Digital Technology: A2 Exam Question 1a

In my AS year we started developing our initial media digital technology skills by starting a small ancillary task. Our coursework project for AS was to do an opening short film sequence - we chose to do a teen drama. For A2 we did a longer and more skilled short film.

When first starting media I did not have any technical camera skills really except for common knowledge of how to use cameras. We were taught a lot from the early start of our course, and these skills were further developed when we moved onto our A2 work. In A2 we experimented with photography as well as filming. In our first ancillary task at the beginning of AS we were asked to stick to a brief of people having a conversation - we decided as a group to take this to the next level and be creative with the use of our college campus location. We did a horror type very short film, from our initial rushes that we shot.  


Our AS ancillary task and coursework taught us to stick to a simple brief and how to work together as a team with our new classmates. We were put into groups of 4 and learnt all about how to use handheld cameras, tripods and how to edit on simple computer editing software such as windows movie maker. For our coursework in the first year we were put in a group of three to work together and create our opening sequence film (2 and a half minutes). In A2 our film was almost twice the length than the one we did in the first year (5 minutes) and we edited it with better editing software. We were more aware of how to use everything and how to make the most of the gadgets and technology around us. To start with, we used simple software to edit our short film opening sequences with e.g Windows Movie maker. We learnt how to use basic equipment with the digital equipment, such as tripods. We used the internet to research on websites such as youtube and IMDB about short films - and to gain inspiration from them for our own opening sequence.

My skills devloped throughout the project immensly. In our second year our film was - to say the least - a lot more developed and skillful. We had a lot more definitive ideas from the beginning of our idea brainstorms. We knew exact camera shots, cotumes and locations we wanted to use. Because we had such precise thoughts of how we wanted our film to be from the very start we were a lot more organised with getting everything together. We used social networking sites such as Facebook to advertise for actors and actresses targeting mainly drama students from our own and other colleges. We used email; to commnicate with one of the drama teachers in our college to try and set up auditions with his students, we continuously were using our mobile to keep in contact - texting, calling, taking pictures of locations and sending them to each other etc. We used MSN Messenger a lot - we would set a time and date to go online to chat about our plans and to make decisions and generally send each other files, pictures and to help each other with our coursework and blogs.