. I knew how to edit the colours, brightness and the contrast to improve my video. I did this to make my music video seem a lot more fun and professional, which I wanted to do. I did a lot of research on the genre of my music video which was pop, to see the type of editing other music videos did. Most of them did subtle transitions. I did a lot shorter shots, whereas in my film opening they lasted longer, this is a typical for a music video.

My post-production skills dramatically improved from year 12 to year 13, from the use of practicing. I was able to edit a lot better and understand what methods were successful to edit and promote a music video and film opening.