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One major piece of technology I have used within my research was a computer. This piece of equiptment I particularly depended on to complete my whole project. I used a computer for every aspect of my work from research and planning to the production.

The advantages of using a computer is that it is quick and fast to write down any information you have collected, as well as being easy to save and keep safe on the computer system and for extra security you can save it on a memory stick in comparison with a piece of paper which you could lose and never have a backup for all your work. A computer is also much more environmentally friendly for this particular project because this project would entail using large quantities of paper which would therefore destroying our trees and also be very hard to keep in an organized manner, especially as you can carry around all your work on one memory stick rather than carrying pages of work and lots of library books.

Disadvantages to using a computer however, is that it is not always reliable occasionally I came across situations where my computer wouldn’t save the work which had a simple solution, I just had to delete some files because I had used the maximum capacity of memory space. sometimes computers can be slow and end up taking longer than if you were to look for a book in a library for research instead.

The overall impact of this technology is that it has provided a simple way of presenting my work in a structured and organized style.

• How did you use them? • Were they beneficial (consider the pro’s and con’s)? • What has the impact of this technology been?• Have you become more creative?

Comp ute

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(A technology used in general throughout all of my project)

I used the internet for mostly the

research because it was easier than

using a library book.

Cons: The internet has its cons, those being that the data you find

is not always reliable because anyone can post information on a

website whether its reliable or not, therefore, you have to be careful what you read and aware of this.

Whereas, books have to be published etc so all the

information has been checked over.

Finally, the only problem I faced with the Internet was

when I was at college it was very slow at working

occasionally because of the large numbers of people using the internet at the

same time.

Pros: The internet is much easier than getting a library book and hunting through the pages

to find what you’re looking for and making sure that the information that you find is up to date and not old data/information. The

internet is faster than a library book because you don't have to go to your local library and find the book you just need to turn on your computer and type in specifically what you

want to find out and a massive range of answers will come up in comparison to the

number of books that are in a library.

(A technology used in general throughout all of my project)

I feel PowerPoint has helped me become more creative and think of different ways of approaching how to present something and I have learnt more and more things within the program as I have gone along.

I have used PowerPoint throughout my project mainly to help entertain my audience and make a more interesting way of consuming my coursework.

I think using PowerPoint was beneficial because you can present work in a different most interesting way other than just a word document, you can also show off skills. It is a more interesting approach to presenting work because it separates big bulks of writing and can make it clearer to the reader on the point that is trying to be put across. It looks more professional and tidy than someone presenting handwritten or poster work to present something.

However PowerPoint can be difficult to use if you haven't had the experience of using it before and therefore using a word document or hand writing a presentation would be much easier. Some people don't get the full potential out the program if they don't know how to use it and there is an opportunity that the presentation can look tacky if you use too many transitions, animations or different themes.

M

icro

soft

Pow

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int (A technology used in some areas of Research and Evaluation)

Microsoft Word I used Microsoft Word within my project because I found it easier to use in some circumstances

than blogger.

For instance I found blogger hard to create a table on so I used Microsoft as I am more familiar

with the program than blogger. Once I created the table I pasted it into blogger. However a few

problems then became apparent for example you couldn't copy and paste the pictures that were

within the table, you had to copy and paste them individually after, which was time consuming. A few other problems occurred with the use of Word, sometimes the program froze and there

was a worry that it didn't save my work along with it, luckily it saved it as a backup but you

wouldn't get this type of stress if you were writing something out as technical problems can’t

really occur apart from your pen running out etc. However, this is easily fixed.The overall impact of Word on my project is not as significant as other technologies I have used

however it did make it easier when I was less familiar with the use of blogger.

(A technology used in general throughout all of my project)

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK WEB/MOBILES I used email to send and recieve emails from my partner and to receive helpful information and deadlines from my lecturer.

Microsoft Outlook was extremely helpful for me and my partner to communicate and share with each other the work we had completed to inform each other where we were at.

We also received emails regarding our blogs so we could complete our blogs individually. Above left is an email I have received from my partner with a link to his blog. This is much quicker than waiting to see each other in another lesson and transferring information and most definitely quicker than sending a letter which was typical for traditional ways of communicating. We used mobiles also to communicate but this was mainly for urgent contact for something we wanted to let our partners know straight away because email doesn't give an alarm that you have received an email unless you are online when an email is sent. Whereas, mobile phones, which nowadays people carry them everywhere with them so I can be almost certain that my partner would receive this instantly. An advanage to email is that you can keep track of what you are sending and recieving all in one place and can re –read over it at any time.The downside to email is that it doesn't send an alarm if the person isnt online at that time, unlike text which is more instant. The other downside is that technology can play up and therefore it may not always be possible to access emails, however, this particulat issue didnt accure to me whilst doing my project.

(A technology used in general throughout all of my project)

iPhone 3GSI used my iPhone as it has a high quality camera and used this to take images for my poster and magazine cover. I also used this to send and receive texts to my actor/partner.

The camera was very effective and took the images clearly. The possible problems that could have occurred is if I were taking an image in a dark place, then this camera doesn't have flash and therefore the image would be very poor but given that I wanted to take the images in daylight this was not an issue. I was careful that I positioned the camera evenly as I don’t have a tripod for the iPhone but I had a steady hand.

I feel as though this played a big part in making the film poster and magazine cover look attractive as before I was just using screenshots of the teaser trailer which wasn’t as high quality.

(A technology used in general throughout all of my project)

YouTube

Technologies I have used for specifically for Research

I used YouTube to watch my teaser trailers on so I was able to analyse them without this I wouldn’t be able to analyse my teaser trailer in as much thorough detail and it could also be much m ore expensive.

