Digital Technology Progression

In the first year of my Media Studies A-Level I feel that I was very creative as I had to produce a British Social Realist film opening sequence with a partner. We had to develop a narrative for our opening sequence that had to be conventional of the British Social Realist genre, but also something unique. My partner and I were creative with our narrative as we decided to subvert the typical representations of pregnant teenagers. Our main character fell pregnant, carrying her abusive boyfriends child. Her boyfriend would regularly beat her up, therefore she decides to run away for the safety of her unborn child. We felt that this was creative because unlike most teens our main character Leah didn't want to abort her child, instead she wanted to protect it and therefore ran away in an attempt to start a new life so that she could allow her child to be raised better than she had been. Stereotypically, teenage girls that are accidently impregnated immediately think to abort it. As teenage girls, my partner and I wanted to steer away from the reckless negative representation of teenage girls to present them in a more positive light through our main character Leah. Having to create a narrative for our opening sequence I feel will help me also be creative in my final year of the course as I feel I now know how to try and think outside of the box and be unique. So when planning my music video I will make sure I am even more creative and different, in order to produce a music video that really stand out in a positive way.

The digital technology I used last year included; Blogger (to update my project log and make post http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/evaluation-part-7-technologies-used-in.html).
entries), Youtube (to upload videos of relevance and to upload my continuity editing exercise and British Social Realist opening sequence), Live Type (to create graphics), Issuu (to upload powerpoints for my blog), iMovie (to edit footage), Final Cut (to import final footage and edit graphics in), Video cameras (to film footage), Flip camera (to film vox pop research), etc. In the evaluation of my British social realist opening sequence I made a powerpoint that showed the technologies I used at each stage of production (

Last year in the pre-production stage of producing an opening sequence, I conducted a lot of research into the British social realism genre and film opening sequences to learn the conventions of each. This research can be found on my AS media blog: http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/. My partner and I did a vox pop of our target audience to find out what they know about the British social realism genre, the films they've already watched of this genre and what ideas of ours they preferred and why (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/primary-audience-research.html). In the planning of our opening sequence, my partner and I made a shooting script to order the shots that would feature in our opening sequence and organize what camera language each shot would have and what would happen in each shot (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/shooting-script.html). We also made a production schedule where we planned the days when we would film, this allowed us to organise our time better (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/production-schedule.html). Every time before we'd go out to film we'd make a call sheet, to state where we'd be filming, the props, equipment and actors we'd be using to keep ourselves on task. A location recci was also made to show pictures of all of the locations that we'd be using in our opening sequence (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/location-recci.html).

Last year, the post production technology I used included; iMovie (to edit all footage), Final Cut (to import final footage and edit graphics in) and Live Type (to create all graphics).

We studied many conventions last year in relation to the British social realist genre. The camera conventions of this genre were; lots of movements, very few low/high angles, etc. The narrative conventions of this genre were to make the narrative realistic portraying the hardships of working class Britons in an explicit way. The typical themes that are presented in this genre include; poverty, drug abuse, violence, sex, domestic abuse, dysfunctional families, etc. The conventions of sound in this genre is mainly diegetic sound to add to the verisimilitude of the film, including; dialogue, ambient sound, music, etc.