How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

BloggerBlogger is a website that people can upload different forms of information that they have made too so people can see this on the internet.

I have used Blogger to upload all of my work from the start of the year. This includes uploading Word documents, Powerpoint documents, Video and Audio files, Prezi Files and Taggle files.

Premier Pro

Premier Pro is a video editing programme that is used to edit video files. This is what we used to edit the footage that we filmed and combined the edited footage with music and a voice over as well as on screen graphics.

To start of with as a group we went out and filmed various footage that we wanted to use to make our documentary. Once we filmed all of our footage we selected the files that we felt were the most suitable and imported them into Premier where we started to cut down the footage and place them in order using the razor tool.

Once we had done a rough edit of all the footage we then went over the different video files again and cut them down even more specifically to make the documentary flow smoother. This meant making the intro quicker and more appealing so the viewer would be more incline to keep watching. With the interviews we filmed, instead of placing them all in together, we cut them up and used parts mixed with the vox pops and others to answer questions in detail. When the footage of interviews are playing we used cut away shots over these clips so the person being interviewed is still talking but the cut away shows what they are talking about. This makes the clips look more professional and this goes by the typical codes and conventions of a documentary.

On the print screen above it shows how we there is a clip of an interview with the audio below it. We placed a cut away shot over the clip of the interview but kept the audio of the interview uninterrupted. This meant the sound from the interview carried on playing whilst the image in the screen changed to someone baking a cake.

Once most of the footage for the documentary was in order and edited properly we began to put the title of the documentary in the opening sequence and the names of the people we interviewed in the clips where they were talking. To do this we right clicked on the project box where all the video files are dragged to, went on to the new item drop down and clicked on title.

From this we could put a title on top of the footage that would be playing.

When the title had been added we used a video transition effect. The effect we used was the cross dissolve, this made the name of the person being interviewed slowly fade into the picture and slowly fade out again.

Once we had completed editing the footage of the Documentary and a voice over had been added to the audio, We found a music bed to play throughout the documentary. We dragged the MP3 file into Premier and placed it under the voice over and recorded audio.

PhotoshopPhotoshop is a graphics editing programme that is commonly used to design and edit various things such as photos, logos and other digital based work.

We used Photoshop to create the print advertisement for the advertising campaign. We started off by drawing sketches of what we felt would look good as a print advertisement, once we had a few sketches we chose a design we felt was most suitable and went further into making this a print advert. Firstly I went out and used and SLR camera to take pictures of a cake. Once I had taken about 15 photos of the cake from different angles and positions I imported them onto the computer and looked at which photograph was most suitable.

I simply dragged the picture of the cake into a new Photoshop file and re sized to how it would look on the print advert. Once I had done this I was ready to start adding designs to the image.

Now that the picture had been cropped to the right size I added the channel 4 logo in the right hand side of the picture. To delete parts of the logo so that you could see the background image I used the magic wand tool and clicked on specific parts I wanted to delete, selected control and inverse and then deleted it so that you could see the background image instead of the white of the logo but without deleting the logo itself

I then added text to the image, to do this I simply clicked on the horizontal type tool and then made a small box in which I could type my font into.

Finally used the rectangle tool to create the rectangle background for the texts, I then went on blending options and changed the colour of the box.

Audacity was used to create the radio advertisement and the voice over for the documentary. To do this we went into the college radio room to use the mic to record into. To record the voice over for the radio advert and the voice over for the documentary we simply opened up a new document in Audacity and clicked on the record button, whilst it was recording everyone in the room had headphones on and stayed silent. The person doing the voice over spoke directly into the microphone. The reason everyone in the room had headphones on is so we could listen to it as it was recording and make sure the playback sounded acceptable. Once we had recorded this we put it onto a pen drive and imported it into our documentary and a separate Premier file that was used for the radio advert.

HD Sony Camera and SLR Camera

We used the Sony HD video cameras to film all of our footage for the documentary. To use the cameras effectively we also used tripods. When we were filming interviews we used the tripod to create a steady shot that used the rule of thirds correctly. We also used the tripod for other shots such as cut aways and establishing shots as this makes the documentary look more professional rather than mediocre. When we were filming interviews we used a small clip mic so the sound would record on the camera.

The SLR cameras were used to take pictures of the cake that was used for the print advertisement. I tried a variety of shot types with the camera to get the right picture. This included extreme close up shots, close up shots and medium close up shots. I also swapped between automatic and manual settings to get different effects when taking the photo.

Tagul was used to write down our documentary content ideas after we had come up with our main idea for the documentary.

Once we had come up with a large variety of content ideas we put them into Tagul and these words then created the shape of a cup cake. Once this was on our blog the person viewing the Tagul file could click on a certain word that made up the image of the cupcake and this would automatically search into google.

Prezi was used during the research stage when we were analysing various documentaries. I analysed Louis Theroux: The City Addicted to Meth and used Prezi to present the work that I did when analysing the documentary.

Firstly I started up a new Prezi document which gives you the option to select a template that you want to use for the layout of the analysis. However I started a blank Prezi as I didn’t want one of the pre set designs.

Once the new document has started it is simply a case of adding a title, subtitle and then adding the text around the blue circle.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint was what I used to analyse some of the documentaries we watched at the beginning of the unit. I used this because it is probably the most simple and straightforward way to write down and analyses of something as you can write about each topic on a separate slide.

SlideShareSlideShare is the programme that I used to upload my PowerPoints to blogger with. This was a very simple task as all I had to do was click on the upload button and then find the specific PowerPoint file that I wanted to upload, once it was successfully uploaded I copied the embed code into blogger and the PowerPoint was then on my blog.

YouTube was used to watch the documentaries at the beginning of the year when we were analysing the documentaries.

This was also used to upload the voice over video I made of screenshots from a documentary I analysed, from YouTube I could upload the video to my Blogger