Skills Development.

I will write about how the abundance of digital technology available to me aided my creativity and how my skills with Digital technology and my creativity have gotten better.

At the start of A2 media I once again started a blog to track my developments on the project and get feedback from people. I used the integrated poll system on blogger to ask questions and gather feedback on different aspects of my project such as the genre of the video and how my ancillary texts worked together. Using this feedback I was able to make adjustments and alterations to my project.
 Digital Technology also helped me create most of the effects and editing of my music video as well as the visual appeal of my ancillary texts. I recorded the footage of my actors using a Canon MiniDV tape camcorder which i then captured onto a computer using Matrox Media tools software.
 I then used Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 in order to edit my production including cutting shots to match the beat of the song, a convention of most videos, synchronising the playing of the guitar in some of my shots to match the song, and adding effects to the video such as Chroma Key, which allowed me to transpose another background onto the shot, for example I changed the background of my performer from the wall of the College's green room to a Cyan colour. It also let me add title slides which I used to alert the consumers of the text to the name of the song, as well as the name of the record company. The other feature of this software I used was the ability to speed up or slow down the clip. all of these effects and features allowed me to expand my thinking while creating the video, as well as influencing some of my creative decisions based on things being possible which I hadn't previously anticipated.
 Initially I also wanted to use Adobe Flash CS3 in order to produce animated segments for my video, but then dismissed the idea because I realised I only wanted to try it was because it was available to try. This is an example of how digital technology has had a negative effect on my creative development.
  While producing my ancillary texts, I first used a Kodak M520 Digital camera with Panorama function to capture a panoramic picture. I then opened this picture using Adobe Photoshop CS3 where i applied a series of effects such as 'Posterise' to alter the image's appearance in order to produce a background for my digipak cover. I then added text which was a custom font 'Extravaganza' which Photoshop allowed me to make use of. Finally I adjusted the size of the picture and the text in order to produce my magazine advert, with photoshop allowing quick duplication of imagery meaning I had texts which shared main features and could be related visually to each other and to my music video.
 Overall, the presence of such an abundance of digital technology has drastically increased the amount of editing options available to me. This aided my creative development and meant that because of the experimentation i did, my project seems more developed despite straying from my initial ideas.