What have you learnt about technologies

from the process of constructing this product?

During the production of my coursework, I used many different technologies and gained a lot of knowledge about them that I did not have previously. These include:

Facebook is the most popular social networking sight in the world. This proved to be very useful for organisational purposes and research during my project. I used Facebook to communicate with the people who appeared in my photo shoot and filming, to arrange locations and times to meet and discuss any other issues.

I also used Facebook as a form of primary research. I added a status to my profile which asked people of my target age range to get in touch with me if they would like to give me some feedback on my video. Some people replied and this proved to be quick and effective!

Photobucket is an image hosting website which allows you to upload many images. I created a folder on the website where I uploaded all pictures I took for my subsidiary tasks. The website then allows me to copy the html which embeds a slideshow of these photographs onto my blog. Although I could upload images directly to my blog, this was more time efficient and also made my blog looked well organised.

Slideshare is an internet website which allows you to upload PowerPoint presentations. This was a very useful tool for me during coursework production! In posts where I had a lot of information and images to upload, I simply created a PowerPoint presentation with this information and uploaded it to Slideshare.com. I could then embed the PowerPoint onto my blog, so the information is there in a more organised and structured way.

Slideshare.com

When taking photographs for my coursework, I preferred to use the digital SLR camera as the quality of picture is better and I also learned how to use the camera for things such as adjusting focus, adapting the image to different lighting settings and zooming in and out. I used these cameras for the photo shoots of my main task and subsidiary task, and I think my photography skills have definitely improved due to all the practice! I used these in the creation of my subsidiary tasks.

Digital SLR Camera / Ordinary digital camera

Serif Photo Plus

This photo editing software helped me to edit my photographs in many different ways! It allowed me to resize, crop and rotate images, adjust colour settings, add photographic effects such as lighting and I also created my whole magazine using this programme. It has a large variety of tools which helped me create my magazine, however one limitation was that the files were too large to upload to my blog. To combat this, I copied the image into Paint software and uploaded it as a JPEG file. My skills using this have greatly improved. This was used in the creation of my film poster and film magazine.

Blogging website

I used Blogger.com to document my coursework. It allows you to create different blogs and posts, including ways of uploading videos, images and embedding documents such as PowerPoint presentations. It was an excellent way of structuring my coursework, and helped me with time management as I knew my teachers could see when, and what, I was posting.

TripodA used a tripod while I was filming my teaser trailer. This was effective as it keeps the camera stable and stops the ‘shaky’ effect. It has many different mechanisms for moving around smoothly, and doing panning shots.

My ability to use the tripod and camera has much improved.

Camcorder

I used a camcorder to film my teaser trailer. The viewing screen allowed me to see how my footage looked while I was filming, which is very helpful! There are also settings on the camera for changing colour, therefore altering mise-en-scene. The camera fitted onto the tripod perfectly allowing for more professional filming and allowed me o zoom in and out of my shots.

I MovieThis is the editing software I used to edit my film post production. It allowed me first, to select the footage that I wanted to use in my trailer as there are some takes that went wrong, were not appropriate etc. I was able to adjust the speed of clips, split clips, crop clips and adjust colour settings to alter mise en scene. It allowed me to alter diegetic sound in the filming by either removing the sound or adjusting the volume of it. I added non diegetic sound by converting music from Youtube onto MP3 then importing it into Imovie for my soundtrack. I also used the sound effects such as a closing door which is already on Imovie. I could incorporate slide transitions and text into my trailer to talk directly to my audience. I also was able to create a voice over.

I also filmed my audience feedback interviews on this software.

Imovie allowed me to import files from Youtube as MP3 or MP4 files.

Garage band

This is the software on the school Mac computers which allows you to create your own music, using different instruments.I acknowledge that it would be preferential to create my own music on this programme but I tried to create sound and it turned out terrible! Due to deadlines, I could not spend a lot of time perfecting my musical skills and I therefore used an existing orchestral score.

Apple Mac Computer

This is the computer I used to edit my footage and photographs. I also used this to manage and edit my blog and upload my photographs and film clips.

Scanner

This technology allows you to scan still images from paper into the computer. I scanned in my draft for my subsidiary tasks and also my storyboard, allowing me to document my planning on my blog.