Evaluation: How did you use media

technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research• During my course I became aware of how lucky I am to have

access to the Web 2.0 format, as it has allowed me to use consumer produced websites such as YouTube and Blogger. Websites such as these allow the public to upload user-generated content whilst being easy and simple to use.

• Research was the first stage of the coursework, I explored many websites on the Internet using the search engine Google. I found a good range of film posters, magazines and trailers.

• This would have given me a major insights to all 3 and will have also given me inspiration.

• I went to the cinema as often as I could to actually watch trailers in the cinema to give me the full impact of how trailers can actually affect the audience. In the cinema there is also posters, billboards and advertisement to promote the film. I looked how they made me feel and how they draw the audience in.

• The internet was the biggest source that I use throughout my coursework, it has given massive understanding with existing media products such as posters and magazines.

YouTube• I used YouTube throughout my project for research, planning,

production, post-production. I think that if it hadn’t been for this sight, I wouldn’t have gain so much insight on existing products. I spent hours watching trailers to hope it would inspire me. YouTube is a site which is free and readily available. When I decided to do a thriller I spent many hours searching through clips and short films to come up with an idea that was going to be suited to my genre. I feel my trailer has worked well all thanks to YouTube. When I was doing my planning, I was watching some trailers on YouTube to gain ideas for the type of shots which were needed for my storyboard. I then spent a while looking for suitable soundtracks. I looked on all the free copyright websites, some were good but other didn’t quite fit. I downloaded effect to make my trailer scarier and add realism. I used YouTube 2 MP3 to download the sounds.

• I used the site YouTube to search for existing trailer, as this site is free and readily available. There is also audience feedback on each video so I was able to see which one were more successful.

• For example The Dark Knight trailer has over 3 million views with a like/dislike bar at the bottom. This bar shows that 4692 liked the trailer and only 152 disliked it. This means that this trailer was very successful with its target audience. I could also look at the comments below to see specifically which elements were liked and disliked.

Internet• I used Google Chrome because it works

will with blogger. I do think I used Google Chrome in all my tasks enabling me to achieve my full potential through the use of this browser. By using this search engine, it has given me everything that I could ever need for my research, planning and production.

• Google was a really useful website, it was a good tool for my research because it allowed me to search for websites that helped me gain useful information and also find images I needed such as film posters. Google was easy and quick to used and it helped me find all the information I need form y research.

Blogger• I used Blogger the most throughout my project. I

uploaded all my work to which was really easy and useful. It meant I could add videos and images to support my written work which a clear heading above each post. I really like how I could combine this use of technology with my written work to support it and make it look creative and interesting to read. I feel by using Blogger I have thought more about how I represent my work as well as thinking about uploading content to the internet. Blogger has made me more creative as I have really thought about how to display work within a blog post. However I did have problems with Blogger, such as it was difficult to place images where I wanted and sometime I was limited to a smaller size. It also took a long time for videos to upload which wasn’t really too much of a problem as I could still edit my post but it would sometimes crash Blogger meaning I would lose my work when it didn’t save. Overall, I think Blogger was a really useful tool and I feel it was a good way to upload my work.

Excel and Paint• Microsoft Office is a software package used

globally and we can see why because of the range of programmes it consists. Advantage of using Excel is that I found was that it enabled me to create charts with ease; it was useful for my audience results analysis. On Excel I was able to easily tally up and count up out results with minimal errors and maximum speed. We also made out results look more interesting by being more creative and using different ranges of bar charts. Once I created the charts, I copied it onto paint and saved it as a JPEG.

• I used Paint to save image as JPEGs. I print screens the charts from excel and cropped then down to size and saved them as JPEG on paint. I did this because I could upload them on my blog. It was very time consuming but it was worth it. Paint is a simple but useful programme that I feel I made good use of in my work.

Planning• In my planning stage, I created a storyboard using

Post-It notes which showed the story of my trailer. I used Post-It notes because I could change around the scenes if I wished too which was much easily and convenient. I did change it around often and also added more scenes in. for each Post-It note I’ve drawn diagrams to illustrate the scenes, giving a brief description of what's happening and how long it is shot for. Also the diagram is drawn as what camera I am going to use. Images were taken on a Blackberry then transferred onto the computer.

• To organise my filming, I used Google calendar to show this. Google calendar is free and very easy to us. It also shows it in a very simple way and is available to print and be shown online (Internet).

• Any planning and research that I completed was then transferred onto Blogger, an online blog storage that allowed me to enter my work chronologically.

Facebook and Email

• I felt that Facebook is a great way to communicate with others. I use this social network to organise shooting day with my actress by using Facebook chat and mail.

• Email was used to contact my artist but I also used mobile because it quicker to communicate and any complication I can also ring.

Word

• Work was very important during my research, planning and evaluation stage. Firstly it enabled me to create my audience research questionnaire. An advantage of using Word was that any text could be easily changed and it detects spelling errors and grammatically errors. This helps because it makes my written work professional because it won’t have any errors.

Production • During my production I used a range of different media

technologies. Firstly to capture my images, I used a digital SLR Nikon D3200 camera for high quality and professional looking production. When taking my photos for my poster, I want to emphasise dark/light so I used an iPhone flash on the camera to enhance my artist features.

• To film my trailer used a video camera which was very fun to use and actually going out to film help me improve my camera skills.

• I used Photoshop to edit my images for poster and front cover magazine. Using the crop tool, brightness, contrast, lightness, hue, saturation etc. I have used Photoshop briefly in AS Level so now using it again has given more depth into how to use Photoshop.

• InDesign was used for my poster and magazine, yet again I have used this before so I am familiar with the tools on the programme.

• Premiere Pro was completely new to me and I had to use this to edit my footage. This programmed allowed me to edit various aspects of my trailer.

• For example, I was able to input ‘scream sound effect ‘ to convey what happening in the trailer without having to show scenes of the scream. It also allowed me to add in transition and shorten scenes to make it more scary and jumpy. This has given me a new skill on working on another Adobe programme.

Premiere Pro• Premiere Pro was one of the most important

pieces of software I used to enable me to create my ‘The Watcher’ trailer. Without the editing techniques available I wouldn’t have been able to import my captured footage from my film camera and add several of effects to fit into conventions of a thriller. You can see for each scene I need a transition effect called ‘Dissolve’. The ability of adding this transition helped me be creative as it connotes different times of day. Furthermore, Premiere Pro allowed me to cut and chop footage and increase the pace of the trailer.

• Another aspect which helped me was the editing of sound. It let me take out sounds away from my footage and add different sound on top of my footage. It also let me increase the pace of the sound or even slow it down.

• A possible disadvantage is that I would have to regularly save my work because sometimes it would crash which would lead to losing my work.

Photoshop

• I used Photoshop to edit all my images that I have used. Photoshop came easy to me this year because I gain practise from last year project (AS Media), yet again it has helped me create fantastic images.