The advantages of being able to use YouTube was that I could watch the trailers whenever I liked and within my own time where I could continuously watch the trailer and take every aspect of it in so I could produce a detailed analysis of each one. YouTube provides sound and noise which makes the analysis much more intense.

However, YouTube does come with some downsides. For example, my college doesn’t enable you to access YouTube because of the entertainment distraction that can be found on YouTube and therefore I had to do this part of the research at home. Another negative about this website is that a lot of advertising is also done on the website and therefore pop-ups can be annoying and get in the way occasionally. Sometimes the quality of videos uploaded onto YouTube are poor because anyone can upload their footage and so sometimes it is not always the best quality, therefore you have to be careful which ones you watch.

However, I found this website extremely helpful to use and the positives outweigh the negative points because without this technology I would struggle to analyse any teaser trailers and it would mean taking several trips to a cinema and trying to jot down notes in the dark.

(A technology specific to Research)

Internet Movie Database is a website that covers the film industry and more importantly shows plenty of teaser trailers. I used IMDb when researching teaser trailers, I used there trailers and analysed them. When working on my teaser trailer research I inserted many weblinks to IMDb on my blog, which sends the reader to the teaser trailers I researched on IMDb. I feel IMDb helped me a lot to analyse teaser trailers similarly to YouTube, without this website I wouldn’t have been able to analyse them in as much detail.

A negative about this website is that you have to be careful you are watching a teaser trailer and not a normal trailer but I could easily check this by seeing how long the trailer lasted. They don’t always have all the teaser trailers for every film so when I wanted to research a particular film I sometimes found that they didn’t have this on their website therefore I had to choose a different movie trailer.

I feel being able to watch different trailers it has made my imagination wider and I was able to take on some of the professional techniques and reflect these within my own teaser trailer.

IMDb(A technology specific to Research)

FIND YOUR TRIBEI have used find your tribe website within my research. I found it useful because it helped me to define what my target audience is stereotyped as and what their interests are which was an advantage because I was able to know what kind of interests my audience would be into and therefore be influenced by this and I could try and incorporate some of these aspects in my products.

Although this is a good way of stereotyping my target audience it is also a very general way of grouping people and therefore is quite biased. I had to do more research into target audience because I couldn’t just rely on this data to create my products.

(A technology specific to Research)

Adobe Premier Pro

Adobe Photoshop Elements

Adobe Photoshop CS5

Lumix G1 digital camera Vs. Samsung Digital Camcorder VP-D70

I have used two different cameras as it was convenient to use my partners camera (lumix) when we were filming outside of college because it was easier to access and it wasn't as much of a risk if we were to damage it during filming. We used these cameras to film all of the scenes within out teaser trailer.

The pros that came with using these is that we could capture as many bits of footage on a tap e and replay it back on a PC when we had finished recording. You can film scenes over and over again until you have perfected it and if you are running out of tape then you can rewind and simply record over the footage that weren't the perfected pieces of footage. The cameras were simple to use as I have previous experience of working with them.

Some problems we came across when using these cameras to film was that we used the camera landscape and portrait in different scenes this meant that we had to go out and record more footage because the portrait footage we were unable to use because it didn't fit into the screen size of the trailer and looked unprofessional. Other difficulties we found were when we had run out of tape we had to record over bits that we had already saved on the PC but on one occasion we recorded over footage that we hadn't saved and therefore we had to record some scenes again which was time consuming.

The use of this technology has definitely made me more creative because I have increased my skills of using a camera and understand the rules of using a camera. I feel i have a better understanding of how camera men use their camera and specific techniques they use to make a particular scene look more effective.

Adobe Premiere ProAdobe Premiere Pro was an extremely useful program to create my teaser trailer, without this I wouldn’t have been able to create such a high quality and professional trailer.

I really enjoyed using this Premiere Pro because it was easy to edit my trailer and I could add all the components to my trailer in an order and systematic way. I could easily insert soundtracks and text so that they fitted the timings of the footage. I sometimes found it difficult to get the cropping of the original footage correct but this was easily fixed because I could clip the footage further and more exact when I inserted it into the trailer.

A common problem that occurred was when I rearranged the clips within my trailer the clips sometimes were lost and therefore I had to re-insert this footage which was time consuming however easily solved. Another problem was that there were only some computers that could operate premiere pro to upload footage from your tape to the computer therefore sometimes we had to wait for a computer to free up this was also time consuming. I had to do all the trailer work at college as I don’t have the Premiere Pro software at home this is another downside to the product because of the expense of it.

However, I feel this program has made me much more creative as I have learnt different ways of presenting work and I feel much more confident in using the program and feel I could carry on creating more professional looking videos.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0/ Adobe Photoshop CS5

I used Photoshop in the planning and production of the film poster and magazine cover to edit images and insert text.

I really enjoyed using Photoshop as you can edit images and transform them to look like a completely different image in easy ways as long as you know how to use Photoshop. I am not very experienced with using the program but I understand the basics so in some circumstances I watched and read up on how to edit things to make them look as you want them to look. You can do virtually everything on this program to transform your original image into one that fits your needs.

The negative with using Photoshop is that if you don't know how to use it then it can be a struggle to understand the program however, i was willing to teach myself along the way. Other negatives is that the program is expensive to initially buy and the space that the images can take up on your computer can be a lot therefore simple changes like changing the file to a jpeg so it takes up less space, however this can decrease the quality of the image sometimes.

Overall, I feel much more inspired by this program and feel I could create more creative things because of the potential that this program has to edit images.