Past Paper Questions

Describe the most important post-production decisions you made for your different media productions and explain why theses decisions were significant. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how your skills developed over time.

The most important programme that we have used for the post-production of our music video coursework would be Imovie. This is how we selected significant clips of our recording that we wanted to edit. Without Imovie we wouldn’t have been able to make a professional music video as we have used many features on this programme which have all contributed to ensuring that our music videdo is of a high standard. Examples of the features of Imovie that we have used on our music video include: stabilising shaky movement, slow motion, cutting, filters and cropping. These were important attributes in creating our music video as our music video explores a dramatic narrative based in the 1940s. We as a group believed that slow motion triggers dramatic effect therefore in turn evoking emotion from the audience and captivating them. Due to the fact that our music video is a 1940’s period piece we had to crop out modern day things within the shot. We looked at the colouring of videos in 1940’s and added a filter to our music video to symbolise the fact that it is old. I believe this is something that in our music magazine coursework we did not really look into. We used Photoshop for the post production of our music video and although we did manipulate the picture slightly I don’t feel as though we edited it accordingly to suit the genre of music that the magazine looked at.  When analysing other music videos we noted that their shots lasted roughly 2 seconds, this is something that we failed to do in our preliminary task. I feel as though we did not edit the preliminary video quite right as the shots were too long,it made the audience lose focus of the video and become bored. This is evident from the analytics of the video whereby 15% of the audience only watched the video for 5 seconds before clicking off. I also believe that the transitions that we edited in looked too experimental rather than professional, therefore in our main music video we used fairly quick shots and no transitions.

Add the concept of genre to one of your coursework productions.

As Ryall (1998) theorised, genre is cognitive repository of images, sounds, stories, characters and expectations. Our music video follows the romantic and tragic story of a couple during world war 2. This is evident through the images portrayed through each shots where there is a great deal of different elements of mise en scene visible, from location to props and costume. The actors portray that of 1940’s people due to their costume, hair and make-up also the way in which they hold themselves. There is a great deal of expectation in this music video. I feel as though the audience know from the sounds that this is a tragic love story and contributes to their expectation of what will happen. The audience can tell from the fact the female actor in the music video is getting ready for a funeral that there is a tragic narrative.  Uses and gratification theory can be adapted to our music video- it is an escapism causing the audience to Become involved in the plot and triggers emotional response from the audience. As Deborah knight notes “satisfaction is guaranteed in genre”I think with our music video the satisfaction stems from the acceptance of her partners death. The happy and romantic parts also add to that element of satisfaction.