30 min timed essay - Digital Technology

Digital technology are electronic tools that involves a lot of things such as social media, applications and so forth. Currently, all forms of media texts including horror movie trailers rely heavily on digital technology since we live in the age where technology is everywhere we go now and it enhances creativity. My creation of media has gotten better over the 2 years due to my understanding of digital technology getting better too.

In the first year which was AS, the preliminary task was to create a college magazine. The college magazine wasn't my best work even though I have used digital technology before. I had only 1 or 2 influence in terms of research which contributed to why it wasn't good. The production had no effort as the students and I didn't know how to use the camera properly at the time since it is more advanced than the cameras on our phone. After production, I really didn't know how to use Adobe InDesign too since it was my first time and I was getting used to it.

Later on, I made my final AS music magazine; I had more influences for my magazine such as the NME magazine with Kano as one example. The examples of the magazines made it better for me to understand what I should put in my magazine in terms of rap and hip hop and magazines in general. In terms of the shoot, I did my shoot outside and used a black guy that is not skinny as my model for my magazine. I took the shot and it came out better than the picture for my preliminary task because I understood more about focusing and zooming better. After shooting, I understood how to use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop better. For example, I knew how to play with the brightness and contrast and make it black and white because I wanted it to look very urban. My understanding developed between the two periods of time.

Now, my group and I are making our A2 horror trailer, magazine front cover and poster. From then to now, we have had so many influences (e.g. from Friday the 13th to Jeepers Creepers) for our trailers, front covers and posters. This is to make sure we reinvent the old and that we put our own flavour into it or else it is just a carbon copy. When shooting for our trailer, we spend a lot more time now and we use lights to add more of an effect as well. We now know how to use the camera properly (e.g. depth of field) to make sure we make the best trailer possible. In addition, we use stabilisers and tripods to make sure our shots don't shake. Post production wise, I now know how to use Photoshop a lot better now; for example, for my poster I now know how to add a graphic overlay on top of the dominant image to give it that red evil look to it. Also, I was able to add blood to the main coverline  s well by puttig it in Multiply mode when that specific layer is selected. In addition, we have learned to edit trailers on a professional level. For example, we know how use the blade tool on Final Cut Pro to trim footage that we took on our shoots.

To conclude, my understanding of the use of digital technology has developed drastically over the 2 years and I know how to do a lot more things with digital technology now than before.