In the construction and research stages, the student: 1) Created trial soap trailers in groups to learn camerawork and character portrayal. 2) Watched soap operas to understand audience expectations of the genre. 3) Researched magazine covers to identify what readers expect. 4) Used iMovie to edit trailer clips and GarageBand to import music. 5) Used Photoshop to edit a logo and SlideShare to share documents. 6) Created a blog to log progress and follow classmates' blogs. 7) Uploaded the trailer to YouTube and embedded it in the blog.

2. Evaluation Question 4:
How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?

3. PRELIMINARY SOAP TRAILER: EDEN ROAD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yvY_ANIU
sY&context=C2308cADOEgsToPDskJQP4Dk2d4
PKPZ3mSnjQxGM
In groups of four/five, we created trial soap trailers -
using script from an actual soap – to get an idea of
how the camera worked, how the characters are
portrayed and to look for good locations to shoot. We
were very lucky with the weather so all of the shots
were bright enough to be used.
It also helped us to figure out the editing software we
would be eventually using for our final product later in
the year.

4. RESEARCHING THE SOAP GENRE
I watched relevant soap programs such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and
Hollyoaks to get an idea of what audiences expect from them. The audience
watch soaps to get away from their own lives – they believe that their own lives
aren’t so bad after watching others.
I also used Google to look up TV magazine covers, plus buying them from my
local supermarket to get an idea of what reader’s expect from them.

5. USING THE MAC’S: iMOVIE
I used iMovie to edit my trailer together. By selecting ‘Import…’
and ‘from file’ I could select my clips and insert them into the
‘Project Timeline’ and edit them from there.

6. …GARAGEBAND
Previously, I had downloaded the track from YouTube: using YouTube Converter
(http://www.youtube-mp3.org/), I had converted into the correct format and imported straight
into iMovie to be placed in my trailer.

7. Using the E4 style guide, I
USING PHOTOSHOP: saved the logo as a JPEG and
imported it into Photoshop.
First I used the
‘Quick Selection
Tool’ to delete the
excess black
around the logo.
Using the ‘polygonal lasso tool’, I zoomed in to the image
(200%) and carefully cut away the uneven and pixelated edges
surrounding the logo.

8. USING SLIDESHARE… By uploading
PowerPoint's, Publisher, a
nd Word documents onto
‘slideshare’, I could show
what planning and other
work I had done.
Whilst the file was uploading, I
could change the title of the
document and choose a category or
any tags that it will relate to.
I could then embed the document onto
my blog, the same way I could embed my
trailer.

9. To keep all my work together, and to
USING BLOGSPOT: make my work look as professional as
possible, I used ‘blogspot.com’ to log
my progress.
I created my own blog
using my g-mail
account. I then chose a
design I liked for my
background and started
posting all of my work I
had completed already.
I also started to follow the
Aquinas A2 Media blog so I
could keep up to date. I also
started following my
classmates blogs so I could see
how they were progressing
and so I could comment on
their work.

10. YOUTUBE UPLOAD…
Using my YouTube account, I
uploaded all four versions of
my trailer.

11. EMBEDDING TO BLOG…
Once I had uploaded and saved
my trailer to YouTube, I could
embed it onto my blog.
By copying and pasting the
HTML, into a ‘New Post’ I could
embed my trailer, rather then
copying and pasting a link to it.