HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA

TECHNOLOGIES IN THE

CONSTRUCTION,

RESEARCH, PLANNING

AND EVALUATION STAGES?

Whilst conducting research and planning I used a variety of different soft wares. Most of

these soft ware are:

- Blogger

- Google

- Word

- PowerPoint

- Slideshare

- Facebook

For research, we mainly used Microsoft word to help us to come up with scripts for our voice-over

for the documentary and radio trailer, and we also used it to help create our article for our double

page spread. We also used word to prepare any other pieces of work that we had to put onto our

blog. However, we decided not to just make posts in word and stick them straight onto the blog

because even though it would make the blog look consistent and professional it would looking very

boring and long as there would be too many words to read, so we only used the word format on 2-3

posts on our blog. Word is a very easy and basic software to use and it can be mastered by anyone

instantly. I have got lots of experience with using word because I have been using it since school

right up to my current education stage.

As well as using Microsoft word, I also used PowerPoint to create presentations. This allowed me to

create and present my work in a professional and attractive manner because the layout of

PowerPoint is very basic and easy and also there are lots of different font and colour options that

you can use to help make the presentation looking more eye catchy. I mainly used PowerPoint for

my blog when I was carrying out research into specific parts of the blog, such as the different

theorists. After creating the PowerPoint presentation I had to put it onto my blog and to do this I

used another online software called Slideshare. Just like word, this is another easy and basic

software to use and also it comes with another feature which allows you to turn your presentation

into separate images depending on the number of slides you have. This then lets you go a step

further with presenting it in your own unique way.

Slideshare was another software that I used. However I didn’t use this software to create anything

because it is designed to allow you to present your work. Instead I used this software to allow my

presentations to be put online so that they can be added onto my blog. Another benefit that came

with Slideshare is that it allowed me to view other people’s presentations online. This was very

influential because it allowed me to look at presentations that other people had created around

the world and then do something similar to their work when carrying our planning and research in

the future. This is another very easy software to use as all you have to do is create a presentation

on PowerPoint and then put it onto Slideshare. I have not been using Slideshare for a long time

however because it is so basic and easy to use I quickly became very familiar with its tools and

now I feel as if I am very experienced in using it.

Google is not a software it is a search engine. However, I still used Google a lot when carrying out

research and planning into existing media products because I needed to understand some key

concepts of each media product that we were going to make. I feel that Google was extremely

helpful because it provided me lots of different search results that contained all of the information

that I needed to know about the three different media products. Just like Word and PowerPoint, I

have been using Google for a long time and therefore knew how to get the right information

whenever I searched something relating to either the documentary, radio trailer or double page

spread.

Blogger is an online blogging site that was created by Google. It allows users to sign up and then

post whatever they like onto different blog posts. I used blogger to help show all of the different

work that I produced throughout all the steps for the media products. The information that I

included on the blogger was mainly about research and planning into real media products,

research into our chosen topic, production and development and evaluation. On blogger, I didn’t

just stick the information on, I used various other software and programs such as Prezi and

Slideshare to help aid my work. They helped to aid my work by making it more interesting to read

because it looked more attractive than just sticking everything straight onto the blog. Blogger is a

very easy program to use and can be accessed by nearly everyone, I would also recommend it to

people who spend lots of time blogging because it is easy and basic to use and can help them

make their posts look good.

We did not use Facebook to aid any of the research and planning for our media products, instead

we used it to create a group chat consisting of all the members I was working with. We felt that

this was a good way for us all to stay in touch with each other because Facebook is a social

networking site making it easy for our group members to get hold of each other and to keep us

updated about the work we are doing. Another advantage our group gained by using Facebook was

that we were able to assign individual tasks amongst each other more easily meaning that we

were able to get the work done much more quickly.

