1. Zakaria Hamdi-Pacha
Media Studies (A2)
Friday 07/March/2014
6)
Describe a range of creative decisions that you made in post-production and how
these decisions made a difference to the final outcomes. Refer to a range of examples in
your answers to show how these skills developed over time.
At post-production, I had made a number of decisions that have either positively or negatively
impacted on the final outcome of my projects. This applies to both my AS and A2 projects.
One skill that I believe that developed over time is my use of final cut pro. At AS it was my first
time using this program and therefor I was getting used to it. As my genre was a thriller I wanted
to add tension to my opening two minutes. I did this my adding a dark contrast to the shots
making the shots look conspicuous and somewhat puts the audience on edge. However, I feel
like I added this effect in far too early before the plot even picked up and I think I made the
contrast too dark making it difficult to even see much. At A2 I think I rectified these bad decisions
by ensuring that each effect actually applies and works well with each shot. For example, I added
reverse effects onto some clips where I feel it applied better, like trains pulling in and out of train
stations where you can really visually see that the effect is there and is in sync with the music,
rather than randomly on anything. I think the impact of this is that the audience can see how well
synced the music is with the effects and shots of the music video and helps the flow of the music
video, it also makes the video somewhat spontaneous and keeps the audience interested.
Another skill which I feel had developed over time within post-production is my use of photoshop.
At AS I used photoshop to edit my production company, “ZASK”, logo. At this point, although I had
some knowledge in photoshop, it was still quite limited, and so I ended up just throwing in all of
the effects that I could onto it, and although at the time it seemed like a good idea, the logo
ended up looking quite unprofessional. However, in contract to this, at when creating my digipak, I
decided to go through an important thinking process before making changes to my digipak, and I
had made backups of each change of my digipak incase I wanted to go back to a previous draft
because of a mistake. This thinking process included whether or not the effect in question was
really required, whether or not it fits with the typical codes and conventions of my genre and
whether or not its over the top or too much for one pane, as I didn't want to make the same
mistake as last year. I also had to consider whether or not the digipak and the effects I used on it
fitted with my other ancillary texts ad music video so that it all looked like it came from one
product.
One skill that I developed at A2 which I did not have as AS was my skill of website production. At
A2 I had to make a website as one of my ancillary texts. This was the first time that I created a
website for media studies and therefor I had picked up a number of tricks over the time that I
created this website. One skill that I developed within website creation was my use of HTML. I
was able to incorporate my twitter feed into my website by getting the HTML code provided by
twitter on their website and embedding it into my wix website. I feel a twitter feed is important as
the impact of including a social networking tool allows the artist to communicate and interact with
their audience. I could then drag it to where ever I pleased. I ensured that the colour scheme of
my twitter feed matched my website colours so that it didn't stick out and looked professional.
Another tool that I developed was my use of capitalising off the template. I used my knowledge of
the codes and conventions of the genres websites to transform provided pages by the template
into pages that I needed. For example, wix provided me with an image gallery page, but thanks to
how flexible wix is I was able to transform it into a news page for my artist.
(30 minutes here)
In conclusion, over my progress from AS to A2, I have developed a number of skills which have
helped me create a much more professional product. Looking over my two products from AS to
A2 it is quite clear to see how my skills have developed as my A2 product has rectified most if not
all of the mistakes I had made at AS simply because of the skills that I have developed.