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

 During my coursework my post production skills developed significantly from AS to A2 and were key elements which helped my creativity in each of my projects. The brief for AS was to create an opening sequence to a horror film lasting 2 minutes including titles and the A2 brief was to create a promo package including video, digipak and advert for the pop genre. During AS my post production helped with my creativity such as being able to use Final Cut, Garageband and Photoshop. These helped us make our product original and creative by combining the things produced from each together to produce a sequence that has never been produced before. Within Final Cut we were able to create transitions such as fading in and out at the correct times to create a horror type feel and using text to show titles of specific actors and members of the production to make the sequence as creative as possible. With sound being an important part into being creative Garageband was a key element which helped make our sequence unique. We added sound effects from Garageband at specific points in the sequence to make it more dramatic to the viewer such as when the attacker is directly behind the couple and when the title of the film began. Being able to create our own soundtrack at the correct places made our sequence creative and exactly how we wanted it to be to create atmosphere and suspense. However though we were able to choose specific music to fit the genre Garageband only has a certain amount of loops so often this restricts the creativeness available. Using Photoshop also helped with our creativity to design a unique logo specifically fitting with the horror theme and which we included in our video to creatively show our production. However at this point my Photoshop skills were fairly limited and I was only able to create a very basic logo and title page for the video. These did both fit with the genre though and helped with the creativity of the sequence.

Using Web 2.0 Blogger to show all my post production work helped me show them creatively all in one place and fitted to the theme of horror with a black background and red text to give it that professional look. My evaluation questions were completed on Prezi within post production of AS which enabled me to analyse my work in a creative and quick way. Prezi was easy to learn and use so I was able to insert photos, videos and make the text and background fit with the rest of the theme with this. The progression into A2 enabled me to be more creative with my use of technology in post production using similar programs but in a much more developed and creative way. Using Final Cut was a massive factor into the creation of my project by creating my music video. As I wanted the music video to be fast paced in order to fit the song chosen Final Cut aloud me to do non linear editing and use a wide range of effects such as text flying in to the beat of the music stating the lyrics heard at the time. I also was able to use jump cuts of the actress in various locations throughout the video fitting with the beats of the music. Final Cut enabled me in A2 to progress and do the creative things I planned to in my music paced such as adding markers to aid the lip sync and get the footage of the actress and actions made to fit with the lyrics and cut footage to create a very fast paced changing shot video.

My use of Photoshop also progressed and became more creative within A2 by me producing a digipak, advert, flyer and logo for my project on it. Photoshop in second year helped me to create layers with a professional looking logo which was shown at the end of the video and was perfectly suited to the genre stating "smoking hot records" production which was shown on the digipak and advert too to help with the creativity of my project. Though Photoshop can be quite difficult to use the practice in it helped my skills massively and I was able to design a range of products for my coursework. These fitted with the genre perfectly and showed various layers of text and professional photos of the artist take from a previous photoshoot. I was able to creatively make the digipak and advert original through Photoshop by adding backgrounds and texts to fit our song such as a night sky background on the cd to fit with the song title "It's all about tonight" and stars on the advert around the artist on a black background to continue with this theme and link the three projects together. To gain the music for my video I used the secondary source of Itunes as this gave a professional soundtrack for my video and gave me a starting point for my creativity in which I could use any footage I wanted in order to portray the lyrics and music given. I used Prezi also in A2 to display my evaluation questions but in a much more developed way. Showing videos I had filmed of myself speaking about the audience and what was good and could of been developed about my project showed a development from AS as I used my own primary footage within my evaluation which I edited on Final Cut instead of secondary videos. I also added a much wider range of information into the development of my project and the theories behind it such as Laura Mulveys theory of every video seen from the male perspective throughout my Prezi presentation. Several more photos were shown on the Prezi presentation from the photoshoots and on set as well as the background and text being bright and colourful to fit in with the genre.