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

2. SlideShare is something that I hadn’t used in my
previous projects and I found that it enabled me to
make the presentation of my blog look very neat and
professional while helping my to keep my work
creative. I have used it for several pieces of my work
such as Plot Blocking, Ancillary Research, Survey
Responses etc. I really liked using SlideShare as it was
easy for any reader/viewer to navigate and work out. I
found it especially useful when using Blogger because
Blogger doesn’t allow me to put a Powerpoint onto in
therefore, I could upload it to SlideShare and embed it
from there so, it actually helped me solve some issues I
was struggling with, another good point is that it also
works with word documents which allowed me to
upload and present my shot list/script without any
trouble. SlideShare itself has a built in system that lets
you know how easy your presentation is to find and
what tags to use etc. even though this doesn’t apply to
what I need I believe this is good idea when it would
come to marketing/distributing a film itself.

3. Like I previously just said, I would create a PowerPoint with I would upload
onto SlideShare and embed from there so, I have rarely used PowerPoint for
these projects before however, using it this year has allowed me to go into
more detailed visually then I did before as it’s easy to place
pictures/screenshots into it just like I have done on this slide. You can do this
easily on Blogger however, the positioning and sizing isn’t as free as it is on
PowerPoint allowing me to positioning things to fit the structure or move
everything exactly how I want it and when I can’t do this on Blogger it can be
slightly annoying so, PowerPoint is a happy alternative.
I have used PowerPoint for a few of pieces of work such as explaining my
production logo ideas/decisions, Ancillary Research etc. I have been happy
with how all of them have turned out and how I’ve been able to use this
method of presentation throughout both planning and research effectively.
I had previously avoided using Microsoft Word as I didn’t like the layout when on my blog
however, now having the alternative of uploading it to SlideShare I used it for more
pieces of work such as my shot list/script and film review draft. While doing previously
doing some work on a script to help practice my skills to write the one for this project
when I found that Microsoft Word actually had a Plug-in which can make it easy to select
the correct settings for each part of a script for example, dialogue will automatically be
placed in the middle with the characters name instantly underlines, another is the first 2
transitions being placed to the right and the rest the left. I have found things like this
helpful when learning the layout for myself but also to apply it to my pieces of work to
help my achieve the best I can out of the piece.

4. Blogger is something I have used the most
throughout this project as it what I upload all
of my work to whether it’s straight from
Blogger or embedding work from alternative
places. I’ve found that even though it’s hard to
position things sometimes due to Blogger’s
setting it’s still an effective way of presentation
and can be as creative as any other. I have used
it for a large proportion of my work, I have
used it for all of my moving image textual
analysis’s which I found was very helpful as
they’re extremely text heavy and Blogger
allows me to preview how my work would look
on my blog which helped me to estimate how much to write and actually helped me to make
sure I didn’t go off topic while writing. Something that I like about Blogger that the others
don’t do as much is that you’re able to go back to older work and adjust/tweak them if
needed and there’s no need to fuss with re-uploading etc. it also, has a built in spell-checker
which is helpful for my as I always forget to proof read my work and sometimes miss my
grammar mistakes.

5. This was actually my first time using Bubbl.us and I
am glad I did. Bubbl.us is a online software, where
you can easily mind-map things out. I only used
this for my second idea developments as I wanted
to vary and widen my methods of presentation but
also, I felt that if I was to go wrong on bubbl.us I
could easily just erase something or hit the back
button but if I drew it out and went wrong the
presentation would look as good. I did come
across a few issues while using it though for
example, when it came to actually uploading it to
my blog I attempted to download and upload it as
a .png while but it just wouldn’t show up on the
blog post at all and when I changed it to .jpeg it
was too small which resulting in me having to crop
it and use Photoshop to place them side by side so
that it was evident how the layout was suppose to
go. Even though it was a struggle it did provide my
piece of work with a nice layout and ultimately
helped me to decide what route I wanted to take
my storyline on.

6. Prezi is something I have previously used and I tried
to limit how much I used it this time to help me with
my variation of different presentation methods
however, I still used it for a couple of my pieces of
work such as, my three poster analysis’s, audience
profiling etc. I find that Prezi is a create software to
make your work interact and sometimes more
memorable as it has a lot more features then
anything else I have used for example, you can have
music playing over the top of the presentation, you
can play clips within the prezi, movements can be
controlled by the viewer etc. This is also the only
other software from Blogger that allows you to go
back and alter/change anything at a later date
without having to re-upload or anything which is a
feature I really like. It also, has some creative and professional pre-done templates which I
found helpful as this saved me some time when creating my prezi’s but also you had
complete control over everything within the Prezi when creating it.

