Developing Skills from AS to A2

AS was a huge foundation which helped equipped me and my group for all the challenges that awaited us in A2.  Our skills has developed vastly since our last project at AS. Last year we had problems adjusting quickly after a hiccup for example when we had a few continuity errors in our film, it really dampened our team spirit but this year the major thing for us was a backup plan, always having something planned just in case something went wrong!

We were also very quickly able to suggest how well different camera shots and angle will work for different things this year, for example, we know that a wide shot is recommended if we are trying to show location and a high angle is good to portray that some one is inferior. Although I knew the basics at AS stage but I didn’t not fully appreciate how these film language helps sends a message across without dialogue or subtitles. In our film this year we used close-ups to show the emotions on both characters faces, this allows the audience to see how happy they are together, close up worked better for that frame because if we used a long shot the focus will be taken away from their facial expression.

Last year the major downfall for us was continuity error, this year it was one of our top of our priority, we made sure that we filmed every thing separately and at least three times to make sure we didn’t have to come back and do it another day . even with this we made sure that we took pictures of what our characters looked like and what they were wearing so it would make it easier for us to repeat the same look if necessary.

Last year we spent quite sometimes going back and re-filming bits because of simple mistakes that we could have simply edited on Facebook. For example we had an issues with lighting in our AS course work where some of our footage was brighter than some, instead of adjusting the tone we decided to re-film again. This year we are more familiar with Pinnacle and we are far more advance in using the tools than we were and I think this is down to all the mistakes we made at AS level and how we learnt from them.

This year our preparation stage was also much better than last year, our research was very focus on what we wanted to find out instead of generalising our research, for example, in our research of film posters we didn’t just look at film posters in generally but rather looked into Romantic Comedy films poster, last year although our research was very good because we covered a range of things but we were very general with our research.

Over all I think we have improved a lot from last year and we are much more matured in our knowledge of Media Technology both theoretically and practically and our knowledge of media theories and how it actually fits into narrative has increased vastly. Last year we got a very good overall grade for AS Course work and there was a lot of work to be done in other to maintain the good grade and I think our experience with AS definitely helped us through.