evaluation - question 4
TRANSCRIPT
Evaluation – Question 4
How did you use digital technology in your work?
I had to gain skills in using the camera to film my movie, which took me a few trial and errors to get right, but quickly adapted to the controls. Benefits from using a camera are that I can take as many photos as I like that are stored on a memory card. This allows me to keep trying and trying until I get something that I like, and by the end of the shoot, I can look on the memory card and choose the best out of a series of photos. However, a downside to using a digital camera is certain settings. I experienced using a camera that had previously been used by someone else who had changed the aperture on the camera, which allowed a lot of light to come through the camera lens, making the photo very light and hard to see anything in the photo. Because the aperture is an advanced setting on the camera, I was unsure of how to change it and I was unable to take any images for my coursework while I had the camera out of college.
Camera
The computer is the main piece of digital equipment used and the most important for my A2 media course. The computer allows me to put all of my theory into documents and onto a blog so that my work can be viewed and checked by the teacher and by an examiner by the end of the year. The computer also lets us store all our files such as photographs, video clips and audio so that it can be found and used later for my final products. Mainly, the computer is used to put my final products together, without the computer; I’d have no programmes to be able to create my short film. The benefits from using a computer are that it makes storing coursework, files, audio, photos etc easier than keeping them as hard copies. The computer also provides different software and programmes that I can use to edit my photos and my short film to make them seem much more professional than they would be if they were produced on anything else. Disadvantages of using a computer could be that some of the software and programmes can easily crash, resulting in losing work. Also the internet can sometimes be very slow, delaying research and also delaying deadlines.
Computer
A microphone was used during the making of my short film. At first, the microphone was quite confusing to use and to get the files from, but after a while of using the microphone, I quickly became used to the controls. An advantage of using the microphone for my short film is that I can have much clearer audio on parts where there are people talking, as the audio on the camera doesn’t have as much quality. However, the microphone can be confusing to use sometimes and is difficult to find my files when uploaded onto a computer as they cannot be named and there are many other files on the microphone already.
Microphone
This is software on the computer that I used to create my ancillary tasks. It provided an appropriate layout for my film poster and double page spread and several different tools I could use to edit certain things on the products such as the masthead, the tagline, the photographs, etc. Again, this is software that I had to be taught how to use. The tools had to be explained to me and how to choose the best layout for my project. But by the end of the ancillary production, I had significantly improved using certain editing tools on the software and there is a drastic difference between my first productions and my ancillary tasks, as the ancillary had a more professional approach to it. Benefits from using InDesign are that I can build my ancillary tasks on InDesign alone without having to use any other software as it provides many different editing tools for anything I import on the programme. However, it is a programme that is known to crash and cause you to lose all your work when it does, so because of this, I have to keep saving my work after every little thing I change so I ended up having many different files in my documents folder.
InDesign
Premier Pro is video editing software that enabled me to put all my video clips and audio together to make my movie. By uploading all my files onto the scratch drive on the computer, I was able to edit clips and put them together in an appropriate order to make my movie flow better. There are several tools I can use such as a split tool, audio editing tools, video editing tools etc. When I first started using the software, it was very confusing and I had to be show how to use certain things, but by the time I was nearly finished with my short film, I was able to use most things correctly to make my short film as professional I can make it. The benefits from using Premiere Pro include being able to change and manipulate my movie clips so that they all fit together and they look as professional as I can get them. However, before every time I use this programme, I have to save all of my files onto the scratch drive before I can open the programme and then when I’m finished working on the programme, I have to save all my filed onto the desktop. This takes a lot of time to do and could delay the production of my film.
Premiere Pro
PowerPoint is a programme that was used throughout my A2 course. It was an important programme to use as I was able to display the majority of my coursework and theory onto PowerPoint to create a flowing slide show to present my work. I have been aware of PowerPoint for many years, so using PowerPoint for my coursework was easy to do. The benefits from using PowerPoint are that I can put all my coursework and theory onto different slides in chunks so that all my work isn’t in one block, making it easier to process and understand, and I can also add animation and pictures onto each slide to give more of an image in the viewers mind. However, the PowerPoint files can’t be uploaded straight onto my blog, they have to go onto slide share first before it can be uploaded onto the blog, which uses a lot of time.
Power Point
Slide share was essential for me and my coursework because without this software, I wouldn’t be able to upload any of my PowerPoints onto my blog. By uploading all my coursework slideshows onto slide share, it allowed me to embed the slide share onto my blogger so that it can be viewed on my Blogger page rather than navigating through the internet by links. This makes it easier for all my work to be seen on my blog all together on one page without any hassle for my viewers.
Slide Share
Blogger is again one of the most important pieces of software to use for the whole Media Studies course. This is a place where I can share my media journey digitally and publically so anyone around the world can see it, and most importantly my teacher and examiner so they can see everything that I’ve done so that I can receive my grades. When I first started using Blogger, it became easy to use straight away.
Blogger
Prezi is a website that I used to display coursework, similarly to PowerPoint. However, this website was new to me in AS and it took me a while to be able to use it properly and it is extremely slow to use on the internet. By the end of AS and into A2, the tools and layouts became more familiar to that of the one in PowerPoint, so I was able to use both of them to display different pieces of my coursework.
Prezi
