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

evaluation stages?

Blogger• Blogger is what I use to present my work

altogether in one place. Blogger allowed me to present my work in chronological order and the freedom to use different medias to present it. Blogger has also allowed me to present the research that we found for the topic. I have also been able to create a page that is easy to navigate and my work can be easily found under titles. By using an online blog it has also made it easier to share work and ideas to my group as I can just publish it to my blog and they can then share their ideas on the work or suggest any improvements.

Slideshare• Slideshare allowed me to upload any slideshows I have done on Microsoft

Powerpoint to my blog. The website allows users to upload powerpoints and then used an ‘embed’ code to transfer the powerpoint onto a blog. This helped me in my planning and research as it allowed me to present work clearly through a powerpoint. I mainly used powerpoint when presenting any research, such as documentaries I had analysed (The Marketing of Meatloaf, Escape! Breakout from Alcatraz etc.) to give me ideas on the codes and conventions of a documentary. Slideshare also allowed me to publish my research on the ‘Theories of Documentaries’ which involved looking at the different genres and theories behind documentaries. I also used slideshare to publish my findings from the ‘Audience Research’. Being able to use Powerpoint for this allowed me to present graphs and use text boxes to analyse the data and explain to the ‘reader’ of my work how I will take the results into consideration when creating my own documentary.

Prezi• Prezi was used to creatively present my work. The website gives you preset

templates with text boxes, when you press play the ‘clip’ will swoop over to each text box and any images in a fun creative way. It allows work to be presented in a varied and eye catching way. I used Prezi to present some documentary analysis such as ‘Lara Croft – That thing’ and ‘New York Photographer’ Prezi allowed me to analyse the documentaries in an interesting way with lots of detail and also allowed me to become more creative with my presentation. I again used the documentaries I analysed to inspire my own work. I also used Prezi to create a ‘flow chart’ or ‘spider diagram’ of all the ideas our class came up with on what our documentaries could be based on with ideas such as ‘cakes, phobias, fast food and coffee shops’. The spider diagram on Prezi was useful as it allowed me to write down all of the ideas in an eye catching way that could easily be accessed and referred to. Much like Slideshare, I also had to use an ‘Embed’ code from Prezi to transfer it onto my blog.

Moviemaker• Windows Moviemaker allowed me to create simple videos that I

could upload to Youtube. Moviemaker could not be used to create the documentary as it is not as advanced in editing but I was able to use it from home to create an analysis on ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’ and a video on audience feedback. To create my documentary analysis I used screenshots that I took from Youtube as I could access the documentary from there. I then uploaded the images individually into the order I wanted them in the video. Once I had done this I created a voiceover using the microphone in my laptop, then imported the audio clip into movie maker. I then extended the time some of the images appeared for in video so the pictures would stay relevant to what I was saying. Moviemaker allowed very basic editing but worked well enough for what I was using it for.

Youtube• Youtube allowed me to present any videos I had created. The first time I used it

during my project was when I created an analysis on a documentary called ‘The Devil Made Me Do It’. I watched the documentary on Youtube and then took screenshots so I had images to analyse. I then put these images into a program called ‘Windows Movie Maker’ and used the microphone in my laptop to record my own voiceover. I then uploaded this analysis to Youtube to make it a video analysis of images with my own voiceover explaining what the documentary did in it’s production and what effect it would have on the audience. I also used Youtube to upload my documentary and have it available online for audience feedback, I exported it from Adobe Premiere and uploaded it to Youtube, I did this again with my Radio Advert. By having my own documentary on Youtube I was able to easily share it on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter which allowed me to get audience feedback directly.

• Youtube also allowed me to gather archive footage for my documentary, we searched what we thought would be appropriate for the documentary and gathered clips from “The Great British Bake Off” and even got clips from around the 60s of women in baking classes. This allowed us to have a lot of content in our documentary. We also used Youtube to get music for our documentary. We used the song “If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked A Cake” as the song has lyrics that relate to the topic.

Tagul• Once we had decided what we wanted

our documentary to be on we used a software called ‘Tagul’ to create a kind of mind map surrounding our chosen topic. Our documentary is based on cakes so our ‘Tagul’ word cloud would be based around cakes with words like ‘bakeries, birthdays, supermarkets and baking etc’ featuring inside the cloud. The ‘Tagul cloud’ was used to show ideas of documentary content in a creative way. We made our ‘cloud’ the shape of a cupcake to reflect our topic. This ‘Tagul cloud’ was then put onto my blog under the heading ‘Brainstorm of content for documentary’. I could then refer back to this image later for inspiration.

Our Tagul based on a cake theme.

Camera and Tripod

• When filming the documentary college allowed us to use a Sony HXR-MC2000, a tripod and a clip on microphone. It allowed us to create an HD documentary. This meant our footage looked high quality and professional. The only problems we really had with the cameras is some footage ended up being out of focus but that was not very clear when looking at it on the small screen that's built in to the camera, this resulted in some footage not being useable and having to be re-filmed to keep a high quality standard of work.

Adobe Premiere• Adobe Premiere is what we spent a lot of the time using. We used it to create

the documentary. Adobe Premiere allows you to manipulate clips and audio, so if the audio in a vox pop/interview was to quiet you could open up the sound control and increase the sound. Also when putting in a backing track we were able to turn it up when there was no audio and turn it down so it could only be heard in the background of a person talking. We could also put effects into the clip like a persons name and occupation in the bottom of the clip which told the audience who they were and their significance to the documentary. When importing a clip I was able to crop it and edit it the way I wanted, I could cut it to the exact point where you wanted it to start and finish, which helped make the documentary flow. Adobe Premiere gave us the tools to create a professional looking documentary.Adobe Premiere was also used to create the radio advert. I did this by recording a lady in the radio room in college and putting the audio into a sequence on Adobe Premiere. It would be edited similar to a video clip such as turning up the sound or cropping the clip. I then added Vox Pops that I ripped the audio from and inserted that into the radio advert with the same music that featured in the documentary playing in the background.

Adobe Photoshop

• Photoshop was used to create the print advertisement. It allowed us to recreate a stereotypical ‘Channel 4’ style print ad in the theme of our own documentary. Photoshop allowed us to tweak the image slightly to define it more or make it stand out. It made it have a more professional finish and match the codes and conventions of a typical print ad.