EVALUATION QUESTION 4- HOW DID YOU USE NEW

MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND

RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGE?

Chloe Spears & Chelsea Ripley

THE TECHNOLOGIES During our research and planning, it was crucial to use a range of

technologies in order to gain the highest, professional and accurate forms of research we could, in order to reflect our planning and over all production of our products. In the following slides, a selection of technologies used in our research will be present, how and why we used them and what benefits they gave us in production/researching and evaluating.

Some of the technologies we used in our production/planning and evaluation's: Photoshop Elements, Final Cut Pro, Apple iMac’s, YouTube, Facebook, Photobooth, ‘Grab’, Blogger, SLR digital camera’s, Cannon HD Mini-cam, Tri-pod, dafont.com, Prezi, Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, Slideshare, Google, Garage Band, iPhoto.

PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop is a advanced form of editing and creating visual images of high quality, which is used in professional practises within the media industry. Our research showed it was an product used to create professional products, so we decided to use it for our own products.

In order to create our magazine front cover and poster, we carried through our skills gained at AS in Photoshop to create a highly professional product that fitted conventions of our horror genre, whilst matching standards of professional practises.

Using tools such as; text, grab, magic wand, brush, selection, crop we were able to edit the overall products. We also edited contrast, brightness, shadows, image control, hue/saturation to determine how our photographs would look and fit our specific genre, moreover the overall effect we intended them to create on our intended audience.

Photoshop offered us a broad, convenient and contempory device to create our products, which we were trained in using confidently, allowing our skills to be progressed further through-out our production process of our project.

FINAL CUT PROFinal Cut Pro is an exclusive feature of using an Apple iMac, which we were able to transfer our skills from the evaluation process of AS into editing our film trailer.

Final Cut Pro was our main editing tool for our main task, as we were able to import our footage filmed directly onto it, using transfer and logging. We could then easily cut, edit and transitional effects between our clips and adding overlay effects to ensure our film carried out similar conventions and on-screen visuals that a professional film trailer of our genre would.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPUSWld-DM&feature=relatedThe video listed illustrates Final Cut’s capabilities to create professional standards in film production. We used these techniques, along with a selection of YouTube tutorials to teach ourselves the available effects on Final Cut.

GARAGE BANDGarage band was the sound and audio technology we used to make our soundtrack. It enhanced our awarement of industry based products regarding soundtracks and sound effects, and encouraged our enthusiasm for producing our own soundtrack for our film trailer.

Garage band allowed us to take control of the soundtrack we wanted to create, allowing to edit our film trailer footage alongside the musical compartments of the soundtrack. We could import a movie track to edit the sound to fit the editing pace of the film footage.

APPLE MACThe Apple Mac was our key production tool, which had installed the majority of our technologies which we used for our project. From our research we also found that most companies and business’s within the media industry would use high advanced computers such as Apple Mac’s in order to create highly advanced and technological products, using their full features and effects to maximise potential and profit.

It allowed us to: research the internet, produce and edit our products, record and update our progress, store our; products, research + findings and ancillary products and integrate ourselves into a different dimension of contempory technologies we which have used through-out our coursework project.

Along with an intelligent computer, it gave us the essentials in our researching – Safari, which was a search internet browser which allowed us to conduct both primary and secondary; textual, audience and product research.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_8Mrpg5z4I&feature=related

INTERNET SITES Safari was our internet browser, which was a curtail and necessary component for our research and planning. It allowed us to surf the internet and find the necessary data we were researching for.

We used Facebook in our audience feedback, in which we used the social networking site to engage with our main target audience, by uploading the final version of our poster. It allowed for direct feedback from our main target audience, which was in a raw form, counting as primary audience feedback. We were then able to analyse our feedback and what improvements that would need to be made to our products, in order to fully satisfy the needs of our audience.

Google was our main internet search engine, which allowed us to search and research into data and websites we found necessary for our research and planning.

We used Dafont.com to research into different fonts used by professional practises, which then allowed us to download and use on our own products. This website was useful as it allowed us to progress our basic skills in editing futher, allowing us to install and use downloaded media counter products from the internet.

Blogger is an online site which allowed us to record our process throughout planning, research, production and evaluating. It was a key tool into keeping our findings together, which we could refer back to and organise our products.

YouTube is an online broadcasting site, which allowed us to upload and store any visual material we had created throughout our research, planning and evaluation of our project. It was also a key tool into research into techniques on Photoshop and Final Cut, where we could discover online tutorials to guide us into finding and using new effects on the software. Overall it was an educational tool which enhanced our knowledge of industry standards, but also familiarised us with the importance of copyrighted material and how to upload our own.

Prezi was a online technology that allowed visual presentations of our research and findings, which we could present similar to that of a slideshow but more interactive andIncluded the use of visual aids. It allowed us to explore different ways to present our work and forms of research, which would possibly be used within the industry.

Slideshare is an online device that allowed us to publish documents made on powerpoint (including this)which could then be embeded onto our blog or other pages on the internet. It also allowed our work to be used as an education tool for others, along with allowing others powerpoints to be used in research for ourselves.

FEATURES ON THE APPLE MAC

Photobooth was a camera operated recording device, which allowed us as a group to make quickly, high quality video’s and photos to record our progress. Being built into the computer, it acted as a convenient method of recording our progress and saved automatically to the desktop, so images/video’s were easy to upload straight onto our blog or YouTube. It enhanced us into the importance of recording progress, which would be expected of us in an industry based position, along with evaluating our own and others products. An example of a photobooth photograph to the right.

The ‘Grab’ application was another form of print screening, but also allowed us to grab particular sections of what was on screen. This was a useful technology during textual analysis, as we could break down products and evaluate particular sections with the use of visual aids.

The finder application is a storage workspace for the user of the mac, which allowed us to store all of our products, research and findings, along with a vast capacity space for images and video’s, which we used during our research and planning.

PRESENTATION MATERIALS

Microsoft Word is word processor in which we used to construct documents such as; film script, blog post, video guidelines, audience questionnaires and audience research findings. It was a useful package that allowed us to return to later and could be stored on a hard drive.

PowerPoint is a presentational device that allowed us to create more visual presentations of our research, planning and evaluating. Like Word, it was easy referable and could be stored and re-visited.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Powerpoint

Word was also an easy tool when creating documents for our actors, such as; Model Release Forms, Call Sheets and Hazard sheets, as we could produce similar documents on a large scale.

CAMERA’SSLR Digital Stills Camera

Using a SLR camera allowed us to take photographs that were high quality and used a quick shutter speed in order to capture photographs that were of high industry standards. It also enhanced our photography skills by learning how to take a photograph properly, steady shots and learn about focal lengths and the shutter speed.

Panasonic Mini HD video camera

Using a HD camera allowed us to create high defined quality footage that was of industry standard and familiarised us with equipment that would be used in professional practise. We could then log and transfer our footage into final cut pro where we could edit our footage to create a well edited and of high standard trailer.