Sian Lynes

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. Refer to a range of examples

in your answer to show how these skills have developed over time.

The use of technology contributed to my overall creative decision making vastly from my foundation portfolio to my advanced portfolio. This has allowed me to greatly improve over the 2 years to a high standard of production.

For my foundation portfolio the technology I used was Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create my magazine cover, contents and double page spread. This was an industry standard program that allowed me to experiment with creative techniques that would not be available by hand. For example, I learned new techniques such as applying a gradient map behind my text and manipulating the saturation of my photography to enhance my star image and house style of my magazine. However, in my advanced portfolio I used the same program, but an updated version (CS6). I was able to apply new techniques due to my previous knowledge in my foundation portfolio and be more experimental. For example, I used my creative skills through a hand-drawn cartoon style sketch through a scanner into Photoshop and used a darken layer to remove the white area of the paper. I then applied editing properties such as decreased contrast and increased brightness to make the edges appear more solidified. This gave my magazine advert and digipak for my advanced portfolio appear as if it had been created using the paint brush tool. Using this scanning technology in combination with Photoshop and my non-technological creative skills allowed my product to appear more professional and to industry standard. I also used Photoshop's paint bucket tool and shape tool to create polka dots on the sketch which were not drawn on as well as rearrange the layout using the scale tool until I was happy with the outcome. I would not have been able to achieve this level of skill in my foundation portfolio, showing the extent of how technology had aided my creative decision making to create a sophisticated end product. Therefore I would disagree with the theoretical statement that "technology has taken all the creativity out of media production" as in my case without it I would not have achieved a successful outcome at A2.

I made progression in my knowledge of media skills to my advanced portfolio as I had to learn a completely new software for the creation of my music video, Adobe Premiere Elements 8.0. I had basic experience in similar tools used for Windows Movie Maker for my foundation portfolio evaluation. I used my preliminary tasks to experiment and gain knowledge of new tools, such as fade in and fade out and more accurate use of straight cutting to the beat of the music. I took initiative to use Youtube as a platform to tutorials on how to insert and apply filter effects to my raw footage. This sped up the process and influenced my creative decision making as the effects that were available gave me a much wider choice of options and were not present at AS. Therefore I was had more freedom to choose effects to the genre I had chosen at A2, rather than making creative decisions based on the music magazine brief given to use at AS and tailoring my choices around that.

My use of web 2.0 certainly increased my creative decision making as it enabled me to research more in-depth into my target market etc. At AS, I made creative decisions for my magazine such as the layout, masthead and coverlines by annotating conventions of other texts on my blog. However, at A2 I used wider platforms such as Youtube and social networking sites such as Twitter to create a star image for my product and to see which other texts were most effective. Therefore I used digital technology more to create a developed brand image, creating mise-en-scene and adhering to

Sian Lynes

narrative codes, which was not as widely applied during AS. From this I could create bricolage such as using 1950s mise-en-scene in my music video and mixing it with modern-day music in the Premiere Elements program to create a completely new creative text.

Overall, from as to A2 I learned the important of developing my skills through preliminary activities such as a mock-up digipak and advert and preliminary music video to advance my skills. However at AS this was not prioritised, instead the acquiring of digital technology skills on Photoshop and applying them was more of the case.