In terms of research and planning in AS, I feel as if my research and planning skills and

improved a lot more in A2 because I have used a wider range of skills and software to

present my research and planning into the media products we are studying. Also because

we are producing different products in A2 compared to AS I feel as if that had been

another reason for why my planning and research skills have developed. What was

different about this unit was that we had to create three very different media products

and at the same time make them all link to one another forming a synergy. I believe that

this is one of the biggest reasons why I have been able to develop my knowledge in

media studies a lot more and also understand how very different products can still be

linked with one another.

During the construction stages I used lot of different hardware to help gather everything I

needed for the documentary, radio trailer and double page spread. These hard wares are:

- Camera

- Tripod

- Microphone

- Headphones

- iMac

- Phones

To get all of the footage that we needed for our documentary we had to use a camera. I was able

to use the camera given to our group to take images and also record footage. The camera was very

simple and easy to use and the footage it provided with afterwards was very good and clear. I also

learnt lots of other features on the camera and lots of different techniques with the camera. I

learnt how to use different zoom methods on the camera so I could always adjust the lens to have

the most appropriate setting for each piece of footage we needed. I also learnt how to get lots of

different camera shots such as wide shots, panning shots and close ups, etc. I found the camera

very easy to use and operate and because of this I was able to capture lots of good footage to use

for our documentary.

A tripod was another piece of equipment I used. This piece of equipment allowed me to easily

capture certain camera shots such as panning shots and tracking shots without distorting the

image on screen. Another advantage of a tripod is that all my clips were levels and there wasn’t

any shaking footage in our documentary. This is a very easy piece of equipment to get used to and

it is very beneficial because it can aid you to capture lots of good footage. Also the camera was

very easy to set-up onto the tripod and there was excellent manoeuvrability.

A boom microphone was an external microphone that our group decided to use with the camera to

help capture the sound more clearly. A problem that did arise was that sometimes the wire of this

microphone would occasionally get caught under the tripod but as a group we were able to fix this

problem by keeping the tripod and microphone a fair distance from one another. This also helped

to keep it out of shot meaning it didn’t block anything.

We also had to use headphones during recording. Headphones allowed us to hear what the

microphone was picking up more clearly. This then enabled us to make any changes I necessary

before filming. This saved our group lots of filming time because we were able to get the shot right

the first time by making sure everything was set up properly first, rather than just rushing into the

get as much footage recorded as possible. The headphone were a very easy piece of equipment to

use because all we had to do was plug them into the camera and they began working.

The iMac’s at college were there for us to transfer our footage onto and to also edit the clips in the

future. The Apple Mac’s made editing and transferring the clips very easy because of the speed

and user friendly devices that it came with. However, during editing, our Mac went through several

server issues meaning that we had lost lots of editing time during the editing period. However we

were able to overcome this once our group’s Mac was fixed by coming in during our frees to work

on editing so we were back on track. A Mac was fairly and easy to use and therefore it allowed us

to create some really good media products.

I used my iPhone 5S to get any other images and footage that we needed either for our blog or

documentary. Once again this was another very easy piece of equipment to use because it is my

phone which I have had for a while and therefore knew how to operate it very quickly, and also

because it was another Apple product it allowed me to sync it with iMac using a power cable so I

could transfer the files over.

In terms of construction and use of equipment, I feel as if my skills have developed a lot

because firstly during AS I only used a camera to take pictures, whereas in A2 I was able

to use a camera and other accessories that were compatible with it to get footage and

images for my media products. Also because for A2 we had to produce more media

products, I feel as if my use of all the different hardware have improved and developed

because there are lots of new skills that I have picked up on in terms of editing which I

will not forget and also operating all the equipment to get the best pieces of work

possible. However, despite improving my skills from AS in A2, I still feel as if that I can

further improve my skills more by using the same equipment again to create other

similar products.

There was not many software that we used for the production of our media products,

but there were still a few that I was brand new to which was a good experience for me.

