Creativity questions

- What do you understand by ‘creativity’ and to what extent have you been creative?

Creativity, in my opinion, comes from the persons' own imagination. I have been creative in my inidividual work from AS as well as in my group during A2 as I have looked at existing products (magazines, ancillary products, and music videos) and tried hard to create my own interpretation of these. This in my eyes is being creative, as I was trying to for fill a brief set by my teachers but also trying to be better than everybody else to get mine high marks, this proved to work as on both my digipak and poster I achieved full marks.


- How have you tried to facilitate and encourage your own creativity?

Over the 2 years my progress in Media has improved; however I feel I worked better at AS as I had no one to stop my own creativity and i was able to create anything i wanted with other people opinions but me as the dictator of the final piece. At A2 I did not feel as though I had much control over the final product (video) because I feel me and my partner tried to please each other too much that we got nothing done because of the other person, we didn't do very well in managing our time or putting ahead a plan of action.


- Did you experience limits/blocks on your own creativity?

When designing my A2 music video I discovered limits and in the end I changed the whole idea completely. Limits to think about a lot where to have committed actors and to plan ahead and not leave everything last minute, props and locations where also an issue we are only students and do not have a lot of access to many facilities.


- How easy/difficult was it to be creative while still working to the brief?

Sticking to the brief was not a problem for my digipak and poster or my AS work, i had done a lot of research on all of these and was confident i had created something good.


- Did working within convention stifle your creativity?

We were given a rough outline of the type of products we were asked to create during both AS and A2 however we definitely had more freedom at A2. The guideline for AS showed a specific style of magazine, which pages to include and roughly how to structure them; whereas at A2 we were given guidelines of '3 minute music video' and that was pretty much it.


- To what extent did you need to work with others and ‘bounce ideas’ off other people to be truly creative?

During the A2 project we used each others ideas to build on our own, resulting in all of the final ideas. We had a say in each idea and were able to give constructive criticism to each other, I feel we never really had a clear precise video we wanted and where trying to aim too high, this in the end resulted in loss of communication.


- How much of your creativity was about trying to picture things in your mind’s eye?

I find it easy to picture end products in my mind so I used this a lot, for example during A2 I had a clear idea of my ancillary products and really wanted my teachers to like them as a 'creative' idea, I new what a normal poster and digipak looked like and I just wanted to portray this through my own work.


- How much of your creativity was about trial and error?

During AS magazine and my ancillary products I discarded previous ideas and created new designs for my final submission. However for our A2 music video project we never had errors, only trials that we pushed aside and replaced with something easier or less time consuming.


- To what extent was a lack of confidence an issue in terms of your creativity?

I think we didn't have enough confidence to speak out to each other during our A2 project so we were not always happy with the final cut of our video. We didn't feel comfortable enough to judge each others ideas and criticise but we always reasoned with each other about ideas but neither put there foot down to portray the plan.


- To what extent was a lack of technical competence/confidence an obstacle to your creativity?

In my A2 coursework my confidence lacked towards the end of the course, I felt as though I was going to be unable to produce the same type of music video I had been planning from the start. As a result of my doubt, I achieved only a Level 2 grade in my coursework, which I was disappointed with as it was not always my fault.