Evaluation 2

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

During the process of my planning, research and evaluation stages, I have used many technologies to help me create my final products. In the making of my products, I have noticed that I have used a lot of technologies to create the trailer I wanted, not just for the making of the trailer, but also for the planning, researching and evaluation stages. Overall I am happy with how my final products came out and will now tell you a bit about each technologies that helped me create my products.

I used new media for my research and planning by watching trailers on YouTube , some of the trailers which I watched for research were Evil Dead, which I took inspiration from and many horror movie trailers based around a school, for example School of the dead. I also looked at Frankenstein trailer, to look at how you can a thriller trailer can be as chilling as a horror movie trailer. Not only did I use YouTube to look at existing horror movie trailers, but I also used it to look at some previous students' work, which I thought helped me quite a lot, as it allowed me to have a bit of an idea of my limitations and the sort of trailer I am able to produce. I also researched scary and haunting sounds and music on YouTube to get a feel of what to include in my trailer. I noted down a few conventions in sound that I noticed and got inspired my whilst watching existing trailers on YouTube. Finally, YouTube helped me at my evaluation stages, as when I had finished my trailer, I uploaded it to YouTube, which allows me to gain feedback from an people who aren't necessarily in my target audience, allowing me to get honest feedback. This allows me to receive positive and negative feedback and allows people to comment and tell me what I could have improved on and how I can make it better for next time.

Another media technology I used in the construction and research, planing and evaluation stages, was Blogger. I have had previous experiences with this site, as I made my first blog, last year in AS. Blogger has allowed me to organise and maintain all my planning and findings. I continently wrote up a post on my progress, as well as all my planning and production stages of my tasks. This site also allows me to easily make changes to any of my posts if needed to. I also used blogger to evaluate my media products, which I could upload any videos and pictures I needed to put on my blog, showing progress or my final task. This allows my evaluations to consist of clips and images of my final tasks, making them look more effective and successful. sing Blogger helped me also to look at other students in my class and see how they were interpreting videos and this meant ideas could be shared between one another, as we are able to leave a comment on the bottom of a post, leaving our thoughts and opinions. This site was really helpful to me by the fact that I can access it anywhere, from the mac to my phone. This allowed me to be able to post whenever and wherever I was.

A vital technology I used was a Mac and the program installed on it, which was Final Cut Pro. This project meant that I was on the Mac everyday, uploading, putting together and editing my trailer. I have briefly use the Mac before this project, however was still quite new to it but found it quite easy, when I got used to it, and it was something I really got the hang of quite quickly, which allowed quick and successful progress. I spent a lot of my free time working on the mac, perfecting my product as much as I possibly could. To create the trailer itself, I had to use Final Cut Pro, which I hadn't actually used before however, again found that when I got used to it, it was quite easy to use and did feel comfortable with it and was able to create a successful movie trailer, knowing how to put transitions in and how to add an audio to a clip, etc.

The internet was another technology that really helped my research and planning. This is because mostly all of my research was done using the internet. Google was a huge part of it, as a lot my research was done through google, for example, searching for existing DVD covers and Movie posters on google images, used it to search around my chosen genre and google was where I got a lot of useful information to help me create the trailer. Google allowed me to view some of the conventions I had to stick to with the making of my trailer and ancillary tasks. The only problem with using google is that the information isn't always true, which does affect the creation of my tasks. Wiki was another site on the internet that I found useful in the process of making my trailer, this is because I found out some very useful information on this site that helped me create my story line, such as the final girl theory. This gave me the information I needed to help me include it in my storyline. And finally, Pixlr was a technology that really helped me with my project. I used this site for the two of my ancillary tasks, to edit and complete them, giving them the effect it needed to look professional and successful. I was already familiar with the site as I used it last year in AS, which did help as I knew what I was doing and knew how everything worked, allowing my two products to be successful and done to the best of my ability.

The main technology I used was the actual camera itself. To take my photos I used my own camera, Nikon D50, which I do feel comfortable using and know how to use, which allowed me to take some good photos. As this camera had a zoom lens, I was able to capture a variate of different and effective shots, which really worked to my advantage whilst taking photos for my ancillary tasks. For videoing my scenes I used the schools Panasonic camera and a tripod for better quality shootings, which I have used before, so I did know how everything worked. The tripod really helped me during the making of my trailer, as I was able to record smooth and steady scenes. At times I did use the hand held shot to create a dramatic effect, to make the video more intense and more frightening (this was used when the final girl was leaving a message to loved ones). I used this devise to maintain the camera in a steady place, to get the best possible footage I could. The camera's were very easy to use and I did not have any problems with them. The one problem I did have was that because I was using a school camera, I didn't always have access to it, however knowing this I decided to base my setting at school, so I didn't need the camera outside school, and could use it and record scenes in my spare time at school. Uploading the footage off of the camera onto the mac was very simple. I had to get the right chord and plug it into the mac, however the problem that sometimes occurred, was that the Mac did not always read the camera and would not upload my footage. At this point I had to completely shut the mac down and set it up again. By doing this the mac was able to read the camera and allowed me to upload my footage.