Q1.a. Post-Production

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 (25 marks)

Throughout my 2 years of studying media, my post production skills have improved especially, editing as I have gained a better understanding of the programme, Adobe Premiere and how to use it. I have used creative decisions during post production to produce a film opening for my AS product, titled Amnesia, and during my year in A2, I, along with 2 other group members, produced a cross promotional package promoting a new artist, under the name of iSO. During the production of both my foundation and advanced portfolios, post production was an important feature as it enabled me to develop my skills further in terms of editing and creativity along with that. At AS, my skills using all software were limited and basic whereas at A2 I was able to use my knowledge and gain even more technical ability to achieve a more professional and industry standard level of production of my work.

At AS post production stage, it gave me a chance to put my editing skills into practise. Before AS I was unfamiliar with the software therefore I had to start fresh and learn how to use the programme and then put the effects to use.  At AS, our first task was to familiarise ourselves with, the editing programme we would use throughout the two years, Adobe premiere, by creating a video of dancing bears. This included the basic skills of importing clips and placing them onto the timeline using the simple cutting tools. We then had the opportunity to recreate the opening scene of Juno with a partner. We had to be able to reproduce an identical version of it including the filming, costumes and editing. This enabled me to become familiar with using transitions and effects on certain clips in order to get the desired effect to the original clip. I used a programme called Adobe Premiere to create my film opening, Amnesia. This allowed me to start with a blank timeline and rearrange shots to fit an order which I felt was appropriate. This involved me using my basic skills for this programme. The pace of the film opening was relatively slow, therefore I didn’t need to cut the shots often which allowed me to place longer pieces of footage. When I placed the footage onto the timeline, I was able to apply basic filters onto the footage, for example black and white filtering, by applying a black and white filter over selected clips. I was able to add more simple transitions such as ‘Dip to Black’ and changing the speed. For my film opening I needed to add some titles over the shots for it to look realistic, therefore I learnt how to add still titles and rolling titles. I learnt about the pace of narrative for film opening but my skills developed drastically when editing my music video.

At A2, my skills were still fairly limited but I was able to apply simple effects and transitions onto the clips placed into my timeline. We were given a task whereby we had to film 5 different shots and then edit them using Adobe Premiere which was really useful to me and helped me as it gave me an insight into all the different shots and effects we can use in our music video to keep it interesting. It also helped as I was able to practise and expand on my editing skills when I had to edit a cloning shot, split screen, reverse shots, stop animation and depth of field. It enabled me to develop my skills as I used YouTube tutorials to expand skills and then be able to put them into practise in my music video. I was able to progress because the advanced portfolio was less restricting in terms of genre as our rap genre is quite broad which enabled me to use different tools and effects which wouldn’t have been appropriate at AS. My preliminary task also helped me to develop my skills as I had to edit an exact copy of Britney Spears’ ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’. However, this video limited me from showing off the new skills I had developed as it only need some simple transitions and cutting. I sped up the occasional shot too so that the shot would fit in with the timing of the original video. My music video enabled me to develop my skills, particularly in editing as it was suitable to add more effects, transitions and cuts. The pace of the song was a lot faster than my AS film opening so I needed to make sure I cut the shots a lot faster to keep up with the pace and to make it look realistic.  I used several effects including dip to black which was a simple effect that I already knew how to use along with speeding some of the shots up. Although, I developed my skills by learning how to use some new effects for example an animation which creates a blinking effect. To create this I needed to put two shots together and have them move up and down at the same time, this creates the ‘blinking effect’. Some of footage wasn’t too wobbly when we filmed it so I decided to add a new effect I’d learnt to use which was a warp stabiliser onto some shots which made them look more professional. In order to show of the skills I’d learnt throughout the year but also the ones I had developed, I added a feathering effect which blurred the outline of the shot to give the shot an edgy effect. Changing the colour of the background was a new editing skill that I put into practise for my music video and it worked well in my video because the short bursts of colour contrasted the darker colours and background within my digipak and website. The base colour was yellow and so you need to select the clip and chose the eye dropper tool which allows you to change the colour from yellow to whichever colour you wish. We used this several times throughout the middle of the video as we decided it was effective. I altered the brightness and contrast levels in my music video so that all the shots looked the same as looking back at my film opening, the brightness changes on most shots which doesn’t look professional.

At AS, I produced a film poster for which I had to use Adobe Photoshop. Before creating a film poster, I had to create a production logo using the same programme I would use for my film poster. When creating my production logo, I changed the levels of the brightness and contrast so that the logo and text looked together. I also changed the shadowing of the original image so that it looked effective yet recognising. At AS, I produced a film poster for which I had to use Adobe premiere. My skills were basic when it came to using this programme but from watching YouTube tutorials, I soon learnt some simple yet effective techniques I could incorporate into my film poster. I was able to create simple layers when making the poster as I wanted a background image but then I also wanted some writing to feature over the top. I applied a black and white filter effect to the image so that synergy was created between my products. I then added text over the top to create a realistic film poster. In the post production of this ancillary text, I gathered all the basic skills I would need in order to create a simple yet effective film poster.

At A2, I produced a digipak, using Adobe Photoshop, and a website, using a new programme, Wix. I had to use Photoshop much more than at AS so I decided to teach myself some specific skills through watching YouTube tutorials. This meant I could incorporate some more complex effects into my digipak and album cover which would make them as good as they could be and interesting to look at. For my album cover, I added some colours around the outside of the image of iSO which represented the coffin outline as we tried to include this from the video, whereby the character is being buried alive. I also added some text onto this album cover, but experimented with the way in which it was displayed on the cover as we wanted it to stand out but didn’t want it too appear to large. We were able to apply effects which made the title change shape and adjust the shadowing and colour to it. For my digipak, we also used adobe premiere as it allowed us to experiment with new effects to make our digipak unique. This enabled me to add layers to my image with text on top and I added different effects to change the brightness of the background. At A2, I also used Wix in order to create my website, however I was new to using this programme but I discovered how to use it through trial and error as I was able to experiment with the layout, style, fonts and content.