Personal Skills Audit Name: Alexander Hester

Skills acquired How did these skills contribute to the creation of

your product?

How will you develop these skills during the A2 project?

Digital technology- What

equipment/software packages did you use to produce your production?

Throughout Media I have gathered a lot of new knowledge on how to create pieces of media using a range of things such as cameras, and various different pieces of editing software such as GarageBand, FinalCut, Adobe Photoshop and other websites to share my work in a creative way such as Prezi and Slideshare.

The new uses of cameras I found helped greatly in creating a more realistic final production also GarageBand will allow me to add sounds and effects that made my final piece a lot more interesting and professional. Also the skills I learnt using FinalCut were essential to creating my piece as filming my piece in one continuous shot would’ve been near impossible to do and also it would have gotten me near no marks. And finally the skills I achieved on Photoshop allowed me to create an advert for my final product that seemed realistic and believable.

The skills with Photoshop will allow my group and me to create a realistic and believable digipack for our music video. The skills on FinalCut are again essential to creating our music video as there will be many shots from different angles and we simply won’t be able to create a believable music video with the right angles and shots from just one simultaneous take, also again I doubt it will achieve my group anything of worth mark-wise. GarageBand I feel will not play such a big part in this production due to a lot if not all of the sound being done with a single track that isn’t found on GarageBand. Finally the new skills with using cameras will allow my group and me to create a fully

believable video that will incorporate all of the angles and shots that you would expect to see in a real and professional video.

Post production- What software did you

use to create your production?

- Discuss specific features of the software.

FinalCut editing software played a big part in the creation of my final AS production along with GarageBand that allowed me to add sound effects to my piece.

FinalCut allowed me to put my piece together quite well and edit out snippets and bits of film that were irrelevant to the production and GarageBand allowed me to add sound effects that gave the production a more authentic feel.

I plan on continuing to use FinalCut in my A2 production to piece together a successful Final music production however I feel that the GarageBand software will play a lesser role as all the sound in the production belongs to a single track however it maybe will feature in the opening to the video.

Research and Planning- What tasks did you

complete when preparing to film your sequence?

- How did your planning help the smooth progression of your film?

We were first given a preliminary task, which was to go and film a short 1 – 2 minute sequence that used our range of media knowledge so far such as camera angles, shots and editing.

This was a taster for what we would have to do in our final product and I feel that it was worth going out and getting a feel for the camera and editing software so that it was a lot easier later on when we were tasked with creating out final assessed product.

We will continue using different camera angles and lighting effects to carry through certain feels and messages in our later productions as I feel they play a certain part that helps get across a message that we would want to get across in our music video.

Using conventions of real media texts

- Which texts did you

I analysed texts such as opening credits for movies such as spider man and lord of the

Learning about how the opening credits are set out in the recent movies helped my

I shall analyse music videos in the same way to get an idea of how artists map out openings to

analyse?- Did you take any

inspiration from the conventions found from your research?

rings to get ideas of how some of the biggest movies to date set their openings and how they set out cast, director and producers etc.

group and me to map out how we wanted to set up the opening credits for our final production and how to do it effectively.

their singles and albums then apply this to my group’s work to make it more real and believable.

Creativity - were our ideas for your portfolio imaginative and unique or did you adhere to conventions?

Throughout the course I learnt new ways to present my work that made it pleasant to look at and not just sticking to plain word documents.

Learning of these new ways to present my productions and analyses, I shared a lot of my work through websites such as prezi which is interactive and pleasant to look at whilst others I displayed on slideshare which keeps looking at the info simple and easy.

I plan to continue some ideas gained from AS such as presenting posts in prezi and slideshare however I shall also look for more interactive and visually attractive ways to present work that I have produced.