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

1. Evaluation 4 – How did you use
media technologies in the
construction and research,
planning and evaluation stages?

2. How has media technology aided us
during the course of this unit?
 Media technology has played a powerful tool during the creation of our final
products. It has helped in our researching process while we were analysing
existing footage, as well as looking into theories, and developing our skills in
video editing, audio and camera work. in terms of the creation of the
product, media technology has aided us in terms of making it more simplistic
and time efficient for us to create the final products, by using the tools that
were available to us such as Adobe Premier Elements and Adobe Audition.
Additionally, it has also benefited us in the publication stage of this unit, by
allowing us to post it onto a public blog so that it can be viewed, as well as
online video sites which allows us to post a multitude of videos. Its through
these tools that has enabled us to create an effective piece of work, by not
only allowing us to develop our existing skills, but giving us the opportunity to
create our work more efficiently, and to a higher quality.

3. Researching

4. 4oD
As part of the textual analysis stage of our
research, we decided to use 4oD to try and
locate existing documentaries that the have
created. 4oD is a online, ‘on demand’ service
that Channel 4 provides, it allows me to watch
any of their programs which was beneficial
during the researching process as I could analyse
the documentaries. This website was also helpful
as it was created by the company that we were
reflecting the conventions of, so by being able to
analyse these documentaries, It allowed us to
adopt these conventions more easily. Overall this
media technology not only allowed us to view
the different techniques that are used, but
further improve our own skills in editing and
camera work, as we could use them as a bench
mark for our own construction of the final
products.

5. YouTube
YouTube is a website which allows you to not
only broadcast your own videos, but also view
existing work that has been created. This
became beneficial in the researching stage as we
could use it as a technological tool to analyse
existing documentaries such as ‘How We Got
Gay’ created by Doc Zone. This was
advantageous for the unit at hand as it enabled
us to further expand our knowledge into the
documentary conventions that we could use to
create our own product, thus creating a higher
quality piece of work. Additionally, YouTube also
aided us in researching into different skills that
we would need to acquire or adopt for the unit,
this included ‘How to’ videos on camera work,
editing, rule of thirds, and many other skills that
was needed. This was advantageous for us in the
development of this project as it allowed us to
further expand our knowledge on the different
techniques that would be needed for this unit.

6. Wikipedia
The site www.Wikipedia.com also played a part
in the researching process of this unit. Wikipedia
is a website that collects the vast amount of
information on the internet, from a number of
different websites and sources, to provide a
collective information about a multitude of
topics, (its essentially an encyclopaedia for the
internet). This became beneficial for our unit as
we could use it as a tool to discover the
different theatrical techniques that are used in
the development of a documentary, such as John
Corners theory of the 5 core elements of a
documentary, and Steven Barnett’s
Disneyfication. By having a source of vast
knowledge from the media technology it aided us
in the development of our project by highlighting
the different theories that we could adopt for
our own documentary, and thereby creating a
product that would be more engaging for the
audience.

7. https://brianair.wordpress.com
/
Brianair.wordpress.com is a website that has
be created for media studies. Similarly to
Wikipedia, this website was another source of
information that we used in the development
of this unit. It gave us the knowledge that
was required to carry out this assignment
effectively such as theories that could be
adopted in our product, and also a multitude
of different skills that could adopted such as
camerawork, editing skills, sound, and mise-
en-scene which are all vital elements that we
needed to adopt correctly, in order to create
an effective piece of work.

8. Survey Monkey
www.surveymonkey.com is a website which
allows you to create online questionnaires that
act as market research for our unit. This website
has become very beneficial for the researching
element of our work, as it gave us the
opportunity to ask our target market a series of
questions about the documentary we are
creating. During the researching process, we
conducted a questionnaire that asked our target
market about the different elements of the
documentary and what they enjoy the most out
them. In essence, we were trying to discover
what attracts the audience to a documentary so
that we could use this knowledge to adopt into
our own product, and thereby making it more
effective. Once the product was created, we
then produced a ‘post production survey’ which
was created using the same website. This
allowed the audience to provide us with
feedback to the finished product so that we can
have a true understanding of its effectiveness,
which this information could then be used to find
areas of improvement for future projects.

9. Production

10. Adobe Premiere Elements
Adobe Premiere Elements is a Video Editing
software which enabled us to edit our
documentary. This media technology provided us
with a cast amount of tools that gave us the
opportunity to make an effective final product.
This software differentiates itself from other
products such as ‘Windows Live Movie Maker’ as
it gives us the opportunity to use techniques
such as green screen, cropping, filters, fading,
and many other tools that could be used to not
only make a more effective piece of work, but
further allow us to add more conventions into
the video which further expands the viewers
understanding of the program, for example if I
lower colour of a shot of a defenceless character,
it further expands that point to the viewer that
they are helpless.

