Q4) How did you use media technologies in the research and

planning, construction, and evaluation stages?

A2 Media Evaluation 2013

By Ferdous Audhali

Research and Planning• Of course research and planning is a core and fundamental part of the project, it is

the first stepping stone towards the completion of the product and without it, there would be no effectiveness and the end products would never be sufficient enough.

• It is at this stage where all the ‘information gathering’ for our documentarybegan.. And where is the first place a media student would go? The Internet.

• The internet has such a vast amount of information available for the topic of Underage Binge Drinking, and it was due to this extensive amount of information that it sometimes became a bit overwhelming. However, we tackled this by splitting tasks between the 4 of us and researching on specific topics using specific media outlets.

• For example, at one point, in the beginning stages, my job was to look at short films/clips on Youtube that discussed underage binge drinking and make notes on them.

• Later on in this stage, I was reading article after article in regards to the up to date, accurate, health implications of the topic, statistics or legislation that has recently been passed via websites which host their newspapers online (eg. BBC News, NHS website and the Guardian)

Why the internet?

• The internet plays as a huge medium in accessing all kinds of information, from visual, to audio, to written, to transcripts, to PDF files of archival documents.. Whatever it is.. The internet will most likely have. Even newspapers (like I mentioned) are available online (even old papers can be tracked down easily)

• However, one must be careful as not ALL the information is 100% valid and a lot of inaccurate information can be found- hence why when finding statistics or key pieces of info, I made sure to double check it by looking at other sources to see if they could support the findings I had found. This is very important as documentaries can only show/provide real facts.

So... what channel?

• The choice for which channel we wanted to air our documentary on was quite tricky as each channel had their own pros and cons. However, the main 2 were BBC three and Channel 4.

• This was because from our research, we found that young people tend to watch these two channels the most and it was through them that documentaries for young people are aired.

• We chose channel 4 due to its experience in informative, ground-shaking wide range of documentary hosting.

How did we access old documentaries?

• Many of the documentaries we watched via ‘catch up’ websites, such as ITV player, BBC iPlayer and 4oD (On Demand)

• These are brilliant websites where all shows, both old and current are accessible to watch online and of course when it came to researching and analysing previous real media texts, this was extremely useful!

Uploading and sharing our work• Without blogger, we would have no way of uploading

our work electronically. Blogger is such an easy and effective website which allows you to upload almost any file type within a few seconds. No size limits and no waiting around for download/uploading time – with the click of a button, a slide show, a Prezi presentation, a word document, a picture, a Youtube video, could all be uploaded and viewable on our blog.

• For me, blogger was one of the essential media technologies when it came to every part of my coursework.

Example of scanned in storyboard we made and then uploaded onto blogger

Construction

• Having the correct hardware is an essential part of documentary filming.. Hardware can hugely effect the quality of the final product. For example, we used a canon HG20 HD camcorder to film our documentary, and this camera quality was High Definition making our end product look much more defined and clearer when being watched. Furthermore, this camera also allowed us to play with some of the effects whilst filming. For example, we could zoom in and out (eg. When filming an establishing shot we might zoom into a particular place to add emphasis) Furthermore, you could drastically change the focus on the camera as well, allowing us to blur out the shot and hence use it effectively to present statistics or writing on top of the blurred moving image.

• But if we were to just have gone and recorded with a camcorder and none of the extra components, chances are, that the clips we had filmed would have been EXTREMELY amateur. Without a microphone, the sound quality isn’t as crisp and is often disturbed by other things such as wind etc. Also, the headphones also play a key role in terms of refining the audio to top notch condition because with the headphones on, the soundman who accompanies the cameraman can ensure that sound is coming out of both ears, meaning that the audio will be stereo and not one sided. Lastly, the tripod plays a key

role in maintaining a still shot and keeping things professional (Also usefulfor when filming high or low angled shots, prevents hand-held effect)

TripodMicrophone

Headphones Camcorder

Editing (Final Cut Express)

• Once we had recorded all the footage we neededfor our documentary it was time to start the editing- so goodbye camera and hello Apple Mac!

• Throughout the weeks of filming, we had already been transferring all the raw footage from the camera onto the computer hardrive (via USB cable), so now it was time to File > log & transfer it all into Final Cut.

Once we had transferred all the clips into Final Cut, we then played each of them individually then selected (and renamed) the ones we wanted and dragged them down onto the timeline and onto the appropriate tracks.

Editing continued..

• Whilst using Final Cut, tools like the ‘Razor’ and ‘Pen’ tool became second nature, as these were some of the options that we would regularly use to split and cut clips up into the bits we wanted, and the bits we didn’t want.

Sometimes clips would require special effects added onto them, such as a blur effect or a black and white effect. To the left is an example of how you turn a clip black and white. You go to the Image control tab and select Desaturate. You simply then drag this tab onto the clip you would like to turn black and white.

Editing continued..

Changing the sound levels so they fade in and out with the individuals entrance and exit –ensuring everyone’s volume is the same..(Using the pen tool)

Montage made with various number of clips running at the same time but on separate tracks! All sounds were silenced (deleted) unless it was one of the individuals turn to speak, then their audio was placed at the right place (and made sure to match with the mouth movements)

Magazine (InDesign)

• Although InDesign was the main programme we used, we did use Photoshop and Microsoft Word in the process..

• Microsoft word was used to construct thearticle and Photoshop to edit the pictures that would then be inserted into the article in InDesign.

Radio Trial (Garage Band)

• We started the radio trial off in Final Cut Pro becauseof the fact we needed to create the extracts from the clips in our documentary so we could export them into Garage band. To do this, we opened up a new sequence which opened up a new fresh page of tracks touse that wouldn’t effect our documentary.

• Once the clips had been cut down into just a few second snippets, these extracts were exported and inserted into a track on Garage band (along with the already inserted voice over clips which had previously been imported

Radio Trial continuation..

• Following this, we then started to look at the available music tracks in Garage band but most of them were not appropriate due to their length or the genre didn’t match our style, target audience or topic.. Therefore, we mixed and matched with 2 different short sounds called ‘dance’ and ‘chordal’ and we played with these to make a consistent rhythm that we thought sounded pretty good.

Other software used for Evaluation..

Used to upload Microsoft Word documents onto blogger. Displays word documents.. Used to create graphs for

evaluation of Audience feedback, in order to display the results in a visual eye friendly manner.. A unique way of presenting

information in a interactive and appealing way!

Used to construct presentations.. a nice way of displaying information rather than boring essays..

Used to upload Powerpoint presentations onto the blog so that they may be made viewable and can easily scroll your way through each of the slides..