500 Word Evaluation

At the beginning of the year I was excited to take media as the course really interested me but I was also worried as I questioned whether I would struggle with the technology side of the course and that made me nervous. Also I was apprehensive as having not had the opportunity to take media as a GCSE I was worried that my lack of knowledge and understanding would make the course very challenging.

I would say that our overall strength as a group was our ability to work successfully as a team. Being an internal at Langley I knew most of my media class, with the exception of a few externals and year 13s, but was really happy to find Grace in my class as although a great friend of mine, I knew that we would work together well. So as I knew Grace, the only member of our group that I didn’t previously know was Jack and because of this I’m very proud of the way we all bonded and worked really well together in order to produce work that we are extremely proud of.

Another strength would be our organization. We were able to make quick and decisive decisions as a group which meant that we were all happy. We also divided the work load as equally as possible which meant we got the work done and to a higher standard as each of us had a task that we needed to focus on. Because of this our written work was never pushed aside and all of us being able to write to a high standard, as well as the added bonus of myself and Grace being English students, we produced blog posts that were detailed and eligible. Our organization was very beneficial as it helped us keep on top of our work and didn’t cause arguments within the group as I know that I found Grace and Jack very reliable and knew that we would get the work done as we are all aiming for the highest grade.

Thirdly, I would say that a very important strength in our group would be our filming. Having had no previous experience filming with the digital camera and using equipment such as the camera stand myself, we collaborated well between each other in order to film footage of high quality. Again our organizational skills played a part in this as our ideas were strong and we had planned meticulously what we wanted our opening sequence to feature and had props and locations chosen well before we went out and filmed.

My personal weakness would be my lack of knowledge and understanding of how the software on the Macs worked. We used the programme Final Cut Pro to edit our footage to produce our opening sequence which I had never used before and therefore was unfortunately mostly useless knowing how to work it. Because of this, Jack was the member of the group that edited our filming and for this I am very thankful as his technology skills enabled us to have an opening sequence that we are really proud of.

If I could change anything about our final piece I would have more scenes in the garage having been inspired by the opening sequence to Seven a great deal. I would have taken more of our initial ideas forward such as having old discarded toys of dead children and having a scrap book made by the captor including things such as the names of children and locks of their hair. However overall I was very happy with the outcome.

I have thoroughly enjoyed media this year and gained knowledge on software and filming. Whether I carry on with media next year or not it was an extremely enjoyable AS Level to have done.