AS reflection on media studies

During year 12 media studies, we explores a lot of themes/aspects and introduced us to many new different things for instance

• Blogging 
• Advanced photoshopping
• adapting to apple macs
• iMovie
• Flipcams
• Pages
• Terminology 
• Shot types 
• Editing
• Mis en scene
• Writing a certain amount under a timed conditions
• Tripods

 We learnt how to do new methods of creating, or researching. For instance this would include the magazines we created for our coursework, had to research a lot of magazines which had different styles and decide what we wanted our ma we magazine to infer,  research also included into the music industry as it was based around our exam. We reflected and summarized back on this by drawing an island to represent out experience with Mr Mazzochi in Media Studies Acland burghley.

The Following points represent different experiences for different times of the year

• It starts on with sunshine on the island as i came in to the new year very optimistic and got on with my work in lessons and had a good relationship with the teachers and completing coursework and homework deadlines to the best of my ability.
• The palm tree in the middle of the island represents a comfort zone, with me showing comfort in the subject and growing to enjoy and learning new things as i go along.
• the grey clouds which occur mid way in the island are representing the stressful times and pressure as it begins to rain, this would be times like exam build up and the amount of revision which had to be complete
• it then becomes sunny again as i came out of the exam feeling that i tried the best that i could and could only wish for the best and remain optimistic. 

The island is a summary of the year i had  with my class and teachers. despite ups and downs media studies is a good subject which I find comes almost naturally to me.

Year 13 Media Studies; The meeting

We started a new module in year 13 which involves filming. We were put in to groups of four to make a short clip of our choice based around the topic 'Meetings'. The purpose of this was to include a total of 12 different shot types which convey different meanings in one clip. We had 2 hours to complete this.

For our clip we decided to base it around the apprentice and made a parody of it. 

We carried out this procedure in a unoccupied classroom and used it as an office by rearranging the tables and chairs to create a headmistress' office and chairs and tables for the three candidates.

We used a flip-cam which was a small device and was quick and easy to use. We used a tripod to keep it steady and use different angles. We followed the story-bored whilst filming as it acted as instructions for us.

Using the flip cam to film The Meeting taught me a lot and allowed me to explore different aspects and different methods of filming. As the flipcam is small and has a small screen to see what you are filming, it is often difficult to hold whilst filming. Technological advances of the flipcam explore different ideas and a variety of ways to filming with low definition camera's however still producing a good short movie

This allowed us to cooperate as a team ensuring to shoot all the relevant and a variety of shots. The group took on the role of producing, filming, writing, and directing. We decided to have shared responsibility on the roles.

What went well with filming:

• Good use of flip-cam and tripod 
• Teamwork cooperated well
• Good use of location
• Good use of limited props
• Improvisation with scripts
• efficiently and quickly completed

When we had completed the 12 shots after a few retakes due to inaccurate camera movement and positioning, we uploaded all of the shots we took on to  iMovie which allows us to rearrange the clips in the right order and watched the movie in full with the removed practice shots.

Limitations and improvements to be made:

• More specific planning and shots
• More camera movement and editing
• Concentrate more on meanings of shots
• Better location
• Sort out props beforehand