A2 Media Exam

Narrative is a report of connected events, real or imaginary, portrayed in a sequence of written or spoken words, or still or moving images. I am going to speak about the film opening I created last year at AS level. The film is called 'Traffic Lights' and is a crime drama which follows the life of a drug smuggler. There are various theorists who talk about the importance of narrative. One theorist, Todorov, stated that in a narrative, there is a state of equilibrium at the start which is followed by a disturbance to the equilibrium (a problem which is encountered by the main characters). My film opening can conform and subvert this theory depending on what perspective you have when watching the opening. One perspective is that the protagonist ( a teenage boy ) is quite satisfied with the job he has of smuggling drugs for powerful individuals until he gets caught by police at the airport. This is a disturbance to the equilibrium because the audience feels sympathetic for the ...

As I progressed through the two year course in media, my digital technology skills have improved significantly. This improvement was largely due to the more experience I had gained while using digital technology during lessons and in my free time. I became more adventurous and tried new techniques along the way which also helped me gain more reassurance when I use digital technology. In year 12 I was first introduced to Premiere Pro where I experimented with the different effects and transitions. For my film opening, I did not explore the potential of this software sue to the nature of the task. This is because a film opening is generally free flowing and does not require too many enhancing effects, we focused primarily on the narrative of the opening therefore it was more important to gain the correct footage which would represent the narrative in the best way possible. However, in year 13 I used Premiere Pro to create a music video which naturally requires more special effects ...

Research and planning is essential in the creation of a satisfactory media product. The two main products I created was a film opening and a music video and evidently the research and planning between these two products was very different. At the end of the coursework, I realised the importance in research and planning and how it contributes to the final media text. In year 12, I carried out titles research in many different films to see what content is included and in what specific order the titles arrive in. From this research, I found out that titles do not appear as soon as the opening starts. This is because the first shot is usually an establishing shot and creates the setting for the film. I used titles.com and found the opening sequence of the film Deadpool and looked at how they used innovation when placing titles for the film. Audience research was also very important for us because our film was a drama so we needed to carefully choose our target audience. Our research conc...

Post production is a vital aspect when creating ancillary texts such as a film opening or a music video. During this two year course I have been tasked with the editing of various productions starting in year 12 where we were given short clips and an unfamiliar software called Premiere Pro. Over time I have gained skills through experimenting with this new software and therefore have been able to edit more challenging and time consuming texts. In year 12, I used Premiere for the first time when completing the 'Dancing Animals' task. This involved piecing together various pieces of footage and adding visual effects to enhance the overall product. This task was given to us in order to gain an understanding of the layout and the features of Premiere Pro. My first experience with Premiere was challenging because I had not used software similar to Premiere Pro so it took me some time to figure out how to use it. For example, I found it difficult to trim pieces of footage however ...