Section 1A - Post Production

Describe how you developed your post production skills for media production and evaluate how these skills informed your creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.  25 Marks.


During Media Studies over the last two years I have expanded my knowledge and understanding of the skills needed during the Post Production stages of my coursework modules, which has also developed my interest in the creativity elements which make my work stand out from the rest. Over the two years we were given two different briefs; In AS the brief was to Create an opening sequence which lasted 2 minutes including titles, we were given the choice to use either a Film Noir or Horror genre, for mine personally I chose horror because I thought the conventions where more interesting. In A2 the brief was to Create a music promo package that included a Music Video, Digipak and Advert. In my specific group we chose the artist Kesha, the song was Cannibal and the genre the catergory it would be outlined under would be Pop.  To give the most detailed answer I can I am going to talk about 7 examples from each of the years of study and then explain the pros and cons for each before commenting on how I have developed the use of these skills from AS to A2.

Post production is a significant part of each coursework module as it is any program or software used after the filming stages of the project. In AS I used Final Cut editing software to create my Horror sequence as I believe it is a much more developed program compared to I - Movie in the way that there are a lot more features available to make the final product have a much more professional feel.
The main elements I focused on using was the marker tools to ensure that the different sound effects that were added on top of the clips where in line with each other and fitted well, this was a positive point of the software because it meant the fittings of the clips and audio where done instantly and by using the markers you can see that when you select a certain part of a clip that would be the only piece that would be edited. Because of this tool it meant I was more open to using a variety of audio to back up my clips to give my sequence a creative flare it  needed.
Also to add to the conventions of a horror film we changed most of our scenes to a black and white format which could be selected easily through the filter section, the only one of the negative points of this program is that no preview can be seen when adding these effects so means you have to take a risk and hope the outcome turns out successfully. The rest of our editing stages when putting our film sequence together only consisted of putting the clips into a running order.

The titles for our horror sequence where created using Livetype, this program allowed you to make your own type of font that suited your preference of work, however the options available to use where not of a large variety but I was lucky enough to find one that fit in with my genre correctly. It allows you to pick the colour, font, font size and filters which was a pro point to me comparing to using Final Cut or Photoshop as they don't have as big of a range as they are mainly very clear and readable fonts whereas I wanted mine to be a sketched font to have some actual link to the work I had created.
When picking my font it then made me think of backgrounds that I could use to present my work on which I edited in Photoshop, this allowed me to use a variety of editing techniques including altering the brightness and contrast of the image, the colour format and again the filters. This meant I had to crop the image down to make sure there was enough width for my titles to fit before converting them back into the beginning of my sequence in Final Cut. However if I had just created my titles in that program compared to Livetype I don't think I would have had a justified deeper thought into adding a background because a plain average font wouldn't have give me the inspiration. Using Photoshop for my background meant I could manipulate it to how I personally wanted it to look to give it that 'horror themed' edge, this is not the type of thing you can do in other photo editing software which is why I use it so often as it has so many pro points about it. You can also convert the images you edited to a variety of different files which means they can be of the best quality depending on the program it's going to be associated with. In this case I converted them to JPEG as I wanted the highest detail to be brought out and stand out to the audience to make them interested into what will follow in the sequence.

I had used the program I - Movie previously at the beginning of my AS year for a variety of tasks but because of it's basic elements that are on offer to use I tried to stay away from using it in my actual coursework brief because I wanted my outcome to be more of a professional standard by using the advanced settings available in Final Cut. However there was a particular scene in our sequence when our main character has a 'flash back' and I wanted to add a selection of flashing lights on top of the clip to ensure the audience clearly noticed what I was trying to achieve. This exact type of affect could be found on I - Movie so I simply transferred the single clip along and edit in the effects I wanted and because it's such an easy program to navigate around it was completed instantly, but because this type of effect looked so simple to create by adding it to my clip I think I could have maybe made the 'flash back' scene myself in Final Cut with the range of effects available the brightness of the flashes for example could be moved to the spots that I feel look more realistic e.t.c

Using programs such as Garageband didn't give me as much inspiration or input to my final product because the software available was too complicated for the simple sounds like a girl screaming and a door closing because using this program meant you could create a full soundtrack which didn't stand out to me because it's not something that I initially wanted to create and I also found it really difficult to use as I think only people who have a music related background of interest could use it to the best of their ability, so for them it would have a selection of positive points as they can create tunes to suit them but because the software was too confusing to use I couldn't get any inspiration or the overall interest that I would need.


