creativity essay

Write up A 750 word response outlining the extent to which you were creative in your AS and A2 coursework tasks.

“Technology has taken all the creativity out of media production” This is a quote taken from a well-known theorist, I completely disagree I think through all of the stages of both of the coursework tasks technology enhanced my creativity; it meant that I was able to generate and better my ideas.

In the Research stages of both my AS and A2 coursework tasks, we were given constraints on what our coursework had to be and involve but we were given the freedom to pick how we create what we wanted from the brief, for example we were able to choose the genre of music for the magazine and for our A2 coursework we were also able to pick the genre, this meant we were able to research into the particular music genres and look at other texts that are similar, for example we decided our music video was a dance genre so we researched into different dance videos on the internet for inspiration which allowed us to be creative, in our A2 coursework we chose the music ourselves this meant we were able to decide the creative direction we wanted to head in and theme our idea around it, for example this determined how original we wanted to be.

In the Planning stages we had complete control over how we structured our ideas to prepare for the making, in my AS coursework I produced a schedule which meant I was able to monitor whether I was ahead or behind, for our A2 coursework we used several planning techniques one being a story board that then we used the technology available to create a clip where the storyboard images are edited so they fit the music which meant filming the video became a lot more structured, We also created a mood board showing the genre and colours we wanted to use this meant we were able to see what we could include.

When creating the magazine the course placed certain restrictions on my making stages such as timing, we had to keep to a deadline which meant decisions had to be made fast and out of school  time was needed so we could produce the coursework at the level we wanted to. Another constraint was being a student this meant low budget, we had to create the best we could with the small budget and limited access of different technologies that were available.

For both our coursework tasks we were the head of styling we made all of the styling decisions from the artist down to the layout, we were able to freely create in areas such as we chose the genre names the layout, the colours and all fonts. This meant we were able to make it personal and add our own creative touch.

For our A2 coursework although we looked at several music videos in the genre of dance music we wanted to challenge conventions of the typical video with similar songs, we decided we wanted to construct a current and different video, we wanted the video to still in keep with the fast pace but we chose to use just one location and keep changing the colour so we could gain are fast pace from the changing colour rather than the typical videos used for dance music showing people dancing in a club/ party etc.

“Creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain and a field of experts who recognise and validate the innovation” this is a quote from a well-known theorist, In my opinion this theory can be applied to our coursework. The culture containing symbolic rules would represent the task we had and our brief that contained different constraints, a person who brings novelty would represent the student who brings individual ideas and the field of experts would represent the teachers who provide guidance.

In future projects I will take all of the skills I have learnt and developed and apply them to better the project, my creativity has grown throughout the course, I only had limited Photoshop and editing skills and now I have improved my knowledge and gained a lot of creative skills which will help me in a lot of areas and I will take everything I have learnt about creating a music video and magazine and media technologies and use it to advantage me in the future.