My Mix Tape.

Baggy Trousers

1. Great Balls of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis
Used to do dance with a friend and this was one of the songs we danced to during a show
2. Let's Twist Again - Chubby Checker
Remember dancing to it at Year 9 Prom
3. Rockin' All Over The World - Status Quo
Remember singing it during a school Christmas play in Yr2, each class were dressed as people from different countries
4. I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness
It was sung loudly and out of tune at a party last year
5. This Love - Maroon 5
Songs About Jane was the first CD I bought and I listened to it endlessly
6. Year 3000 - Busted
Loved Busted and I choose this song any time I played Singstar
7. Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs
Remember singing it with a friend on the way to netball matches
8. Salty Dog - Flogging Molly
Was introduced to Flogging Molly and other bands by a friend in GCSE Art
9. I'm Not Okay (I Promise) - My Chemical Romance
My "emo" phase during Yr10/11
10. Bad Day - Daniel Powter
It used to play practically every lunchtime on Lutterworth High Radio
11. Obviously - McFly
My first concert and all the old McFly songs bought back memories of primary school
12. Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit  
Listened to Frightened Rabbit endlessly during summer 2010 having seen them at Summer Sundae


Mix Tape

What is postmodern about Inception?

• Baudrillard's theory of hyper reality where there are dream worlds that look like reality within dreams.
• Disrupts linear structure - the beginning is the end and flips between layers of dreams
• Mixes up time and space reality - as time is different in the different layers of the dream
• Self-referencing - plot within plots and always referencing back to original "reality"
• Rejects Jameson's theory that Postmodernism is "depthless", characters are complex and develop throughout the film. The plot develops and raises the question what is reality? The ending adds to the philosophical questioning by not clearly establishing whether Cobb was dreaming about returning to his children or not, the top is left spinning on the table however screen goes to the credits so the audience don't see it fall. Postmodernism is usually against interpretation but the ending is enigmatic which leaves the audience questioning; the reality portrayed in the film with Cobb returning home, the reality portrayed in the film - is the director hinting to the audience that it is fictional, hyper real story, or whether life itself is "real" in the sense is life actually just a dream and we wake up when we die, like Mal believed. 
• Christopher Nolan (director) plays Inception on the audience through the soundtrack of Edith Piaf "Non, je ne regrette rien" being mutated, slowed down the deeper the characters are in the dream levels. The music feels distant in the 3rd level as if the audience are in the levels of dreams too - that the film is in fact a dream, playing on the fact that when the audience stop watching a film they almost feel disorientated having been drawn into the story and world that is portrayed in the film.
• It requires an engaged audience who are able to intellectually understand the plot. So in some ways it can be seen as elitist. However it has grossed $825 million which shows that it does appeal to a mass audience. It is able to mix mass culture of Blockbuster effects with a deep, complex plot.

Describe the ways in which you developed your skills in the use of technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision-making.

In my AS coursework I created a preliminary magazine, Mercardo, and a punk music magazine, Rebel. In A2 I created a preliminary music video to Busted's What I Go To School For, a music video to OneRepublic's Good Life and a digipak and poster for the fake band The Empty Crowd.

I had no previous experience of using platforms like Blogger, Scribd, Animoto or Slideshare to present my work. To begin with my presentation of research and planning work was rather limited this reduced my creativity. However when I expanded my knowledge of this digital technology I was able to present my work with more creativity, incorporating links, videos. pictures and gifs into my blog posts and to enhance my coursework blog to set the mood which linked to the punk genre of my music video. Once I had established the research and planning through the use of digital technology I was able to advance my creativity when creating my music magazine. Photoshop was my main tool when creating my music magazine, for the preliminary magazine and the draft I created a basic quality product because I was not completely familiar with the various tools and editing techniques I could achieve in Photoshop. For example I relied on basic pre-programmed patterns to fill the background, this did not create an effective, professional look, which I had to develop for my final music magazine. In order to do this I experimented with the cut-out tool using my own pictures to create a collage effect which I used as the background for my front cover and double page spread. This allowed me to be more creativity and produce a more original style than using Photoshop basic patterns. As I wanted to create an artsy magazine to fit with the DIY aspect of punk and inspired by street artists like Banksy, I experimented with the filter effects in Photoshop to create a stencil print look to the photographs on the front cover and the double page spread. This linked to the art style and linked to the band, Loaded Guns, which featured in the article. Having used the filter effects in the draft magazine I was able to identify which techniques where more successful and produce a more creative, effective final product.

My skills with photoshop then developed from AS to A2, being already familiar with what techniques are more effective than others I was able to produce a creative outcome quicker. However the change of art style from punk to pop changed the way I had to approach the product. Having created a concept for The Empty Crowd which had to link from digipak, poster and music video, I decided to use location shots from the music video to anchor the concept in the digipak. The concept was city vs country so I wanted to portray the contrast between the two. Photoshop's layout of layers enabled me to create a layering effect of photographs of the country projected onto the photographs of the city. This layered effect was developed for my draft digipak, although a more advanced use of photoshop than my AS product it was not as successful as it could have been because the layering obscured the locations too much. I then changed the idea to a simpler layout editing the photographs individually to highlight the contrast between the two locations and to link to the style of the video, where the city shots were edited into black and white and the country was in colour.

My film-making skills have improved over time, through the use of digital technology and understand the technology better which has allowed me to be more creative, producing a more effective product. For the preliminary film, we used basic hand-held video cameras this had a restricted quality which effected the quality of the end product. Also only having very basic knowledge of editing programs meant that the preliminary video and music video draft was not very successful. Having only ever made videos using pictures on Windows Movie Maker I found it difficult to edit videos, altering the audio and cutting out shots, to match the music with the action. As Windows Movie Maker only has limited editing effects which look very unprofessional, we decided to use Adobe Premier Elements for the final music video. This gave more options in editing the shots, increasing speed, slowing action down, increasing or decreasing the brightness to create a strong contrast between the country and city shots. Also the variety of effects allowed us to experiment and be inspired by possible effects. For example, in the animatic there was not plan to include double speed or slow motion shots however after experimenting with this effect we decided it looked more interesting and creative with this edit. As professional pop music videos also use editing techniques like this to create effect and to match the pace of the music it fitted really well.

Overall, I think I have been able to develop my skills with digital technology over AS and A2, having better skills with the technology has in turn has contributed to my creativity. Through experimenting on the programs, mainly Adobe Photoshop and Premier Elements, I have been able to see what I can effectively achieve and what is not as successful. I think I progressed the most with Photoshop as I had very little understanding of how the program works and what I could create at the beginning of the course whereas now I have a good understanding of what effects and tools work best to enhance photographs and create a media product. This has helped my creativity as well as I am now aware of what my skills are in this programs.