Media coursework, question 4.

1. How I used media technologies
in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation stages
…

2. • For all three of my products (the documentary, the poster and puff piece) I have
had to rely on a new kind of media technology for example, final cut pro and
Photoshop. With out these tools I wouldn’t have been able to create the
marketing campaign I did, nor the documentary.
• Also while shooting for the documentary we had an extra piece of equipment
which was a microphone – this helped massively towards the picking up of sound
that wasn’t needed/wanted for example, the wind. The microphone meant that
the interviewees voice didn’t get lost under the sound of the wind.
• The different media platforms such as, YouTube and Iplayer have really allowed me
to constructively and effectively carry out my research and planning, while
websites such as Emaze, Piktochart and Prezi have allowed me to present all of my
research in a creative and constructive way.

3. Final cut pro …
• Final cut pro offers so many opportunities when I comes down to post
production and producing a film to the best of your ability. For example, on final
cut pro you are able to add music behind the footage and make it fade in and
out. This is a tool that was extremely helpful while editing my documentary as,
there is music playing along behind it, therefore we need it to naturally fade in
and out to suit the naturalism of the play.
• Final cut pro helps you to turn your footage into anything you want.
• The large choice of different fonts is exciting as you get to experiment with
different types of looks – the font is very significant towards the effect your film
has and weather or not it succumbs to the conventions of your genre. For
example, we were able to follow the common feature in documentaries which is
text:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHVmIC-1b-g

4. Effect of final cut pro on my research
and planning …
• Because of the tools final cut offers you such as: cutting
tools that allow you to make the shots shorter, being
able to create different ways of transitioning from shot
to shot for example, fading – it meant that during my
research I had to really look out for how
documentaries were edited; what sort of font did they
use, how fast was the pace of cutting, did they have
voice over’s or music playing over it.
• Final cut pro allowed me to include many conventions
of a documentary, therefore making it clear what genre
it belongs to.

5. Photoshop …
• I used photo shop for both the poster and the puff
piece.
• Photoshop allows you to add pictures and edit them
for example, in the making of the poster we got
pictures of the people we interviewed and were able to
crop out the background so that is was just them and
nothing else. It also allows you to experiment with
colours, different fonts and to play around with the
structure of the text for example, when making the
puff piece I was able to bend the text around a picture
– which is a very common feature in magazine reviews.

6. Examples of how we used photo shop:
Bent text
around the
picture.
Photo shop also
provided the ability
to download
different fonts and
use them
Photoshop
allowed us to
create cut outs of
the people in our
film and overlap
them to create a
collage effect.
We were also able to
add the BBC3 ident,
which is vital as, our
audience needs to
know who is hosting
it as this has a
significant impact on
what sort of
documentary it will
be. If they are a fan of
BBC3 then they will
want to watch it.
We were also able
to experiment with
different types of
font, therefore
allowing us to
continue following
the conventions of
how a documentary
is marketed: we
decided to go with
a simple font.

7. The effect photo shop had on my
research and planning …
• Because of the tools photo shop offers for example,
editing pictures, large choice of fonts and backgrounds
I understood that there wasn’t a limit to what you
could do on photo shop and that you could pretty
much create anything you like, so while looking at
posters for documentaries and TV program's in general
I was able to not rule anything out because I knew it
was all possible to do. This meant I could create a
poster that fully catered to what my target audience
wanted to see and was able to follow the conventions
of a BBC3 poster for example, the pink background, the
BBC3 ident and the simple fonts.

8. Technology used while filming.
• Camera lens: When shooting our documentary we had two
different lenses, a wide lens and a smaller lens – we used the wide
lens to shoot the establishing shots as it was able to capture a lot
more into the shot, whereas the smaller lens had a smaller frame,
so was used for the actual interviews as it meant we could get the
conventional ‘talking heads’ shot – this is a medium close up
allowing you to clearly see their face and some of the background
behind them and is commonly used for interviews.
• Microphone: Because we were filming outside we knew that we
would come into contact with problems such as
natural/surrounding sounds – the camera on its own would not be
able to clearly and effectively pick up what the interviewees are
saying so, we decided to use a microphone, it was small therefore
easy to carry around the location and simply clipped onto the top of
the camera. The microphone meant we were able to pick up the
speech of the people we spoke to, with out factors such as the wind
interfering.

9. How these technologies effected my
research ad planning.
• Because I had these camera lenses and microphones
available to me I really had to look and listen closely to the
documentaries I watched for research to educate myself on
what lens they would use for what – it was evident after a
while that they used the wider lens for establishing shots in
order to get a nice, clear and wide shot and the smaller
lens for the interview so that the audience wouldn’t get
distracted by everything that is going on around them.
• It was also evident from my research that while
documentaries have the ‘realism’ effect so natural sounds
such as the wind and traffic they still have the focus on
what is being said – this is clearly done using a microphone,
which causes the voices to be over the natural sounds
rather than the other way round.

10. How I have used different media
platforms …
• Websites such as youtube and BBC3 have played a vital and
significant part in the making of the documentary as I was
able to use them for my research and planning, allowing
me to fully understand the important and conventional
features of a documentary. BBC3 has a whole section on
documentaries, allowing me to watch many of them to get
an overall understanding of what sort of documentaries
they host and the common features in them for example,
what sort of titles are used and the overall feel to it.
Youtube on the other hand streams a variety of different
documentaries allowing me to gather a wider
understanding in general rather than limiting myself to the
BBC3 type documentary.

11. The use of software programs
• Software programs were most significant
when it came to evaluating my documentary
for example, slideshare, prezi and Emaze –
these all allowed me to present what I had
learnt in a creative and interesting way, I could
break up what I had learnt into sections rather
than plainly writing it down in a long
paragraph. It allowed me to simply overlook
everything I had done, and clearly showed my
journey.

12. All of the technologies mentioned have been
extremely useful to me in the making of
our documentary. Each of them offer
different things and have effected our
choices in different ways – if I didn’t have
these technologies available I wouldn’t
have been able to create a documentary
that my target audience would want to
watch, nor would I be able to include the
common codes and conventions of a
documentary.