Creativity

Creativity G325 – Lois Moyes Evans

 

Creativity refers to somebody creating something new (e.g. a product, solution, work of art etc.) that has some kind of significant value, essentially, “making of the old, rearranging of the new” (Bentley). What counts as ‘new’ may be different to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the creation occurs. What counts as “valuable” is similarly defined in a variety of ways. Most people associate creativity with the fields of art and literature. In those fields, originality is considered to be a sufficient condition for creativity.

 

In pre-production at AS I used digital technology for the research and developing ideas of what I wanted to include in my music magazine, this includes using Google for pre-existing music magazines which helped develop my ideas and creativity for my own music magazine. I also used Photoshop in my pre-production with my preliminary task of the ‘Haydon School’ magazine and this was useful as it gave me a basic idea of the skills and features that I would be able to use in my main task. It helped me to see what I would be able to add to my raw images for my music magazine and features such as ‘sharpen’ and ‘blur’ to make some areas stand out more and I could test these on the preliminary task to find the best effect before I added it to my main task. At A2 pre-production in the planning for my music video of Tove Lo Habits, I used a lot more links for the information that I have included in my work and this is useful as it can show where different websites gave influenced my final music video and how I have explored different areas of creativity. I also used Microsoft Word a lot more as it can automatically find any grammar and spelling mistakes which means that I save time and can spend more time on creating my video, rather than worrying about going through and picking out all of the spelling mistakes. A third piece of digital technology I used at pre-production at A2 is the Canon camera which I used to take pictures of my actors, props, costumes and locations which meant that I was able to see exactly what everyone was going to wear, and how it would fit in with the rest of the scene. This meant that when it came to the actual production I had all the planning for the video covered and I knew where everything was going to go, and how it would fit in with the indie pop, this helped my creativity as I could work around conventions to explore different areas of my chosen genre.

 

In the production stage at AS I used a range of different digital technologies which I was capturing my images and this includes the camera shots that I was using for my Canon camera as I stuck to mainly a mid-long shot to include within my music magazine whereas when this advanced to A2 it seems as though I was more able to look at a range of different camera shots, so that I could see what was the most effective for different scenes that I wanted to shoot which helped my creativity. I also had a lot more practise of how to use the camera for A2 compared to AS as it seems that I was able to keep the clips a lot more precise to how I wanted it, and could change features on the actual camera, whereas at AS I just took the original photos and then left it to when I came to post-production to what I had to edit on each photo which took up more time for my digipak and music album advert. I think the reason I was more adventurous in A2 with the way that I filmed was because I had looked at other theorists such as Jean Baudrillard as he  had the some ideas are appropriate for music videos which helped and inspired my creativity of my music magazine.

 

In post-production in the first year I used a range of different software to create my music magazine and these include Photoshop and In-design which advanced my creativity because of the range of features I had available. I used a range of effects on Photoshop such as ‘Sharpen’ and ‘Blur’to make some areas of my photos stand out more than the rest to create a focus on the main image. These effects were useful on a music magazine as the focus would be on the main artist on the front page, rather than what is around them, I found this from conventions on an NME magazine which had the same layout which mine did. I also stuck to a mainly mid-long shot for my music magazine front cover as this is what I had seen from other music magazines such as Rolling Stone. This changed in the second year as I started to look more deeply into what was being shown in a music video and I could test more of a range of features in my own video and Adobe Premiere contributed to this as it is a much more advanced program which uses features such as transitions, titles, brightness and exposure which when are set at the right level, create a very good pop effect. I also used much more creativity in my evaluation at A2 as I used a combination of platforms and then added sound that I had recorded as I think that if people can hear what you are saying, it becomes a lot more effective and shows good use of digital technology, you can also put more creativity into videos and voice-overs as you can talk about separate topics which relate to your original point whereas when you just write out the evaluation you just write what the answer is.

 

In conclusion, I think the bigger range of digital technology that I used for A2 helped the amount of creativity I was able to express.