Q4

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

2. Facebook
In order to communicate with each other throughout the
project, we set up a group chat on Facebook so that we
could discuss any important issues that needed resolving
and so we could keep up with the work over the weekend
when we wouldn’t be seeing each other. This really helped
us progress further in our independent study time and
handle our time management skills with our coursework
production. We used Facebook for research and planning,
production and evaluation as it was a useful piece of
software that really pushed us to do our work. For me, it
also reminded me that I was working in a group so other
people were relying on me, therefore this pushed me to
complete my work so that I wasn’t letting anyone down.

3. Research
To research more into documentaries, we had to use the internet to search
for similar documentaries which would fit our genre. We mainly used Google
to research conventions and codes of documentaries, alongside YouTube to
watch existing documentaries that would help us gain understanding of what
makes a documentary successful. We found some documentaries such as
‘Educating Essex’ on YouTube which were really useful to our research as this
particular example was on the subject of education which was similar to our
topic. Google and YouTube were safe options for research, as I have used
these pieces of software excessively throughout my everyday life and they
retrieve information from all corners of the internet which may be useful to
us.

4. Blogger
One software which we used consistently throughout the
creation of our media product is Blogger. This was essential
in presenting every step of our journey in the process of
creating our documentary, which included research and
planning, production of the documentary and post
production. Blogger is a simple piece of software to use, as
you can create posts, name and label them, then add any
content which is necessary. Sometimes there were issues
with embedding presentations from other software as the
file would be corrupt when presenting the blog, however,
these issues were often easily overcome by re-embedding
the presentation and that usually worked.

5. Prezi
Prezi was a presentation software which was a
creative way of presenting certain topics,
particularly in research and planning. There
were several templates which could be used
which fit the theme of the topic being
presented. Prezi allowed us to be creative with
our posts and this would help us show the
examiner that we could use several different
presentation softwares and develop our skills
with media technologies. I mainly used Prezi for
the research and planning section of our
course, however in the evaluation it also
became useful to flaunt our creativeness.

6. Camera
During production of creating our documentary, the camera
was the main piece of equipment needed to record our
footage. We had had a little bit of practice using the camera
doing our preliminary documentary, however once we had to
create our actual documentary, we had to completely develop
our skills and ensure that our camera skills were up to scratch
and if we needed to film something we could get straight to it
without any implications. We also had to apply camera shots to
our footage so that we could make the shot suitable, for
example, if we wanted to capture someone’s facial expression
we would use a close up shot. Remembering our camera skills
was essential to showing that we had a deep and creative
knowledge of creating a successful documentary. Alongside the
camera, we also had to use a tripod and microphone which
had to be set up and tested correctly before use, otherwise
there could be serious implications for our footage.
This was our ‘How To’ booklet which demonstrated how
we set up and dismantled the tripod safely without any
damage to the equipment. This was important as it
shows that we understood how to use the tripod
properly and this enabled us to quickly set it up and film
a good shot when we needed to.

7. iMac
The iMac was a vital piece of hardware which we had to
use for everything in the pre-production and production
of our documentary. I had never used an Apple Mac
before so this was completely out of my comfort zone
and I had to adapt my skills with modern media
technology in order to be efficient and create a product
which looked good. I had to get used to not being able
to right click when I wanted to copy/paste and instead
use the toolbar at the top of the screen or use keyboard
shortcuts (cmd+C to copy). At first, I thought that the
iMac was really difficult to use and I couldn’t get used
to the shortcuts, however, by constantly using the iMac
consistently, it became second nature to use shortcuts
and I found that it was actually very easy to use the
iMac.

8. Adobe
This was the most challenging piece of software for me to use. I knew from
previous experience in our AS course that I was not a fan of Adobe. For
production, the main piece of software we used was Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 as
we edited our entire documentary on this. It was fairly easy to get the hang of,
although there was several issues we encountered, such as when all of the files
corrupted and we had to get help from the technicians to save our document.
We used Photoshop in AS and this software was fairly easy to use in production
and post production of our documentary when creating our magazine article.
However my skills were very limited because I only really used basic tools such as
cropping or changing the hue/saturation/brightness of certain pictures,
therefore I could have researched into how to use other tools in order to push
myself further. Using InDesign was much easier for me as we had used this for
the majority of our AS production and I was used to everything on there. This is
what we used for our magazine in both AS and for the TV listing for our
documentary, so we had to transfer our skills from AS and also develop our skills
so that our magazine was much better for the TV listings.
These were the main
settings we used in
Photoshop when editing
our photos. The main
features we used were
changing the brightness
and contrast.
This was the layout we created in InDesign for our
magazine. We found this easy as the software was
familiar to us and we had a clear understanding of the
conventions of a magazine, so this was very simple for us
to do.

9. Garageband
This is the software that we used to create the radio trailer.
We had to upload the recording from the handheld
microphone straight onto Garageband which wasn’t a
problem. We also had to insert sound effects at the
beginning and end of the trailer to create a trademark
sound for the trailer, and we just had to find the sound
effects we wanted to use on the internet. The one thing
that I struggled with was alternating sound levels and using
effects such as fade in and out for sound effects. After
watching a tutorial on YouTube, we understood how to
change the sound level.
We figured that by
adjusting the yellow line
on the clip, we could
create the fade in/fade
out effect.

10. Garageband
These were the settings on garageband which we
had to familiarise ourselves with.
This little icon means
that this file is a voice
file. So these were the
voiceovers for the radio
trailer. We had to adjust
the sound levels by
accessing the volume
settings and adjust
them according to the
rest of the trailer.
The aggressive stance bass files were the
sound effects we used to introduce the
trailer and were also used at the end of the
trailer. This created a trademark sound for
our trailer and we really liked the end
effect this had. However, from feedback,
maybe we should have used different
sound effects, possibly more softer ones
which appealed to our audience more.

11. Handheld Microphone
This microphone was used to record the voiceover and the radio
trailer. This was an easy piece of equipment to use as it had
simple settings and you simply had to click the record button to
record, then click it again to stop recording. Although we had not
used this type of microphone before, after asking for assistance
from the teacher, we understood how to record and upload our
clips to the mac. However, sometimes some of the clips sounded
muffled or had interrupting background noise so we had to redo
the recording which was usually in our free time.