A2 Media
Studies
Skill
Development
Evaluation
Essay
In this essay I hope to clarify how
my education has development the skills necessary to produce a convincing media
product. This will include reference to my previous work i.e. the production of
a music magazine and briefly the production of a music video implementing
skills including photo-shop, photography, cinematography and editing.
First I shall be highlighting my
previous knowledge on the subject of media then I shall explain what I have
learned in my studies of media and finally how I hope to apply these skills to
my future work.
This shall be rather easy to explain
my previous knowledge on any subject relating to media and its production or
analysis process as I had none. Other than the occasional stab at photography I
have had no other practical experience with photo-shop or following the conventions
of media and excluding its consumption on occasion I have had very little
dealings with media products until I began my studies of media.
Upon beginning the course I rapidly
learnt how the conventions of modern media have developed over time in the
process of its production both digitally and physically along with its effect
on the people who consume it from our choice in clothing as dictated by fashion
magazines to our political affiliation swayed by the news we read. This truly
amazed me for one I never fully understood how easily people were led by media
and more shocking was how I was swayed by the media I consumed. My
understanding of the conventions of a magazine grew greater and greater as the
course moved on as evidenced by the various draft of my music magazine, with
each iteration becoming more and more like an appropriate layout for a media
product. This also followed through to the transition phase between AS and A2
where I was required, as part of a group to produce a short extract of a music
video. This was the first time I would have to take the conventions of film and
TV and apply it to a product. These being things such as; specific camera
angles, the position and representation of our artist, all things that I had
never considered before but was now having to put into practice.
After the initial analysis stage of
my media course I began the production of my own coursework. This started with
research of existing products, in this case magazines, research that was
infinitely accelerated by the use of technology specifically the internet.
Without the use of computers and access to the internet I would have had to
have spent hours pawing over magazines not to mention attempting to find
magazines to begin with. A further advantage to the use of computers is that I
could resort to historical analysis and research magazines as far back as the
inception of magazines like Kerrang! and NME to see how media has changed over
the years and how magazines have either adhered to or departed from the
standard conventions in the life span of their publication. A further advantage
was that I was able to not only research magazines I knew about but to research
their publishers as well leading me to find new and different magazines outside
of the genre I was studying giving me not only a wider perspective for my own
publication but also a taste of how different genres operated under different
conventions.
Moving away from the pre viz and
research phase to a more production based application to technology I started
simply by producing draft documents of my first magazine design on Microsoft
Word or Publisher as this was the only program I could use with ease to get a
rough idea of what I wanted. This process was very crude and in effective in
the long run but really shows what lack of skill I had and what I eventually
progressed to. This was the beginnings of my College magazine front cover which
although basic did give me a small introduction into the production process and
how to use photo editing software.
Moving on from Microsoft Word I began
to use programs such as Photoshop, these proved challenging for me to
understand as I had a grasp of computing but not to a level that allowed me to
intuitively use editing programs. After being taught the basics I then thought
up an ambitious design that upon reflection I should have known I was never
going to achieve as I wouldn’t be able develop the skills needed to produce
what I wanted as evidenced by my final product being of a low quality in many
respect. I tried to do too many things at any one time; this resulted in the
fading effects I wanted to achieve on my double page spread becoming more of an
affront to the senses rather than a subtle transition of colour throughout the
image. Im not exactly sure as to why I found this overly difficult but I will
probably put it down to my lack of understanding in regards to the layering
system and possibly my overuse of it. I distinctly remember trying to add a
coloured overlay to my work however I was unable to use the appropriate sliders
to achieve the colour I wanted and resorted to layering colour on top of colour
until I was left with a brown page. This does admittedly show a lack of
development however coming for an utter lack of knowledge any progression was
development of some kind all be it in the wrong direction.
Throughout my media course I do
regret saying that my creativity in the field of magazine ideas or many media
formats in general was very limited and even more regrettably, still is.
Although this essay is being written with the idea of development in mind I
believe it is vitally important to also highlight where I was outright unable
to develop, this is no more evident than my creative aspect as my designs
rarely changed throughout my course and were attempts only to copy existing
work. The only evidence I may be able to produce as to my creativity is not in
the overall product but the component of its parts this being my photo shoots
in which I may have taken a cliché idea but I tried to transform it into
something of interest, this work isn’t as evident within my final product as I
would have liked it to be but I felt at the time that if I featured it too much
it would detract from the genre I was following.
In conclusion this essay may come
across and inherently negative, this is because I am perfectly accepting of my
failures but I also believe that within the shortfalls there are huge periods
of learning where the theory behind a product was easily understood however the
application of such may not have be such a success.
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