Skills Development Essay

My foundation portfolio consisted of the creation of my college magazine front cover (as a preliminary task) continuing to my main coursework to design and create a music magazine following the appropriate codes and conventions. During the AS course I have developed many skills acquired during the academic year which not only involve making the final product itself, but also the use of certain programmes (eg Photoshop and BlogSpot), research skills,  presenting my work and finally the creative aspect of creating mood boards and alternative drafts to decide on an idea which is strong.

At the start of the AS media the main relevant knowledge I had was my individual organisation skills. This was very beneficial for my research and planning as it meant different parts of my work were accessible to the examiner.  The planning and research stages for my music magazine was fairly similar to that of my college front cover therefore in the first few months I had already gained relative experience regarding the appropriate layout and the most suitable way to write up my findings.  By having my work organised on blogger it meant not only was the work easily available to the examiner but also I could edit and refine certain posts which needed extra work to gain a higher grade.

Personally I would say digital technology was the most difficult skill area to advance as it involved using physical equipment to take my photographs and then managing Photoshop correctly by using specific features to edit my images. I did have experience taking photographs from out of college and social activities; however during my music magazine it was difficult to take shots containing the correct mise-en-scene and making sure the image quality was clear and good. I think my skills in this specific area will develop more during my A2 course as the more familiar you become with the target audience the more ideas I will have in terms of mise-en-scene and also the setting and lighting of my video. Another aspect of digital technology in which my skills have greatly developed is the use of the edit programme Photoshop. I had no previous experience with this software which was noticeable during the first months of using the programme. During my preliminary task I mainly concentrated on using the basic forms of tools including: crop, blur, image adjustments and quick selection. My skills then further advanced when producing my music magazine from creating many drafts each featuring different images which had to be edited. This practise made me more confident with Photoshop and allowed me to use more advanced tools eg changing the features of the model by using Gaussian Blur tool to give the skin a smooth appearance.

When considering my skills involving Creativity it’s fair to say my ability in this area was very limited before AS media. Personally this skill has developed through recreating many drafts during my preliminary and music magazine which gave me a more conventionally accurate products after each change. I do not have the initial creative skill to think of an idea or concept meaning I have to undertake lots of research and create mood boards ect to give me inspiration. Therefore I could argue my skills have not particularly improved in creativity as a whole however the past year has given me the opportunity to realise the amount of independent research I need to undertake to create a product with a good idea.

I also had to use and analyse conventions from real media texts, this included work for both my exam preparation and foundation portfolio. For the research of my music magazine I had to analyse 3 front covers, 3 contents pages and 3 double page spreads to gain an understanding of conventions was used and what effect they had.  This interlinks with creativity as a skill as it is also part of the research and planning stages and gave me inspiration for my own product. When creating any media text during my AS course it was important to follow the codes and conventions so the audience could understand the genre/theme of my music magazine. For example my music magazine followed the Indie genre and for that reason I made the text bold and unique and put in place appropriate mise-en-scene as this is conventional.

Specifically studying the conventions of a music magazine in detail helped me learn that some conventions can be dynamic. My skills developed in terms of learning the terminology including typical conventions of specific texts. For example terms such as: Connotate, Intertextual references and psychographics and demographics. Prior to my media course I had no understanding of these terms however over the course of my production work my terminology knowledge has advanced which is very useful for my A2 course.

To conclude the amount of work and effort I put into media studies during my foundation portfolio has meant my skills have greatly advanced which is very useful for A2. The skills development in terms of digital technology has improved the most as it has meant learning how to operate new equipment and programmes which has taken much practise. Also the learning the terminology and conventions of specific media texts has been challenging due to the amount of work this actually involved in terms of research and planning.