Tuesday, March 4, 2014

LESSON 2

Describe how your analysis of real media texts informed your own creative decisions

 

Before starting each of our media productions we had to look into what genres we wanted to be a part of for our opening sequence and music video.  By looking into these genres we had an understanding of the conventions that these real media text use and how we can then bring these into our own media productions. This is going to make them look more professional and follows the audience’s needs by what they want and want to get out of watching these types of genres.

When we started creating our first media production, during AS our knowledge and understanding of the conventions that real media texts use were basic and didn't have much of an understanding of it, because of this we had to research and analysis the genre that we wanted to be in, which was ‘Thriller’. By analysing real media texts such as ‘The Ring’ and ‘Se7en’ we were able to see that many opening sequences are dark, dingy and mysterious looking, this was following the enigma coding, wanting to keep things hidden from the audience so it wasn't all given away. By seeing this we decided to add this convention into our own opening sequence, such as at the beginning we created the scene by having a dark background of the room and then having one lit candle on the table, this was giving off a mysterious effect. Another convention that real media texts used was the non-digetic sounds, this was to create an atmosphere for the audience, some real media texts such as 'Halloween' and 'Saw' have their own distinctive sound, this is to create an known ideology for the audience so they are aware of what is happening. The non-digetic sound that we used was a slow paced, contemporary which was composed by an orchestra. We chose this piece of music as it sounds professional and goes along with the opening sequence well. 

After we created our AS opening sequence we had a lot more knowledge about the types of conventions that genres follow and that the audience look for. When we started our A2 media production for Music Videos we already had some background knowledge about the conventions as us as an audience member. One convention that we used throughout our music video was that we used a lot of close-ups and mid shots of the singer looking through and into the camera. This is one of the main conventions of the genre that our song 'Hey You Beautiful - Olly Murs', one of the reasons that the artist does this is to get and feel a connection with the audience. We have used this throughout many times during the music video. Another convention that we also followed was that we have a story line throughout the music video. This is one of the main conventions that music videos in this genre tend to use, this is so the audience have a better understanding of the song and able to see what the artist is singing about. Many artists use story lines throughout their music videos, such as in One Directions - What Makes You Beautiful' the story line is based around love and serenading the female actors. We decided to do something which does follow the same concept, created a story line about a couple's relationship. This helped us as a group to get some ideas about what we wanted to create out of the music video, this was going to follow the audiences needs of what they look for in music videos in the category genre.

By having to analysis the conventions of both real media texts we was able to use these in our own piece of media production work. This was going to make them look more professional. Also we have gained a lot more knowledge and understanding from the media production of AS to A2, about what conventions are used to fit the specific genres in the media. 


Timetoast

Monday, March 3, 2014

TimeToast Timeline

[Lesson 1] Skills Development

Skills Development in AS :
During the gap between AS and A2 my reserach skills has improved from a basic level to a much more advanced level in many ways by using much more technical skills such as ICT and devloping my writing skills making things much simple such as bullet pointing my presentations so its much easier to read so I could always look back at my points that i did instead of reading a paragraph again.

Skills Developed in planning production:
In AS I was not a very organised person since it was my first time planning and filming videos which I was not really a proffession at for example I did not use softwares to plan such as using timetoast to make things easier for me. By using timetoast it help me see through all my work in order of the dates i posted in which organised me really well during A2 which i hoped I could of used during AS. In A2, I mostly used the help of my team mates as i knew teamwork was a really important thing we need and I had to trust them no matter what or we all would have achieved what we needed to.I used different types of planning softwares which helped me check what i needed to do and researching before actually doing my music video.

Skills Developed in video work:
During AS, I did not understand all the basic programs which I needed to know such as final cut pro and sound track pro. Also I knew the basics whilst taking videos of shot angles but then developed much better during A2 as I knew all the technical skills behind them and understood all the key terms which taught me how to hold a camera and how to shoot the video properly as a proffesional. For example in AS, I always had the camera either out of focus or not in the rule of thirds which are the most important things you need in a music video or a film. However in A2, I included all these skills from the help of my teachers and learning new things during this course.