11. Adobe Audition
Adobe Audition is a audio editing software,
which enabled us to create the radio advert, as
well as a number of other researching tasks such
as the vox pop that was created. This technology
enables us to edit the audio of the radio advert,
documentary narration, vox pops, etc. to a
professional standard, as it gives us the
opportunity eliminate background noise and tone
the audio so that it is clear, and easily
understood by the audience in order to avoid
confusion. Additionally, the software also allows
me to add effects to the audio which can be
done to create a message within the different
products, for example for our radio advert it can
be used to increase the pitch of a character, thus
making them see less dominate, which further
creates effect to the listener. The software
enabled us to create effective pieces of work by
providing a number of tools that we can adopt to
improve the quality of our final products.

12. Adobe Fireworks
Adobe Fireworks is a image editing software,
which gives us the opportunity to manipulate
images (e.g. our newspaper advert) for added
effective. We used this software to create our
newspaper advert, for the image of isolation for
our homosexual character, so to do this we used
Firework’s tools such as filters, stamp tool, cut
tool, paint tool, transform tool etc. to create an
effective newspaper advert that adopted the
characteristics of a Channel 4 one. This
technology was beneficial to the development of
our final product as it provided a number of tools
that would not be available on other software
such as Microsoft Paint, and thereby creating a
higher quality piece of work.

13. Condenser Microphone
For development of a number of audio work
we used the microphone Audio Technica
AT4033 to record our work. This was
beneficial to the creation of our work as it
also gave us the opportunity to use a media
technology that would record the narration,
and radio advert in a high, professional
quality. By recording on this condenser
microphone it enabled us to use other
technology such as Adobe Audition to edit the
high quality audio to the desired effect.

14. LEDGO CN 600SC
For the production of our documentary, we used
the LEDGO CN 600SC to manipulate the lighting
within the shots that we recorded. The lights
provided a number of filters that we could use
for each shot, as well as allowing us to change
the intensity of the lighting in a number of shots
which further added a desired effect to the
scene. This physical technology enabled us to
provide a number of lighting conventions to
different shots so that we could provide a
message to the audience more effectively, for
example providing a darker tone to a setting to
portray the idea of the scene being
unwelcoming. By having this media technology to
our disposable, it have provided us with the
ability to create a desired effect to the
audience, which in turn makes the message of
the documentary more prominent, and makes it
more effective.

15. Camera
The camera that we used to film our
documentary was the Panasonic HD Camera (HC –
V720). This HD camera gave us the opportunity
to capture the desired shots that were needed to
create the documentary, and enabled us to
create a number of different camera shots to
add a desired effect for the final product, such
as high and low angle shots, establishing shots
etc. This technology was crucial for the
completion of our documentary as it allowed us
to record the different scenes that would be
needed to create an effective piece of work.

16. Publishing

17. YouTube
As well as playing a vital part to our researching
stage, it also gave us the necessary tools to
publicise our work such as the documentary,
focus groups, speaking to professional bodies
etc. The online publishing software gave us the
ability to broadcast our work so that it could be
embedded to our blog, which in turn allows us to
present our work. This media technology played
a vital roll in the publishing stage of our work as
it could be viewed by the public, but also allow
them to provide feedback on our work. This was
beneficial for the evaluation stage of our work as
we could look at the strengths, weaknesses and
improvements of the work at hand, which in turn
allows us to improve our work and take that into
consideration for future projects.

18. Blogger
Blogger or Google Blogs is a online website which
allows you to create blogs. I used this media
technology as a platform to present my unit of
work. With the help of our websites such as
Prezi, Slideshare, YouTube etc. it gave us a
website to present my researching, planning,
and evaluation stages of this unit of work. The
software also allows me to categorise my work
into different sections so that it makes it more
simplistic to locate work. The website also
provides a comment section for each post which
is beneficial for the evaluation stage of the work
as it enables us to view audience feedback which
is useful for finding improvements that could be
added to the work.

19. CLYP
CLYP is a website which allows me to
publicise audio files. For the purposes of this
unit, I used the website to upload files such
as vox pops and the radio advert. After
conducting this, I then used the media
technology to embed it onto my ‘Blogger’
page, so that it could be published to the
relevant audience. CLYP was a useful tool in
the production of this work as it allowed my
audience to easily listen to my work, so that
they could review it for the purposes of
providing feedback on my work.

20. Presentation Websites
Throughout this unit of work, we have used a
multitude of presentation software’s in order
to present or publicise our work in a different
manors. This is beneficial as it makes it
easier to digest the information that I am
presenting to the audience. Throughout this
unit we have used the tools from a number of
websites which include, Prezi, Powtoon,
Slideshare, Scribd etc. which is beneficial to
the unit as it provides a multitude of
different presenting techniques to further
encourage the attention of the audience,
which not only makes it easier to read over
the information, but further provides a more
effective way of presenting my work.