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

2. Google was an important part of the planning
stage for me as it allowed me to search for
potential locations, codes and conventions,
filming tips, information on how to optimise my
use of my camera, and many other things.
Without Google my work would not have been
as well rounded as it was. The google images
service helped me create an effective ancillary
text because I was able to find high definition
photos of magazine reviews and film posters
which gave me the ability to create
professional pieces. I also used Google to
research how to use the iMovie and Adobe
Illustrator software as I did not have a lot of
knowledge in the use of these.

3. Youtube was important in helping me find a
variety of short films to analyse and
determine the typical conventions of short
films. By having the option to view such a
wide variety of films my own ideas began to
develop and change because I began to see
what the audiences appreciated. It also
provided me with videos that showed me
how to use the video setting on my camera
which helped me prepare for the filming
process. Not only this, Youtube was used to
upload my rough cut and final piece and to
receive feedback on them and develop my
piece until it was the best version of itself
that it could possibly be.

4. Last year we used the school hosted “frogger” blog but we
were presented with a lot of formatting issues and just
general hosting issues so this year we moved onto the
popular blogging platform Blogger. Using Blogger made it
easier to present my research and planning as it has a
very simple layout. Not only that, the general presentation
looked so much better because it was placed on a
standardised template rather than a drag and drop system
that looks very basic. Blogger also made it easier to host
videos from Youtube which allowed for the similar
products pieces and codes and conventions pieces to
work well as it was easier to refer back to the film I was
analysing and anybody viewing the blog didn’t have to
laboriously go through Youtube in order to find it. It also
works in conjunction with google so if we wanted to send a
blog post whilst on the go, we could easily just send an
email to our blogger email address containing the blog
post and provided there was wifi or at least could signal it
would be on the blog very quickly.

5. My use of Dropbox was very heavy throughout
this stage as I used it to link Word documents,
PDF files and Photoshop files onto my blog.
Dropbox is an online sharing programme that
allows users to upload files and share across the
internet. It is a very easy piece of software to use
and it uploads your desired programme onto the
internet very quickly. Users also get 1TB of free
space to use which is very helpful if you're
uploading very large files. Using dropbox made
the process of updating my blog a lot quicker and
easier as I wouldn’t have to laboriously wait for the
files to try and upload onto blogger or to type out
the files which would create a very large blog post
that isn't very aesthetically pleasing. Rather, I
could simply post a link and be done.

6. I decided to film using the Canon 70d
because I wanted high quality footage
that would give my short film a more
professional look. I decided to move onto
using a DSLR because we had previously
been taught that DSLR cameras are
taking over the film industry and are an
economical way to film as they are quite
cheap in comparison to professional
video cameras such as the ones we used
last year. Also, because I have
knowledge regarding how DSLR cameras
work I knew that I would be able to work
with the 70d very well.

7. I used iMovie for the editing of my short film
because the Premiere Pro software that was
available at school could not handle the file size of
my footage and it was not equipped to handle
DSLR footage. When I did try editing on Premiere
Pro I encountered a lot of problems such as my
short film being lost, not being able to save,
rendering not working and the processor would
crash and make the programme unresponsive. I
had never used iMovie before so I had no idea how
to use it but it was not too difficult to PP and was
very easy to pick up the skills to use it. The layout
is very similar to that of PP but it is a lot more
simple. For example, when setting up a timeline
you do not need to set up the technical specs
because iMovie does it for you.

8. To make my film review, I decided to use Adobe
Illustrator. The result of using Illustrator tends to be
more professional than using Microsoft Publisher or
Adobe Photoshop because the user has a lot more
freedom to create with it. With Publisher it is very
difficult to achieve a magazine style and I have
struggled when using that programme in the past so
after testing the waters I began to use Illustrator. As I
was replicating a specific style it was not too difficult to
develop a template from scratch with this programme
as its intended use is for creative ventures such as
this. The Illustrator programme has a lot of tools that
Publisher and Photoshop do not have so I was able to
replicate the ‘predicted interest curve’ as seen in the
Total Film magazine with no difficulty. Not only that,
after trial and error I learned how to effectively
manoeuvre text so that it held a typical magazine
style.

9. I used Photoshop to make my film
poster as this ancillary text is mainly
photograph based and Photoshop is
excellent for editing photos. I have
been using Photoshop for about 5
years so it is software that I am very
familiar with which made it a very
simple process to create the poster. It
is also simple to add text layers in
Photoshop and to alter them so that
they fit in with the photo used which
improved the standard of my film
poster.

10. I used the online presentation platform Prezi to
answer the evaluation question “In what ways does
your media product use, develop or challenge forms
and conventions of real media products?” I decided
to use Prezi because I felt that the format of an
animated flow chart would effectively answer this
question. I also used this website to answer one of
my evaluation questions last year so I already knew
how to work the animation and to create an effective
flow chart. I like Prezi because it makes something
that could potentially be quite boring seem quite fun.
Also, because you can animate the path in which
the presentation is presented it makes your ideas
flow very well. In the case of my own work, I used
this technique to show the parts of the Todorovian
narrative in my own piece with screenshots from the
short.

11. I used the Quicktime programme to answer
the evaluation question: “How effective is the
combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?” I saw a student use this to
answer the same question last year and I
liked how simple and interesting it was.
Using the Quicktime programme, users can
do a live screen grab which means they can
record what is on their screen and create an
audio recording over the top of this. By doing
this I could have my ancillary texts next to
my main piece and compare them and
comment on them so the audience could see
both at the same time.