Outline the extent to which you were creative in your As and A2 coursework

In the planning, construction and evauation stages of the AS and A2 coursework pieces i was able to be creative with my ideas. However there were certain constraints that restricted me from complete freedom of choice and 'one of the reasons why you aren't offered total free choice is because people often find that working within constraints gives them something to exercise their creativity, whereas total freedom can sometimes make it really difficult to know where to start.' - according to Pete Fraser.

When creating a magazine (which included a cover, contents page and double page spread) during the AS year i was given the brief that it had to be a music magazine. This was one of the constraints i faced, however when i started to research and plan what i wanted to achieve it became apparent that there is already a great variety of music magazines. This meant i could still be creative in the designing. Having the technology of the internet was helpful during the planning stages to see the some real conventions that i could adapt. The technology of photoshop also meant that i could have free choice of layout, colour scheme, image and image enhancements. I decided to base the music magaizine genre on indie/electro music. This is music i listen to myself therefore it felt natural to recreate something i myself and other 16-25 year old s would read or be interested in.

A well known theorist has suggested that 'technology has taken all the creativity out of media production'. I would have to challenge this theory becasue during my AS and A2 pieces of work technology did not hinder me in any way. It enabled me to explore what is already excsisting and change/adapt it creativly to make something new and original. This was definitely ahieved in the music video created at A2 where we research existing music video s with a similar 'dance' genre. We then planned the time of shots (fast), framing and lighting that would be appripriate for a dance genred song. However when it came to editing the enitial idea wasn't working. Even though we had come up with creative ways of filming such as spinnng the camera on the tripod and using effects that matched the section of the music, we changed the lengh of some of the shots to creatively challenge the exsisting conventions of a dance track. It was down to the 'field of experts who recognise and validate the inovvation.' In this situation it was my teachers who recoginised what we were trying to achieve and helped us by suggesting their creative skills to us.

Making the digipak and advert enabled me to have again, freedom concerning the layout e.t.c. However for it to look like a real media product i wanted to follow a few existing conventions such as the 6 sided digipak and the idea of having the track listing. I was allowed to be creative in chosing the font, what the band were wearing, the layout of other text, the colour scheme and many more factors that resulted in the end product.

In both tasks there was one main constraint which was the issue of having no budget. This mean't we couldn't rent out a proper studio to work in or buy new clothes for the band. However everyone who was set the task also faced this problem therefore we had to work around it. The main way we did this was trying to make the location look as proffessional as possible. We discovered a creative way of doing this and it involved placing the band infront of a projector screen. Different colours or patterns could be reflected onto the screen which gave the illusion of a many different locations (which we see in dance/pop videos).


In future projects i will continue to work collaboratively in order to achieve a mixed view of ideas. I will also work under constraints because i feel like they gave me guidance with my creativeness.