Post Production and Creativity Essay

(Describe how you developed your post production skills for media production and evaluate how these skills informed your creative practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.)

Throughout the media course there was a big emphasis on post production skills which aided the final products. There has been two major production and the progress from the first project has been very significant in the way that in second year more advanced techniques were tried in post production which was driven by importance of creativity which was due to the widely adaptable brief. At AS my brief was to create a two minute opening sequence to either horror or film noir genre including titles which follow the specific conventions of that genre. On the other hand at A2 the brief was to create a whole promo package for a music video of my choice, including different mediums digipak and advert. This brief was much more open where I could choose any genre of song, this allowed me to be me creative by descending into the genre i was familiar and had many ideas for the video. In this essay I will outline how the development of post media production skills throughout the media course has influenced the outcomes of my final products and helped express my own creativity better through the use of the available software.

At AS, after filming of my opening sequence I used Final Cut Express to edit the raw footage. This included setting up a sequence and selecting slices of footage to be dragged to the timeline. By using markers i was able to select accurate point from the footage and split the clip at the exact point i needed. Being able to have such selective editing control of my footage allowed me to make sure all clip were correctly chosen. Initial research into the 2005 film Sin City directed by Frank Miller had inspired me through the use of vibrant colour. In turn I used a similar effect where a strong colour is contrasted from a black and white shot using the chroma key tool in Final Cut. The tool allowed me to separate a single colour from the frame and key this out to reveal the colour. This technique was used constantly throughout the opening sequence as it enhanced the look of the shot, on the other hand at A2 it would not have been appropriate to adapt this technique to the music video as the style was really different. Although the video post- production contained many more advanced techniques which tested my skills in second year. A big requirement in the AS brief was to include correct titles to the sequence and these had to appear in correct order and time. To incorporate titles to the video i had used LiveType which is part of the final cut package which meant transferring work across the platforms would have been very efficient. A range of simple titles is available although to take the work into a higher level I had to introduce my own creativity and make the titles in the way i thought they would suit the correct genre. The use of this software has hard because of the tricky interface  although as I practiced with LiveType my titles improved with more appealing title font and now i was able to add animation which really enhanced the titles. In post production, along with the video I had to produce an original soundtrack to suit the genre of the sequence. As I could not record actual instruments I decided to use Apple’s Garageband software where loops of sound are used to produce a soundtrack. Even though the software was very easy to use i found some issues in the form of having trouble with inserting sounds from outside the software which meant additional tracks had to be downloaded to iTunes first before putting into Garageband. Having a wide range of loops allowed me to create a very unique soundtrack to be combined with the opening footage. In the film analysis that i have done before hand i saw that the company logos which produced the film use strong graphics or imagery to create a good identity of the company.So as this is one of the requirements from the brief, i decided that using my own captured images would be the best. To get the best quality i used my DSLR and captured a scene of a tarmac stretch because i thought this would suit the genre of film noir. I later used this image in the final sequence, of course with some added post editing effects to make it look darker and more dramatic. I was really happy in the way the logo had turned out because of using my own image rather than taking one from the internet. Even though the final logo appearance was quite simple, i was happy that it looked very effective.

Continuing to towards A2, this time the project was much more in depth and the higher requirements meant that all throughout the project, especially in post production the importance of effective editing and finalising was needed because music videos have certain conventions which should be followed.

The fact I used a 1080p High Definition DSLR camera to record the footage meant that i had to make sure my editing sequences and exporting options were set correctly to keep the high definition standards all the way until the final product. After capturing and importing the footage into Final Cut Express HD, I had laid out the footage on the timeline and synchronised the maximo park master track, while using the sound captured by the camera as reference and i also used markers to make sure everything was positioned perfectly. Here the step up from AS was the use of the HD version of Final Cut which supports high definition formats. As this year my aim was to create a professional looking product i had to use a better quality camera. The result was a complete transformation in the amount of detail visible, especially this allowed for more control and creativity in the production stages which had led to better control at the editing stage  because once fx enhancement have been added i was able to come to a better looking final product.As seen in existing music videos, creativity is a driven aspect to create an identity of a band, this is supported by David Buckingham’s theory that “Identities are not given, but are constructed and negotiated”. Therefore to construct the identity for my music video i had decided to use a film burn effect which enhances the flow of the video and makes transitions look more creative. For the music video i ended up using a variety of film burn because i thought the effect looked really good. This was a big step in making own transitions and effects whereas in first year i did not look further than just using the default transitions given, and most of the time i did not have control over these and at the end of the day those transitions were very plain and i could not make them suit the product. A new contemporary technique known as double speed is not used in many current music videos. The technique involves filming the artist performing the song at half the format speed, later this is readjusted in Final Cut by changing the clip speed to 200%. A technique such as this is quite advanced and difficult to achieve although taking on this technique has really developed my skills from the previous year. The ambition from using the simple effects to enhance the footage to using advanced filming methods used in the industry really has much my own skills to create video which suits the current music video market. Photoshop CS5 has been also used quite extensively throughout the A2 project for all of the promo package parts. At the end of the music video i placed a record label logo which i designed in photoshop. The design was very simple but effective and for it to be used in the video it was important to remove the white background and save it as .png format, in order to when the image was dropped into the video editing timeline it would blend with the current background. The development from AS to A2 could be easily seen at this stage because i used a variety of aspects which were made on different software and then put into one to finish the product. In the creation of the remaining pro package parts, digipak and advert i have used Photoshop again. As the aim was to create a full package package i needed to make sure all products show the same brand identity. To make this happen i have used exact same colours throughout the product range right up to the smallest titles. The colours, white, red and black have also been kept across the range. I think this requirement from the A2 brief was what that made a big difference from AS. The fact all product has to relate and match to the same details was an additional skills i had to master. The final package was really successful in the way that they all looked really similar and i feel that this was one of my highlights from the project. Again to push the boundaries of editing techniques and creativity from first year i attempted the challenge to create some extremely slow motion footage using the Twixtor plugin in Final Cut. The plugin allowed me to blend footage frames to mimic what could have been captured using a professional slow motion camera. The final effect was used on a few cutaway shots in the video which were completely transformed with the added effect. The result was very unique and something which had not been tried before in my class before which had made my work very unique.

The first year evaluation had also benefited with the use of Final Cut. My evaluation was very creative in the way i merged many aspects together. I had filmed my team in front of a green screen while we talked about our work then in Final cut i had keyed out the background and replaced it with footage from the sequence and other relevant information.  I was really proud of my evaluation in AS because once all aspects were combined it had looked very good because i considered the same conventional look as the film sequence. To publish written analysis of our AS project i had used Slideshare. The website allows for convenient publication of work documents which can be shared and downloaded while still in a .doc format. The benefit of using this web 2.0 site was apparent because my work could be easily published and embedded in other sites for final marking. The video part of the AS evaluation had taken much consideration in the appearance of the evaluation although during the A2 evaluation i had decided that this was not that important and that good content was key. Instead I simply filmed myself talking about the work but showing printouts of digipak and advert as evidence of final pieces and talking about these in depth. The footage then could be edited in iMovie and i had chosen it for its ease of use and quick publishing to Youtube. Going for the better content option was very beneficial because the final evaluation was of a good standard and the use of internet sites had broadened the range of mediums used from first year of media. To evaluate the processes and the making of the product i had used Screenr. This very simple site allowed me to film my computer screen while using the computer microphone to record the sound. Using such a variety of technologies has introduced more creative ways of evaluating content which i think is very useful because after making the evaluation videos i have seen that it was much more effective than looking at simple slideshare work documents which i had used in the first year.