Digital technology essay - improved

Explain how your skills in the use of digital technology have developed over time. Refer to a rage of examples from your media productions in your answer (25 marks)

My skills in using digital technology have developed over the last two years when creating two media products - a film sequence in year 12 and a music video, digipak and website in year 13. Also through creating other media products to learn more about digital technology.
The use of the camera Nikon D3300-DSLR was vital over both years, but used much more professionally in year 13. In year 12 the requirements for filming the film sequence were very basic limiting my group to filming still, long shots that fitted with our narrative teen drama. Whereas in year 13 the demands to make an good music video were much greater. The camera was used to create a variety of complex shots, for example moving shots was a new approach we took to filming in year 13 to make our music video more dynamic.The progress of my camera skills from year 12 to year 13 using the Nikon D3300- DSLR improved immensely considering i had little knowledge as to how to use a camera when i first started media in year 12 and now i am able to use a camera to take photo as well as videos. This really impacted my work (productions) as if my camera skills hadn't of improved my production wouldn't be as good.

Another form of digital technology i used was an editing software Adobe Premiere - this enabled me to edit videos by cutting them and adding effects to them. In year 12 we learnt basic editing through the dancing bears practise - this involved multiple different clips of bears dancing or playing basketball for example and then using the various different effects on Adobe Premiere to learn about editing. This enabled me to learn about more effects and incorporate these into my final productions. For example i learnt how to add titles to the video, which was vital for the making of my G321 film sequence when it came to the titles at the beginning and credits at the end. Another example is that i learnt how to apply the black and white effect on Adobe Premiere to the dancing bears clips which i also used in my G321 drama film sequence. In year 12 i also replicated a scene from Juno to enhance my editing skills - this helped me to learn how to film shots using the Nikon D3300- DSLR which i hadn't used before and edit shots to exactly how i want them to be through excellent planning. So when it came to my G321 drama film sequence i had more practice in creating what i wanted to.
Similarly in year 13 i used the banana phone task to enhance my editing skills- this involved a variety of shots of my group with a banana singing to the song banana phone in different backgrounds doing various different activities. This was useful as it gave me the opportunity to experiment in more depth with a number of effects. I also created a Stealomatic this was a collation of ideas from other music videos that my production group used to develop ideas for our video. The stealomatic consisted of videos all put together roughly matching how i wanted my music video to be like - taking ideas from each clip. This was a creative style of editing using the digital technology of adobe premiere. This taught me how technology can be used to create a variety of atmospheres.
I used the technology Photoshop to create a film poster in year 12, at first Photoshop was very difficult to understand but my skills developed through practice and trial and error. Also by the use of YouTube videos which described how to use the software. In year 13 i used Photoshop to edit images of our artist to put on a magazine poster as well as on the digipak. We used more complex effects on Photoshop in year 13 such as ...... , which in turn developed my skills using the software. We used an effect to create multiple images of our artist in one image this involved the effect layering. Overall at the beginning of year 12 i had no idea what Photoshop was but by the end of year 13 i knew how to edit to a relatively complex standard due to the media productions created and practice. The impact of this was that my technological skills developed and i am now able to edit images using Photoshop for future productions.
I also used online technology softwares such as Blogger, my skills developed immensely over the two years of using blogger. In year 12 blogger was a basic template for logging our media work. I learnt the fundamentals to using blogger such as how to change the design and layout of the blog, how to post blogposts, how to post images and how to embed other presentation software such as Emaze presentations. But in year 13 blogger was more about individuality and independence, i learnt how to do more advance things on blogger such as how too embed videos and more complicated presentational softwares. In year 13 double the amount of blogposts were needed in comparison to year 12. In year 13 i also had a much better layout of my blog as i had researched other blogs and worked out what the best way to lay it all out was. I developed my skills i using blogger other the last two years through practice and now i am easily able to use it.
Another presentational tool i used was Slideshare - this was a basic software which i learnt in depth in year 12. I learnt how to embed powerpoints onto blogger using Slideshare. In year 13 i researched more creative presentation softwares and used them when presenting my work - shows creativity. This shows my development over the two years when using digital technology presentation softwares. For example i learnt how to create Emazes and Prezi's in year 13 in more depth, exploring the creative ways in which the software can be used - this improve the quality of my blog as it made it more unique and interesting. Me and my group created a production diary and showed this information on Prezi. During year 13 i found more presentation tools such as Powtoon and Canva. These tools impacted my work as they showed more creativity and how much i had developed over the two years as i became more independent by learning about new presentational tools on my own.
Another element of digital technology i used was the software Wix. In year 12 i didn't need to create a website therefore did not know how to use Wix. However in year 13 i created a whole website for my music artist. I did a lot of research into current music artists websites and incorporated the fundamental features of a website eg - about, shop, tour dates, music, news, homepage, photo gallery to make my website to a professional standard. When i first started using Wix i had no idea how to use Wix to all of its benefits and features, but after practise and learning how to use each tool to it's full benefit i managed to create a website of high standard.
In conclusion, a great strength of the use of digital technology is that it allowed me to create many products to a professional standard and it enabled me to create products that were realistic. Although a limitation of using digital technology is that it took time to learn how to use each software and the tools within that software. My digital technology skills have developed over time because of the time and effort i have put in to learning more about digital technology. Also because i knew it was vital for my skills to be good in this area for me to create professional looking productions. Over the past two years digital technology has had a major influence on both media productions from creating a drama film sequence in year 12 and creating a cross-media package (digipak, website, music video) in year 13.