Evaluation Question 4

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

stages? What technologies did you have to master at all stages? What helped you? What did you find

difficult?

HD Camera and Digital Camera• When filming our actual trailer our group used a HD camera. This meant we were able to get

shots of a high standard, to help with the overall professionalism of our trailer. Although we did have to master how to use the camera, to get the desired shots that we wanted. We done this in our preliminary task, of filming our bussing scene. Using a HD camera also made it easy for us to transfer our shots to the Macs to view our work. When taking the pictures for my ancillary tasks I used a digital camera. I found this easy because I was familiar with how it works, it allowed me to view my pictures instantly after taking them.

Adobe Photoshop• To construct my film poster and magazine cover I used Adobe Photoshop. To begin with I

found it hard to use as it had been a long time sine I had used it. But with perseverance and playing around with it, while doing this I had to take into consideration the feedback from my target audience. I was able to edit my images to get the desired effect I wanted. This meant I was able to cut around my images and darken them, as well as using different brushes to add blood effects to the image. I also found that by downloading new texts, I was able to make the text ‘Obsession’ look much scarier. By doing this it helped me in creating a dark tone to my images to tie in with the horror genre, and the dark mood of my main product, my trailer. This programme also allowed us to create tone cards to put in our trailer.

Blogger

• I used Blogger to document my work. I found this an easy way of viewing my completed work, as well as viewing any work I still had left to do. It also found it was very useful for my peers as well as my teacher to view my work and comment with their feedback or improvements. Aside from this our teacher also posted links onto her blog to help us with any work, which we was able to access.

Google• Google was used to carry out research for existing media products. This gave me an in depth

look as to how magazine front covers and posters are constructed and what codes and conventions they follow. This helped me when constructing my ancillary tasks, to make them look as professional and real as possible.

Microsoft word, Microsoft publisher, Microsoft powerpoint and Slideshare

• I was able to create questionnaires and theory timelines on Microsoft word that I would later open in publisher and save as a jpeg, so I was able to upload it onto my blog. I analysed existing trailers on PowerPoint which I then uploaded onto slideshare so I could put it on my blog.

Youtube

• Using Youtube, it meant I was able to watch existing horror trailers, that allowed us to see the various codes and conventions we would have to include in our own. It was also useful to watch the trailers when I was creating theory timelines.

• YouTube was another media technology we used. We were able to upload our trailer onto Youtube, for people to view. This helped when it came to evaluating my work, as I could read feedback. We also used Youtube to find existing music and sounds that we would then use in our trailer.

Final Cut Express• Final Cut Express was the other media technology we used in order to edit our trailer. We

used this software to edit our shots, add transitions such as fade to black, cut clips so they were shorter, which helped us create jump shots and make the pace of our trailer discontinuous. We were also able to add tone cards and sound, which is a crucial part of the production as it involves the audience more. They are able to feel involved in the trailer with tone cards such as ‘You can only escape once’. This heightens their sense of fear. As it was our groups first time of using this software, we found it difficult to navigate around it and how to start. We therefore watched some tutorials, which gave us a professional end result.

Social Networking Sites• The final media technology we used was social networking sites, such as facebook and twitter. This was

used in order for us to gain feedback immediately from our target audience, in order to evaluate our work. We decided to use social networking sites for this part of our evaluation, as our target audience are from an age that uses the internet frequently and have either a facebook or twitter account.