How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

By Lydia Gould

• All my format research started from Google, a search engine which i used to find and research existing movie posters and websites in which i would then analyse and gain inspiration from. It was so good as it bought up millions of results from a massive range of sources which allowed me an insight into various work.

• My use of technologies definitely have improved throughout the production of the ancillary tasks; I now feel confident in using programmes such as adobe fireworks, photoshop elements and abode InDesign after watching tutorials and playing around with them myself. I also had to get use to the website creator programme- wix. This took some getting used to but was so effective when i found my way around the tools. Wix was really interesting to use and it was amazing to see what you could create with a free website builder. I really enjoyed making the website and personalizing things to relate them to my film- from transitions to fonts and colours.

Wix website builder…• This was a technology I had never used before but was my favourite to use for the Ancillary

tasks. It began by choosing a template, and from that basis you start to build and develop your own site. The website allowed me to interact with people online, I focused strongly on social networking sites; I had a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube link on my website all promoting the film. I found these sources were really effective to ask audience for involvement by giving there opinions and constructive criticisms.

• I like how it was online and it really helped with the construction part of it ecause I was able to add and take away things so easily which was really useful in improving and updating my website conviniently and quickly.

• The programme overall was really good to use, its easy enough to navigate around and it has loads of options and settings which allow you to make it your own.

• In the second year of the course, I advanced my knowledge and skills on photoshop as I started to layer and combine images and change opacities and blending modes in order to create a bold photo for my poster. I now feel really comfortable using this programme and would be happy to challenge myself with harder edits if I was able to re-do my ancillary tasks. InDesign also ended up being quite easy to work with for the creation of my poster, it was practical and easy to add fonts, move stuff around and make pre-sets so i could have consistency among my pages.

• Furthermore, I recognise a significant difference in the presentation of my A2 blog compared to my AS showing how I used by blog much more effectively to research, plan and evaluate materials. I found myself embedding my own presentations, videos, screenshots, sound cloud links, PowerPoint, emaze and prezis, because it was a much more effective way to present my work to make my blog interesting and engaging to an audience. It was also easier to look back on my plans as my ideas were a lot more structured and developed.

• Other technologies I used to plan and research, involved things such as YouTube and social networking sites, which again I used much more effectively in the second year. This is because I was much more interactive with the audience, asking them questions and getting feedback, which helped with the production of my products in particular. Furthermore, it allowed me to target a wide and varied mass audience, so was really useful in my research and planning stages to distinguish my target demographic. For one of my ancillary tasks I created a website, so the social networking side worked really effectively to help promote and draw attention to the website to get consumers to have a look.

Fading in and out Music on Adobe Premiere

Using various transitions- Dissolve effects being my favourite 

Here are some tools I used on Adobe Premiere and Imovie:

Adjusting colours, contrasts and cropping videos. Also opportunities to auto tune

the footage and add filters etc.