Digital Technology Essay Question

Explain how your skills in the creative use of digital technology developed over time

The use of digital technologies has played a massive part in our media products. My technical skills and my ability to produce innovative film opening, digipaks as well as websites and a music video has improved massively over my two years of study. Without the digital tools like premier pro and YouTube these products would not have been possible.

Blogger was the main source of publicising our work. We used it as a digital note book to keep track of all of our work. From year 12 to now the detail and quality of my blogs has drastically improved as I not include more information about what each post is representing as well as posting more useful and creative presentation tools. Last year I would have posted 10 pictures onto the blog and you would have had to scroll down the page to view them all. I have recently produced a photo album containing all of our photo shoot images by using amaze, a better way of presenting my work. In addition to emaze I have endeavoured into the use of Prezi, survey money and also virtual videos. In year 12 I struggled to use all of these software’s as they can be confusing to use. But I stuck at it and I am now able to produce creative animations to present all of my work. For the evaluation, I produced a video presentation with the use of a green screen and many other editing tools such as the titles on premier pro to illustrate what was being spoken about.

Last year when producing our Juno prelim and our final film opening we used a Sony HDR digital camera. It was useful at the time although it wasn’t of a very good quality and also didn’t have many technical advances that we could adapt to our needs. We evolved from this to using the iPhone 8+. This was because had a secondary 56mm-equivalent “telephoto” lens system and you could also use the 28mm-equivalent wide-angle lens for photographs which were the added features that we used. We used these features for the multiple photoshoots which took place whilst producing our music video.

I also used adobe Photoshop. In year 12 it allowed us to produce a film poster, yet I wasn’t aware of how to use the brightness tools and therefore the image appears dark and blurred. Recently we have created a tour poster as well as a digipak and magazine article. Both of these products are bright and colourful. I also used the sharpen tool to make the image crisp and professional.

Furthermore, our editing software was premier pro. In year 12 we were first introduced to premier by practicing with a dancing animals task, learning how to import footage and match it with a sound track. We then moved onto a Juno task where we attempted to duplicate a film opening. This was successful as it gave us knowledge of how to use the titles and also how to use specific effects to distort the shot, scribble effect. Our final film opening worked well as it clearly portrayed a story. Yet the editing wasn’t very advanced and therefore it didn’t have a sharp professional vibe. We have evolved from this unprofessional product to an amazing bright and colourful music video. We used three-way colour correct to enforce our pastel pink theme and this then linked our digipak and website together. For the evaluation, premier pro also allowed me to be inventive with how I presented my answer. The transition effects meant I could make the titles slide in and out, cross fade between two images and zoom in and out when needed. Making it a fun and interactive presentation. 

To make our websites we used the internet program wix.com. This allows you to create a website either from scratch or to use a template on a number of categories. For the film opening, we had a simplistic layout with minimal information and images. This suited the specification yet when producing the music video website, we were able to excel in all of these areas. We used a template of a music artist as our website was for a music artist. We then used the tools given to make the website our own and unique to our artist. We added a clear colour scheme to relate t to our band image and incorporate our other products. We were also able to play around with the layout of the website and include extra pages full of information, all thanks to the wix software.

Throughout the two years I have learned multiple new skills and techniques and I know many more ways in which I can express my creativity.