Post-production essay - improved

In your experience now have your post-production skills developed through creating your productions (25 marks)

My post-production skills have developed through creating a film opening called 'Impact' at AS level and a cross-media package; music video  'Hypnotic', website and digipak at A2 level. Post-production is everything I did after the filming process. The post-production stage of production is crucial to the final outcome of a text. If any element, such as transitions, titles or sound seem wrong or misplaced, the entire text could decrease in quality.
In year 12 my first task was to edit dancing bears on Adobe premiere 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 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 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. My production group and i did this to research more into our genre and come up with more ideas of what we wanted our video to look like. This was a very useful task to do as it widden our creativity when it came to creating our final production.
In year 12 i also completed a preliminary task which was to - create a minute of a film sequence with the genre action. I had not done any research into my chosen film genre; action,therefore my product looked unfinished. I used Adobe Premiere to edit this production. The transitions i used between shots (cross-fade) did not look to a professional standard as i didn't have much practice in learning where to use them for them to be effective. The main element of my film sequence in the preliminary task was a chase scene which lacked meaning where as for my actual film sequence i created meaning through the mise en scene.  I learnt through my mistakes in this task before working on my G321 film sequence. I placed a lot of emphasis on researching my genre, i found that slow cuts are key elements used in drama films from looking at existing products such as 'The theory of everything'. My use of only simple slow cuts created a more professional and realistic ,looking production. My use of titles also developed from my preliminary task because i had carried out research into my chosen genre and also practised using Adobe premiere and it's many features. For example, i knew that black was a dark, negative colour so i chose to use the colour black in my titles to show the sadness/depression within the main character of my film sequence. When looking at existing drama film products i noticed that fonts also tended to be dark colours as well. I created these titles of Adobe premiere and incorporated them into my film opening 'Impact'.
Similarly, in year 12 i completed a preliminary task which was to - recreate a minute of a current music video. My production group and i chose the song 'One call away' and used various locations to recreate this music video. Little research was put into this in comparison to my G324 cross-media promotional package. However the preliminary task was helpful in the sense that it helped me to work out what was essential in a music video ie what the fundamental elements are. This was vital when it came to creating a new music video as i had to incorporate a typical structure of a music video in with my ideas.  
I learnt more and improved further when doing my G324 cross media promotional package for a music artist in year 13. My skills when using digital technology in post-production developed and improved for this production as i had had more practice so i knew hot to use the editing software Adobe premiere easier. This enabled me to quickly apply the necessities such as making sure each clip is the same frame size and of the same colour (brightness and contrast) to my music video 'Hypnotic'. So then i could look for new, unusual exciting effects to match the psychotic, abnormal and crazy style of my music video. This ensured my video remained creative and was appealing, intriguing for my audience. As well as the vast amount of edits my production group and i created within the music video to increase the intensity,pace and madness. The music video has about 100 shots, in comparison to my G321 film sequence that had a small number of long shots - this shows the development of my skills and how able i am now when editing. Thus my skills have developed further over time through my experience of post-production. 
My production group and i also used the blurred effect on our performer to create confusion within the video and to emphasis the uniqueness. Adobe premiere helped me to make a professional standard production as i had a variety of new industry standard techniques that i could develop my work with. 

Further evidence to show my development in post production comes from the fact that in year 12 Adobe premiere was the only software i used when it came to post-production but in year 13 i used Wix, Adobe Premiere and Photoshop. Especially when it came to ancillary tasks.
For example when creating a digipak i used the professional quality editing software Photoshop CS6. This editing software enabled me to create a digipak and edit other images to go our artists magazine cover and gallery on her website. Enabling me to create these products matching my music video which resulted in synergy between all three media products forming the cross media promotional package. The photographs used were colour corrected to match each other, edited in size to fit onto the digipak and edited in the orientation of them to match the style of the digipak. Some were highly edited, for example one photo on my digipak includes two images of the music artist 'Stellato' (performer in music video 'Hypnotic'), this was achieved through using Photoshop CS6. Using this editing software made my digipak look to a professional standard.
I also used the software Wix to create a website for my artist 'Stellato', using the tools lightbox, music player, store creator and many more. Learning how to use these tools improved my post production skills from the first year of media when i only had to create the film opening. The tools helped to engage the music videos audience,for example lightbox is like an advertisement to find out more within the website, it pops up as you enter the page to get the viewers attention. Store creator was used to make merchandise.
Also as part of post-production i informed my social media followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook that my music video had been released on Youtube to increase my audience. These were linked to my website and my website linked to them.


I completed many tasks over the two years on editing practice. The examples stated above helped me to improve and develop my skills in post-production. In conclusion my abilities in post-production have improved significantly throughout all four of my productions- film sequence, website, digipak and music video. Practise really helped me to further improve my post-production skills.