Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology Essay

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples and show how these skills developed over time. Digital technologies were a crucial part of both of my productions; using digital technologies has also extremely developed over time and you can see a significant change in the A2 music video production as the piece was greatly developed in terms of technology and creativity. In the production stage of our AS piece we have used a Cannon DSLR camera in filming of our entire production. It was extremely helpful as it was easy to use, portable but also a major advantage of it was that it allowed us to an instant playback to aid our creative decision making. We did not use this feature enough in AS. However once we returned to produce our A2 music video, I have made sure that we checked all the footage at the location so we could immediately reshoot the scenes that weren’t good enough at the location, which also saved us time in going back into the location to redo it all. In our A2 production we have used the same camera (Cannon DSLR) due to a convenience of the camera and the high quality footage it was producing, it was portable, easy to use and easy to set up. Considering our filming had to take place in six different location it was very convenient to use that camera. However, we wanted to enhance our A2 production with other filming technologies in other to enhance our creative decision making, so therefore we decided to use JVC HDV 720p studio camera for our performance part. However we decided not to use it at the end due to the quality difference between the DSLR and the studio camera. That way we only used a footage from the DSLR, however the use of JVC HDV 720p gave us some practice using the high quality studio camera and also gave us an opportunity to explore different filming equipment, which also has played a part on our creative decision making. Our skills in audio technology we not well utilized at A2 as we were required  to create a music video for a contemporary artist. However, the use of Final Cut Pro allowed us to change the volume levels throughout the music video where needed (e.g. the volume levels were used at the start of the music video were we decided to fade the music in to slowly and nicely flow into the music video, and we have also used it at the end to fade out the audio.) Our competence with Final Cut Pro this year has enabled us to be more ambitious in terms of editing and as a result end up with more creative and individual piece. According to Goodwin, each genre of music has certain conventions that their associated videos should comply to. We have noticed, whilst studying and researching into our genre and the artists a common trend of cutting to the beat. We employed use of excessive jump cuts within the narrative in order to underline the feelings of the protagonist, which was also another example of complying with theorist’s ideology using digital technology in order to develop our creative decision making. Although out skills in Garage Band were not as fully utilized at A2 as they were at AS, were we used Garage Band to create a score. However, in most recent production of our music video I was required to use Photoshop in order to create a digipak and a poster. In order to be more creative instead of using the screenshots taken out of the video, I have decided to organize a separate photo-shoot, were I went out and took photographs myself using DLSR camera again, in order to get the high quality pictures. The fact that I also do Photography as one of my A-levels gave me an advantage of organizing a photo-shoot and also using Photoshop as my editing tool. Photoshop was definitely a software, which played a big part in using a digital technologies and the skills used in that department have definitely enhanced the creative decision making.