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

2. Google was used for planning our documentary and ancillary texts as it
allowed us to research things such as conventions of
documentaries, newspaper adverts, and radio adverts. It allowed us to
get an idea of what channel 4 posters are like and there own brand
conventions. Google also helped us find images to put on our
documentary for our montage as we found pictures of celebrities with
tattoos. We also were able to research people with shocking
tattoos, such as Rich Genest, and without Google we wouldn't’t have
found this and been able to have interesting images on our
documentary. On Google we found statistics on tattoos which we then
put in our documentary, and we also found out what was the oldest
tattoo ever recorded in history.

3. Blogger
• Blogger has allowed us to upload all of our planning for
our documentary project and keep everything organised
such as drafts of posters, storyboards for the
documentary, questionnaires. It has also been good for
the evaluation stages as we have uploaded all of our
finished products so they can be easily viewed and
accessed.

4. YouTube
• YouTube was essential in researching archive for our
documentary as we found a lot of archive videos that
made our documentary come together. Such as we got
footage of Rich Genest, the man with full body tattoos
which was really effective in the documentary as that is
the extreme you can go with tattoos. Also we got all of
our music off YouTube which was also essential for our
documentary as it would have been very basic and bland
for the audience to watch.

5. Firefox
• Firefox was very important towards the construction of
our documentary as without it we would have struggled
converting YouTube videos to quicktime files. Firefox
helped me upload my audience feedback to blogger
which is also important for my evaluation process as I
needed video evidence of audience feedback.

6. Premiere
• Premiere was the most essential part of constructing our media documentary as it allowed us to edit all of our footage together.
It allowed us to use transitions such as cross fade, dip to white, dip to black, etc which made the documentary flow. Audio
transitions were important during the construction of the documentary and the radio add as it allowed the audio tracks to flow
more as we could use audio fades. Without the audio fades the documentary and radio add would have sounded very robotic
and wouldn’t have sounded smoother. Premiere allowed us to speed up and slow down footage which was very effective as it
can show things in more detail, and If a piece of footage is too short you can always elongate it to look right. Premiere also
allows to adjust image levels which we used on the opening scene where we changed the levels to black and white which
emphasised the image to make it look more like a tattoo.
The razor tool was the tool we used
most as it allowed us to cut multiple
parts of footage we didn’t want in a
quick and easy way.
We had to use chromo key
which removed the blue
screen from the footage
and it allowed us to put in a
image in the background.
The audio track allowed us to
edit audio footage and play
around with the levels of
audio and the levels of music
that was used in the
documentary

7. Photoshop Photoshop was important on the construction of our poster as it
allowed us to edit the images we had taken. To create the look
as if the image has a spotlight on it we created a new layer that
was black and used the brush tool to take away some of the
black layer.
A great thing about photoshop is the blemish tool which we
On the image that we took the ‘Eye of used on the image as on the back there was a mark that
the needle’ written on the back of the didn’t look right so we used the blemish tool to perfect the
girl didn’t stand out enough. But on skin on the left hand side on the girls back.
photoshop you can change the levels
to emphasise certain things which we
did on this too make the eye of the
needle writing stand out as it was our
documentary title.
Photoshop has a text tool which we
used to type the tag line ‘To ink or not
to ink?’ which was important in the
construction of our poster as it had to
use the channel 4 conventions.
Also there is a shape tool which I used
a square shape and filled it white then
put the layer behind the text to make
the text stand out

8. Equipment used
• Sony HXR –MC2000E Camera
This was the main essential technology for our documentary as it shoots at 1080p it allowed us to film quality
footage. As it has a built in 7.5 megapixels stills camera it helped capture our image for the newspaper
advertisement.
• Clip microphone
This was very important during the filming process of our documentary as it was mainly interview based and
a clip mic is a uni-directional microphone which didn’t pick up other sounds like footsteps. Whereas a boom
microphone would have picked up quiet noises and wouldn’t have been suitable for the interviews.
• USB device cable
Essential for transferring the video footage we had filmed on the cameras to the computers we were working
on.
• Dell computers XPS
Essential for use of all the different programmes (premiere, photoshop, internet explorer, etc.)
• Tripod
This was very useful as it had a built in spirit level which helped us get the
right angle and shot for the interview. It also had the plus side of height
which was good as we had the choice of high and low angle shots.