Moving onto my post production in A2, I used many of the same types of programs but just developed my skills to make the outcome even better than in AS. Once again Final Cut was used to put my music video together because I had used in previously in AS and I knew all of the futuristic settings that were available could essentially make my video look realistically like the rest of actual singers around today, the markers where used again in A2 but a lot more often because I filmed shots of my main characters in one scene in a variety of different angles I had to use the markers to select sections from each of the clips to make up one full scene, for example selecting a medium close up clip, marking from the start and end part I wanted to use before positioning it in the timeline below. Being able to do this meant I could showcase my skills first hand like a montage of all the different angles by using just one technique, which I could use easily now as I had time to practice. The only negative point about using Final Cut for such a distinct part of our music video was that it took a lot of time to render the clips after even just moving them along, because the scenes where so long some of our lessons where used just rendering clips, however I had the idea of cutting down the clips in order for the time to be shorter and that indeed meant I got more done.
On one particular section I wanted the main character to stand out but because it was filmed in a Photography Studio the colours where very bland, so I was able to find an effect that made each of the clips in that scene move around and jolt sort of like a jump cut as I knew this would catch the audiences attention. Being able to alter how fast or slow the clip moves to make it contrast agaisnt the effect was a pro for the program because it meant I could personally make changes till I thought the clips looked of a high enough standard for my overall final video. This showed my development from AS because I was able to navigate around the program easily and actually change the settings to meet my criteria, however in AS I just used whichever settings the effects where on because my confidence with the program wasn't there.

Because I had to make a digipak and advert to go along side my music video, Photoshop was used a lot in these stages, however because I am a photography student I did develop these skills a lot into the second year and meant I found new techniques that I didn't know existed before. I conducted a separate photo shoot for the covers of the advert and digipak so meant I used the spot healing tool a lot to give my main character the flawless skin that all the pop stars have on these covers, I did have to alter the size of the brush at times depending where I was getting rid of the blemishes. Just by concentrating on her face looking perfect it give me the idea to add extra elements such as eyelashes and whitening her teeth to give her that overall 'pop star edge' that is thought about on every CD cover and advert. I used the brush tool to add the eyelashes however they wouldn't work on some of the images because it all depended on how my model was looking at the camera, because if her head was positioned too far back they wouldn't bend round enough. The dodge tool was used to whiten her teeth, but I only used it very lightly as I didn't want to over do it and make them look fake. Both of these techniques are what I have learnt through practice in my second year so in the AS brief I would have only used the original images and maybe edited through the brightness and contrast however the overall finish would not have been to this sort of standard.

Compared to trying out Garage band like in AS I resorted to using I tunes in A2 because I knew that I only really needed the audio to my chosen song and no extra sound effects would be needed, so I downloaded this from YouTube and then converted to an MP3 file in the program ZamZar before adding it into Final Cut on top of my clips to make sure that the lip syncing was correct. This saved time and meant I was being original by using the actual song, however I couldn't have used any other program to create a tune as it wouldn't have been the same whereas in AS the tunes that we used where optional.

In the evaluation stages of my briefs I used different programs. Both in AS and A2 I used Prezi to present some of my evaluation answers because it was on a much more advanced level to using Microsoft PowerPoint as it meant I could branch off into a range of different points regarding one specific topic and by adding pictures and graphs made the answer look more eye catching. The main comparison was in AS I made a 'path' the movement of a variety of points of around 10-20 but in A2 I made around 90 points on my path, this shows how much more detail and explanation is needed in A2 to get into the higher level mark band. The theme I used in AS was also very simple black to relate to my conventions however I just selected the colour of the chart available however in A2 I used the actual theme wizard which meant I could select the background colour, title colours, arrow colours and box colours which I chose to match my digipak and advert so the brand identity was shown fluent throughout.

Then for the rest of my questions in AS I used the Flash Mic to conduct audio to play on top of my PowerPoint to make my question seem more interesting and show the viewers first hand how I can speak in detail about each of the small points I had made on the PowerPoint. This was easy to use as the only settings on the actual mic included play pause and record so it meant I couldn't conduct the audio I was recording badly, because these were the only settings and they were very basic I didn't want to re use the mic in my A2 evaluation questions as I wanted to challenge myself a lot more which is why I used ScreenR. This software meant I could record my voice on the computer whilst navigating around various programs websites I was speaking about using the mouse. This would allow the audience to see exactly what programs I used and how my skills had developed through the brief to achieve the outcome, it was a very quick and easy program to use but I believe it looks much more professional than using the flash mic as the audio and visuals can be seen together as one unit on ScreenR and give me the opportunity to explain about such a wide range of elements in one short section.