Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making

In year 12 my production task was creating an opening for a Thriller film and in year 13 for my A2 production  I was given the task of creating a music video, website and an album cover. For both years the main areas that required the use of digital technology were the research, planning and construction stages. 

The main differences between the production from my first year production and my second year production was the confidence in and breadth of the digital technology used in each stage. For the research and planning stages though the technology used stayed mostly the same, for my Thriller film opening I used websites such as Youtube, Facebook and also film critiquing websites such as IMDB. Youtube was used for a large part of my research as it was the best place to watch the openings and extracts of both urban and thriller movies this was especially important as we were aiming to create a hybrid genre film it was imperative that we identified the main codes and conventions of both genres so that we could create a hybrid of the two. I found that thriller openings were enigmatic and used suspense and tension to entice and entertain the audience I also noted that like in the 'Vertigo' opening they often used long tracking shots and close ups combined with jump cuts to draw the views into the narrative of a character but then distant them from it to draw them into the characters and story. And in urban films it was often a mixture of emotive characters, location shots and flashes of action to draw in the viewer and establish the urban setting after I had established these conventions I used review sites to learn how these films had been received to see if there interpretation of the conventions was well accepted but also used Facebook as a means of asking my target audience directly what their preferences were in these films. And as a result we were able to combine the two genres effectively. In the research stage of my A2 we used most of the same sources although we new because we were producing such a conventional music video production are product was going to be largely based around popular youth culture and we could the fore use an even wider breath of resources such as tumblr, music blogs, celebrity websites, fashion websites in order to research into the conventions of existing music videos for example Diggy Simmons' music videos that were always illustrative videos that used close ups, fast edits, emotion and movement to showcase the star and the emotions connected to the lyrics and narrative which were the basis of our treatment and then use the other sources to establish the popular trends and iconography such as skating or specific clothing. 

I developed my skills using digital technology quite significantly during the construction stages from As to A2 in my As production it was my first time operating a high performance camera and we were often limited by kurt lack of knowledge and experience in operating the camera and in the different ways of using it to get varied shots. For example in my AS production we wanted a long tracking shot that changed between over the shoulder and P.O.V perspectives but found it difficult to get the camera steady for both types of shots which resulted in some shaky shots that couldn't be used and proved to be quite difficult for us to do at the time, however in my A2 production I found this wasn't really an issue and as we wanted to to have aspects of skating in our video we found ways of creating a moving steady cam which allowed us the creative freedom to have dynamic tracking shots that flowed like roller skates or have very low tracking shots using a skateboard for example which helped us have a far more interesting music video that also fit the conventions of our genre. The same applies to the editing of my two products although like in my AS production I added a colour filter to change the tone of the production in my A2 piece with improved skills in Final Cut I was able to make use of more interesting effects and also correct any issues we had whilst filming; for example we had a contact and colour issue that was correcting in the editing stage that i would not have been able to do last year which would have lowed the quality of the final production. 

Over the time of the course I was able to develop my skills in creative digital media and enable myself to effectively create products that accurately represent my creative process because I am less restricted by not being able to use specific software and technologies.