7. Adobe
Photoshop CS6
Right from the beginning I knew I was going to be
using Adobe Photoshop CS6 to construct my Ancillary
tasks however, throughout my project I found that I
was able to used it through every aspect: research,
planning etc. even if it was for little things such as,
placing two images next to one another or creating a
mood board. Even though I have used Adobe
Photoshop for awhile I still learnt new things/skills
through this project such as, blending two
background into one another (double page film
review) or even co-making a font for my film title.
I even used a section of this software I didn’t know
existed which was the photo editor, it can only be
used with .NEF pictures and it allows me to
manipulate, change and alter things such as, the
saturation of the image, the shadows etc. this is
something I experimented and used with my piece of
work ‘Antagonist Make-Up’.

8. DaFont is a website I commonly use to download
interesting and creative fonts, I used it a lot more
in this project then I have don’t previously as I
felt this was an area that I need to spent more
time and research on. I used DaFont to find any
possible fonts I could use for film titles/
production names and I found that his was very
helpful when it came to decisions and audience
research/feedback. An issue I did come across
with this website though is it, for my title I
planned to use a Greek work which required
some accents and certain layouts and DaFont did
not having any fonts with these conditions which
let to me having to download some fonts and
alter/customize them myself which actually
helped my to development some of my
Photoshop skills. DaFont font’s did actually help
with the presentation of blog posts as I would
sometimes use their fonts as titles to help make
my posts more creative

9. Survey Monkey was a vital part when it
came to my research section as I was able to
easily create surveys and distribute them
even easier which helped me to reach both
my target audience and others to help me
collect results and compare them against
one another and the horror conventions, to
help me make decisions. I found that
SurveyMonkey was very helpful and
effective when it came to me analysis the
results as it providing me with the most
popular choices and simple statistics which I
was able to include in my research itself.
However, something I did limiting about this
website is that I was only able to ask 10
questions which meant I was able to ask
everything I wanted and It would be as easy
to compare the two separate surveys as it
would be just the one.

10. Youtube is where I distribute my Main Task to
(short film) but I have also used it as another
presentation method for things such as my Focus
Group, Final Pitch and Ident Drafts. I have also
found that it’s a good way to show to progress
and process of my editing for the Short Film and
things such as the ident as this is something I
didn’t do much last year except screenshots
whereas, I feel like this method it more
interesting.
It was especially useful for my ‘A2 Focus Group’
as when I uploaded it to Youtube a transcript was
generated for it automatically, a bad point of this
is that the transcript wasn’t 100% correct
however, it still saved more some time which I
was able to put towards other pieces of work.

11. I was able to use Final Cut Pro X for more then just the construction/editing of my main task
(short film.) I was able to use it to edit things such as my A2 Focus Group, taking out any long
pauses and making it more interesting to listen to but also, I was able to overlay pictures on
the screen while the audio/speaking played so that it wasn’t just a boring plain screen. I also
used it to show the construction/planning of my Ident ideas through speeding them up and
editing them only slightly to help show the process I went through to create them in a more
interesting way then just typing and screenshots.
Final Cut Pro x
QuickTime
Even though QuickTime it conventionally used to view/watch videos, it can also be used to
record your screen so I used this feature to record my screen as edited/created my first ident
draft so that I would be able to speed it up in Final Cut Pro and upload it to my blog through
Youtube to make the presentation more visual and creative, I also thought that by doing it this
way it’s more self explained as I find that it can be hard to explain an editing process so instead
I decided to show it.

12. Nikon D5100
Soft-box lighting
The Nikon d5100 is the camera I used to both film my
main task (short film) and take the pictures for my
ancillary task (poster & double page film review.) This
camera does come with some pre-done settings/
menus which can be helpful but I have also done a lot
of research into the technical side of Nikon camera’s
which I found helped me a slightly when working in low
lighting along with how to apply lighting to the shot but
make it seem darker on the camera when filming.
I only used the soft-box lighting for my main task and ancillary
task (film poster) I used them to help with the amount of grain
that I always find a struggle within my clips usually and found
that it did actually work. Also, I especially needed them when
taking pictures for my poster as the lighting require was for it to
be much darker at the bottom of the characters face then at
the top to help make the photo seem sinister and with the soft-
box lighting this was much easier.

13. Apple Mac/Laptop
HP laptop
For 95% of my project I used a Apple Mac Laptop or
computer as that is the technology I have available at home
where I did a majority of the work. Also, most of the
software that I used was specialized to apple products such
as, Final Cut Pro X. I also found this the easiest computer to
use when it came to taking screenshots and adding them to
my blog and it was an easy two step process but on
computers such as HP which I used when at college it was
much more difficult and time consuming.
For the other 5% I used a HP laptop which was
usually when I was in college and I found this very
useful when it came to small Photoshop jobs such
as creating to drafts for my ‘look closer/fact
section’ and also for completing text heavy blog
posts.