The software that we used for production were:

- Photoshop

- Premier Pro

- InDesign

- Garage Band

This was a new software for me to use and therefore meant that I had to first familiarise myself with the

basic controls before I could use it to begin editing my clips and constructing the documentary. This was

quite an easy software to get used to because there were lots of different editing shortcuts on the

keyboard which made it easier to cut and movie clips together. I struggled a little using this software as it

had lots of different functions and was new to me but still enjoyed it a lot because it was a new

experience for me.

This was another new software for me to use and therefore meant that I had to first familiarise myself

with the basic controls of this software as well before I could use it to begin editing and constructing the

radio trailer in it. Just like Adobe Premier Pro, Garage Band was quite an easy software to get used to

because there were lots of different editing shortcuts on the keyboard as well. I also struggled a little

using this software as well because it had lots of different functions and was new to me but still enjoyed it

a lot because it was a new experience for me.

In Photoshop I was able to use lots of my skills, this is because I have been using this software for a

very long time and am very familiar with how everything works. Therefore I was able to create lots of

good drafts pieces of works for mainly the double page spread before moving on into InDesign to create

the final product. Photoshop was very easy for me to use as I understand it very well and I was also

able to my teammates along with how to use it and get better at it through the time of production.

In InDesign I was able to construct and create the double page spread based on our topic and our

documentary. I constructed a basic layout of where all the information and pictures would go for our

double page spread and then once this was completed I started filling in the blank areas with the right

information and pictures, depending on where I said I would put them. InDesign was a very easy

software for me to use because I had used it before for my AS media product and became very good at

using it back then because whilst constructing my music magazine for my foundation portfolio, I

experimented a lot with this software to get used to all of the different tools and features that came

along with it. Overall I feel that I am just as good at using this software as I am at using Photoshop but

still believe that my skills can be further developed.

In terms of production of our media products, I feel as if my skills in Premier Pro and

Garage Band are still basic but they are much better than what they were before I started

using these two software. As I’ve used Photoshop and InDesign before in AS and use

them quite a lot, I feel as if I have been able to use my skills of these software to create

some good media products. I feel that my skills can still be further developed for all of

these different soft wares that I have used and maybe if I get some more practise at

using them all, especially Garage Band and Premier Pro, I can create other pieces of

work like our group’s media products.

For the evaluation I used some of the same soft wares and hardware that I used during

the research and planning, construction and production of my media products. These soft

wares and hardware were:

- Photoshop

- Premier Pro

- PowerPoint

- Word

- Prezi

- Slideshare

For evaluation questions 1 and 2 I used Prezi to present them. I felt like using this program to

answer questions 1 and 2 because it is a fun software to use which is very easy and can help you

create good pieces of work. Also I felt that this program would make my answers look more lively

rather than just sticking them onto a blog post which is quite boring because of the amount of

words there are. Prezi is also a much more professional way of presenting information and this

was another reason why I chose to use it for evaluation questions 1 and 2. also throughout this

whole coursework unit, I have used Prezi a lot because I didn’t use it at all during AS, this was

because I didn’t understand how to use it during the making of my AS coursework, but now in A2

I am much more familiar with how to use it and how to present information on it.

For evaluation questions 1 and 4 I used Slide share. I chose to use this program because it is

simple, quick and very easy to use and again would make my work look more attractive rather

than just sticking all the information straight onto a blog post.

For evaluation questions 1 I used Photoshop for one part of my answer. I chose to use this

software to answer the program because it gave me lots of freedom in terms of colours, fonts

and layout to answer the question meaning I could make my answer look very good and present

it in a unique way.

For evaluation questions 3 I used Premier Pro to create a video to answer the question. I used a

voice over and images of pie charts representing the information. This would make my answer

unique because instead of having to read four different paragraphs, I decided to turn one into a

little clip which answers the questions.

I used word for all the questions because before presenting the information on different

programs and software I decided to type them all up in word, this allowed me to make changes if

necessary and also meant that there would be no spelling mistakes.