Skills Development Analysis

Overview

Throughout our coursework in media we have used and development a range of skills whilst creating the opening 5 minutes of our documentary “Life Choices”, a magazine article to inform the readers about the documentary and the radio trailer advertising the documentary.

Camera

When filming and capturing scenes and a variety of shots for our 5 minute opening sequence we used Canon HG 20 camcorder. This camera allowed us to blur the focus of what we were shooting, also to zoom in and out of a shot.

Tripod

Along with the camera we used a tripod, this allowed the camera to film a steady scene without making the shot shaky in anyway which makes our documentary look like it was to a professional standard. The tripod also allowed us to tilt the camera so we could use a high or low angle shot. We used a range of shots in order to make the documentary engaging for the audience. At the beginning, we struggled to use the tripod as we weren’t taught how to use them before we set out filming however after the first day of filming we became more established and developed new techniques in using the equipment.

Apple MacAfter each filming session we had to upload our footage on to the Apple Macs, this

was a challenging task but it became simpler after more frequent usage. This

included getting a power cable to plug into the

camera, an usb connector to plug into the

mac, and use the mac to copy and paste the

footage into our drive. The Apple Macs were

a difficult task to master as we had never used Apple Macs before, the system is

completely different to a normal computer but nevertheless it was an essential piece

of technology when editing our footage and creating our radio trailer.

ProgrammesIn addition, we used programmes such as Final Cut Express, one program that we had never used before, it was quite hard to grasp at the beginning, but we were more familiar with the programme after we were taught how to use it. We also used Garageband to create the music for our documentary and radio trailer. In Garageband we could mix the sound levels, create new music via the different sound tracks that were already there, we could even record live sound, using microphones and other instruments ourselves. Furthermore, we used Adobe Indesign to create our double page spread magazine; we had good knowledge from this last year, but were a bit rusty because of the occasional usage after the coursework to produce a music magazine from last year therefore we required a bit of help from teachers and other students.