Top Boy Presentation

Q1B Example Answer

Research and Planning Essay

The two texts i created for my coursework for AS and A-level were a film opening and a music video. For my film opening i produced an action comedy called 'Not so die hard', this production was about a group of people planning for a back robbery but with a twist of comedic flaws. Following this for my music video i produced an alternative rock song called 'Drugs', the reason i chose this genre was due to it allowing various approaches to the video in regards to color, image, mood and synergy. Also the song allowed me the chance to be the main performer and to have a say on how we could experiment with angles to emphasize the artists image.

For AS I produced various forms of research for our film opening, this included similar genre film openings like 'Central Intelligence' and '21 Jump Street'. The main influencer out of these films was central intelligence, this is down to the overall mood and personalities of the characters. There is a clear resemblance in our film opening to this film, as our film opening also includes a variation of character abilities (one smart, one less intelligent), this is the main aspect that influenced us as we wanted to create an action film that held aspects of comedy that our young audience could relate to. Although this film was accurate to our genre representation we didn't do enough research into other films that had a greater perception on camera use, this was clear in our opening as we had limited resources to relate back to during construction. This is the opposite to our A2 production as we done thorough research into all camera, mise en scene, editing and sound before continuing to construction.

In order to produce a more successful production for A2 we ensured our research was thorough and in detail to allow us to create the best music video as possible. This research included a wider variety of music videos like 'Yamborghini high' for our editing, 'The hills' for our narrative and performance and finally 'No rest' for the use of camera angles in relation to empowerment. We decided to use these three music videos as inspiration as they each held aspects that we believed could combine to produce a accurate representation of our artist, lyrics and genre. By creating a steal-o-matic and individual screen shots of these music videos we was able to create a visual representation of the aspects we liked the most from each video and how they would work with our backing music.

In order to try and produce the best productions we also researched our target audiences for AS and A2, however similar to the real products research our A2 research held greater detail. For both of these this research was key as it let us gain an insight into what it took for our production to gain the interest of our target audiences. The difference at A2 however was that we produced various surveys online and practical questionnaires for our target audience to complete. This way we could relate our planning, and production based on these research results.

For our planning phase of our productions we created shooting schedules, story boards and risk assessments for both productions, this allowed us to gain a visual plan of what we wanted to produce. However the shooting schedule and story board for each AS and A2 were the most important part of our transition from planning to construction. Both of these planning factors allowed us to gain a greater understanding of the camera angles we wished to use for both productions. However, after completing both productions it became clear that at A2 we used over 90 different shots in comparison to the 30 at AS, this is three times the amount and therefore evaluates the difference in depth, growth and quality of both the productions and our individual understanding and abilities.

When I came down to our evaluations at AS we had limited understanding of presentation forms. The forms we used were simple, these were PowerPoint, Microsoft word, Emaze and Prezi. These platforms allowed us to produce basic presentations of our evaluation questions and therefore restricted the amount of marks we was able to receive. However for A2 after researching further platforms and improving our ability we broadened our ways of presenting and used software's like adobe premier to produce a evaluation video and powtoon to produce a creative approach.

As a result I have grown significantly from AS to A2 as I have became to understand the importance of research and planning and what effect both have on the final production outcome.

1B guide

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Question 2 Guide

Section 1 Past Questions

Digital Technology Essay

Digital Technology – how your skills have progressed and how they helped you in your productions

Digital technologies has had a great impact on my progression, ability and understanding of media products from As (year 12) to A2 (year 13). They have allowed me to broaden my approach to tasks and develop my ability to produce a professional film and music video production.

In year 12 in order to produce a film opening i used a Sony handy cam (5.3MP), this provided a poor quality shot and a limited quality of clarity in low lights. In order to improve the professional quality of my music video at A2 i used a Canon 1200D, this gave professional lighting contrast, high clarity and an overall higher level production. For my film opening we use the mise en scene to emphasize the genre and narrative of the opening, this allowed me to use a limited number of shot types and cuts such as; straight/short cuts, level and low shots and jump cuts. This lack of variety caused the overall level of production to be lower as it required less skill and time to produce the film opening. At A-level in year 13 my music video pushed my ability even further and ensured I used a wider variety of digital technology to improve the professional quality of my production. In order to produce a high level production that represented my artist's image and genre i used various types of shots such as low tracking, high, low, level and vertical panning shots along with various transitions like jump, straight, fade, spiral and reverse transitions to push my ability to the limit and maximize the quality of my production. This required a high level of camera skills and editing understanding, and without these skills i would not believe my music video production was successful.

Part of my productions development was producing film poster,tour posters and magazine articles through year 12 and 13. In year 12 i made a film poser for our film opening using Microsoft word, this is because i had limited skill and knowledge so used this ammatuar application. This software simply allowed me to insert a photo and place text over the top and therefore didn't produce a professional quality outcome. In year 13 i pushed my ability and used a adobe Photoshop to edit and enhance my tour poster and magazine cover. This software allowed me to manipulate the contrast, clarity and overlaying layers on each image, therefore, allowing me to produce a quality outcome to a high standard.

During my progression from year 12 to 13 i used an online software called blogger that allowed me to document my research, planning and inspirations. Whilst in year 12 i used blogger to document my simple ideas and inspirations, i done this using my basic ability and understanding of how to input a image, embed a video or insert text that was relevant to my progression through that year. This caused my year 12 blog to consist of a vast majority of simple presentation and blocks of text. In order to improve in year 13 i extended my understanding and knowledge of this software by learning how to adjust the layout, theme and embed various presenting tools. An example of this is how i discovered presentation tools such as prezi, emaze and vimeo. These all allowed me to increase the clarity of information and improve the overall quality and outlook of my blog. As well as this improving my use and development of digital technology through presentation software's and tool's it also allowed me to produce 100 blog posts of various presenting methods in year 13 compared to 50 blog posts that consisted of heavy blocks of text.

The most important use of digital technology from year 12 to 13 was when editing my productions. For both my productions in year 12 and 13 i used Adobe Premier Pro, however, my ability to use this software was greatly contrasted from year 12 to 13. In year 12 i started by experimenting with the software and producing small editing task that allowed me to learn how to sequence, import and add transitions to video clips. With this basic knowledge and skill set i then created a Juno task in which i had to import an overlaying video whilst replicating the video with various shot types and cuts, transitions and basic effects. this task allowed me to improve my understanding of camera shots and basic editing skills like slowing/speeding up a clip, sequencing videos, basic transitions and a basic contrast effect. This skill set gave me a basis to improve on in year 13, i started my producing a preliminary music video in which all these skills were needed to replicate a video of my choice. However, this task required me to develop my ability to use new transitions and effects such as slide transitions and split screen effects. With this task i was able to improve further my knowledge of the variety of transitions and how to use them effectively in a music video. Finally my music video production was a test of my ability in using this digital technology to edit our video. This is because we used color correction, reverse transitions and clips, overlaying color and image effects and after effects to produce the most professional music video production we could.

Therefore, in conclusion my use of digital technology has been the greatest factor of my development from year 12 to year 13, as it has allowed me to produce progressively more professional productions from my film opening to my music video, it has allowed me to document my inspirations, research and planning across various presentation stages. Digital Technology is therefore one of the most important factor of producing successful media productions.