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

2. Media technologies have been so important throughout the process of our coursework in
many ways whether they’re being used to make everything easier or even to make our work
look professional. To begin with, we started off just making mind maps to plan ideas of what
we could use as a topic and after that, story boards of how we wanted to plan our
documentary. These however didn’t use media technologies because they were just written
on paper. However the internet was briefly used to get ideas and facts and this goes on to
the research stage of the process.
When researching our chosen topic of underage binge drinking, we knew it was
important to use reliable information which is why we wanted to use mediums such a
BBC and from newspapers such as the guardian so our information was up to date. This
was all using internet providers such as safari and internet explorer.
Because we needed to do as much research
into types of documentaries and also find
statistics we needed to watch as many
documentaries as we could. To do this we
used play back materials such as 4OD,
Iplayer, Youtube and DVDs.

3. Because we had done a lot of research and planning, this meant we were able to get on
quickly with our filming as we knew what we wanted to include and how we wanted I to
turn out. For the filming we used a cannon video camera which made it easy to focus and
zoom in and out. We also used headphones and a long directional microphone so we
could get the best sound quality we could. To make our videos be a still as possible so they
look professional we used a tripod of lots of the filming as we felt using a handheld
camera would make it look more like a film and not look like its trying to inform the
audience.

4. When it came to the editing part of the process, we knew media technologies
would be an important part. We used IMac computers and learnt a lot about how
to use them. To edit our documentaries we used a program called Final Cut Pro as
it would able our work to look professional.
Once finishing filming, we were easily able
to upload our videos by logging and transferring
them onto the program. We were then able to
chose which ones we wanted to use. To make it
easier for ourselves, we labeled the videos with
what they included so we knew which one to
chose without having to watch them all.
Naming the clips

5. Once we knew our way around final cut, it was easy to get started with the editing of our
documentary.
Screen to watch
the work
To view
the clips
Our Clips
Timing
Length of the clip Tools
Sound and sound levels

6. We learnt many things when editing to create a professional product.
These are some of the tools and effects we learnt how to use to make
the documentary look as good as it could.
Cutting Tool. Because we
obviously didn’t need all of the
clips and everything we filmed we
quickly found the cut tool which
abled us to gather just the footage
we needed.
For our montage, we decided that
because there were lots of faces
moving but only one talking, the
others should be turned black and
white. This image shows us going
into effects and desaturating.
Just like in real documentaries,
we decided that we needed our
interviewees name and job title
in the lower left hand corner of
the screen and we did this by
adding text. We were able to edit
the font, size and colour so it was
easy to see

7. It was important to us that we got the
same sound levels throughout the
documentary so our audience wasn’t left
having to turn the volume up and down.
This was easy to do as we just had to turn
them up or down when applicable.
The editing and transitions is big when it
comes to documentaries. However we didn’t
want to spend time using different transitions
on each clip we instead used a pen tool to fade
them out as you can see on the picture. This
worked well throughout the documentary as it
was quite subtle
This is quite common in a documentary to have
a blurred background with text over the top
which is why we decided to do it. We went into
edit and chose the best blur and added text.
This definitely made our statistic stand out.

8. We used a program on the Macs to create our radio trail on Garage Band.
We first chose the best clips from our documentary that will best promote our
documentary. This is what this picture show. The clips are on the timeline.
The clips we found would work best were some from the expert interviews
and also some opinions from the students. They convey the message we are
trying to put out to our audience.
It took us a long time to chose a correct piece of music throughout the
radio trail as it is a very important part because the radio trail is so short it
quickly needs to grab the audience. As we were focusing on students and
parents and its about underage drinking I feel that the music fits in very
well. It is a fast base paced song and something maybe students listen
today in our society.

9. The media technology we used for our article was indesign. Because we used this
last year in our AS year we pretty much knew our way around after a bit. We easily
remembered how to add text, images and colour to our article to create the primary
purpose of engaging our audience. We didn’t really use anything too hard as we
wanted it to be as simple and basic as possible. In the article, I particularly like how
we have edited the page numbers into cocktail drinks to fit into the drinking topic
and also the ‘I’ in binge has been replaced with a vodka bottle. In conclusion the
article wasn’t payed as much attention to as the radio trail and the documentary and
I think this is shown throughout the article.