How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research and planning stages?

Research – Internet:• The internet helped hugely in my research and planning of my media products. There

was a huge variety of resources I was able to access in order to gain knowledge of media texts and products which helped developed mine. Resources included:

– Google

– Youtube

– Wikipedia

– IMD (Internet Movie Data base)

– Wordpress

– Slideshare

• Youtube allowed me access to many various types of film trailers which was vital to my work. I was able to visually see conventions used across many genres and it developed my knowledge on trailers hugely.

• Wikipedia held a lot of information of various media texts which I was able to put forward into my research to back my development and plans. Information such as conventions used in media texts, how they are used, example of different texts and genres within these texts, etc.

• Wordpress not only held knowledge other people had gathered that I could benefit from, but it helped hugely in organising and keeping record of my research and planning. I was also able to communicate with the public which enabled me to gain their opinion on my work and development.

• IMDb is a huge database for movies which is key to my research. I was able to retrieve details of various films I was

researching into which in the end improved

my research and made it more beneficial to me

• Here you can see that I have posted videos from youtube onto my blog in order to help in my research; access to internet allowed me to use Wikipedia to find films similar to the genre I intend to represent in my trailer where I could watch through them and attempt to analyse them. This helped for me as I able to take information from this such as conventions that worked well in the trailers and various shots that pulled of a good effect and attempt to adopt them in my trailer. I was also able to get the hang of a typical horror trailer and the kind of feel it gave; a sense of fear and suspense which catches the eye of the audience and makes a connection with them. This makes the trailer very effective and I was able to witness this watching various horror trailers which made me start thinking of various ways to pull of this effect and maximise my trailers potential.

• The use of youtube also allowed me to realise that all horror trailers aren’t the same; there is a contrast of different trailer within the same genre which pulled off different effects; this helped conclude that all horror trailers don’t have to be the same and I don’t have to follow and copy every convention used in horror trailers.

Use of wordpress for research:

• Wordpress enabled me to visually show and express my progress and development within my research and planning. This was useful as I was able to visually see and show differences in different media rather than having to explain it. The blog allowed me to post various links such as videos, posters and websites which I could use to compare and contrast with other of similar qualities or analyse them to help aid in my knowledge. For example:

– Comparing film trailers within the same genre.– Analysing film posters– Researching into music for my film trailer by comparing songs

• Not only could I express my work and development on my own blog, I was able to gain the opinions of various colleagues and the public themselves. I could do this through the form of polls or comments on posts that I have submitted. This was vital as it helped in my development; if I was unsure on what type of convention to use or what style to follow I would be able to connect with the public and get their opinion on the matter.

These screenshots shows what Wordpress has enabled me to do; I am able to upload various bits of media and text to boost my research and planning so I can visually see differences and development, which has helped hugely.

• Polls:• Wordpress not only allowed me to visually show my progress; but gave me the

opportunity to communicate with the public and try to get their opinion on my work and progress. I was able to do this through the use of polls; which I have done. However, I don’t think I maximised the use of posting polls on my blog and perhaps should have posted more than I did. This would have given me more of an overview of what the public and colleagues thought of my work and what appealed to them the most.

• Use of polls also gave me the opportunity to pick from a choice of options, rather than just sticking to one. It means I was able to explore more and see which option appealed to the public the most.

For example, the poll shown here helped me choose from a collection of Film titles which I wasn’t sure which one appealed to me the most. I was able to get feedback from the audience in the form of votes to see which one appealed the most.

Adobe Premier Elements and filming:• At the start of the year I learned and gained skills on Adobe Premier elements, which is the

program I went on to use to construct my trailer. Learning these skills early on was key to my planning and constructing, as I was able to build basic knowledge of the program ready for when I started my trailer. Basic skills I learned were:

• How to edit shots – colour distortion, opacity, shot length etc

• How to do fade in-fade out effects on shots

• How to add other media such as text or audio to my shots

• Here are some examples of what I achieved when I first started using Adobe Elements and some of the conventions I learned to use:

• - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9tPx3uE1-c• - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiA_4HbcSKg

Camerawork and filming:

• My camera work and filming skills were quite low level when I first started filming my film trailer and that may still be evident now in my trailer. I had to take in a range of conventions such as camera angle, lighting, positioning, mise-en-scene and sound.

• This was quite a lot to take in and I don’t think I got the full grasp of it which may be apparent in my trailer.

• Using equipment for the cameras was helpful however; we had access to tripods which the cameras could attach to, so a good, firm angles was sustained with no wobbly movement.

• A downside of the cameras in filming a horror trailer was that it didn’t film very well in the dark as it was able to pick up very little light which left you with a dark screen with very little to see. This was a problem as dark scenes would have been ideal for my trailer. Therefore we had to film in light hours was quite significantly different.

Evaluation – use of Powerpoint:

• Using Microsoft PowerPoint was very useful for covering some of my questions in my evaluation as it is creative yet informative.

• I have been able to range from using text, images and URLs throughout these PowerPoint's to cover as many points as I can. I think this is a better convention than having pages of text as images used can catch the eye and look appealing, where endless amounts of paragraphs can make you eyesore.

• I uploaded these powerpoints using Slideshare, and then posted them on my blogs. This shows how a range of technology and resources were used to help benefit my work and evaluation.