Part of my A2 media coursework evaluation

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

2. Construction and Research

3. Photoshop
• Photoshop was used for all three tasks and it’s purpose was:
• To manipulate the images that were taken for the advertisements that
were present on the web pages and also on the second page of the
newspaper.
• To do basic editing with the images taken for the articles within the
paper. The lack of editing was to create a sense of truth and reality
within the newspaper. For example with the student photo I simply
cropped out the rest of the scene to make the student the main focus.
• To create the billboard poster. Photoshop was used as it is easy to use
as a blank canvas for a product that wasn’t as demanding as the main
task. The programme was used to cut out images and use it as a
stencil over a blended image of the newspaper pages.
• The programme was also used to manipulate the images for my
advertisements which are present on the second page of the
newspaper and on the web pages.

4. Weebly
• Weebly was used to help with the HTML coding and layout of
a website, something that I’m not too familiar with.
• I chose to work with a website construction site as they are
simple and effective to use in an area that I have little
knowledge of.
• The site had lots of features that were very easy to use such
as the HTML coding for the use of Twitter and Facebook
buttons. Weebly also allowed me to display the technological
convergence of the internet through the HTML coding box,
which I could drag into place onto the page.
• The site allowed me to simply drag and drop different
features onto the page such as an image box, text box and
allowed me to split the page up using a ‘multiple column’
device.

5. Digital Camera & Scanner
• I used a Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd to take the images needed
for my magazine.
• The camera helped me retain the quality that I needed for my
local newspaper and for use in Photoshop.
• It also allowed me to take pictures of the newspapers that I
wished to analyse as there wasn’t a scanner big enough to
scan them.
• The scanner helped me scan through useful things like the
newspaper advertisements and images, so I could then utilise
them within the analysis and moodboard respectively.

6. Indesign
• Indesign was used to construct the main task of creating two
pages of a local newspaper.
• I had previous knowledge of the programme from my AS and so
was very familiar with how the programme worked.
• My knowledge of the programme made the task a lot simpler and
made the page easy to assemble.
• The programme was also useful as it supported JPEG images so
the final exported quality of the newspaper was satisfactory to
my expectations.
• Similar to Weebly the programme allowed me to use different
tools such as text boxes and the ‘place’ tool to construct the
newspaper.
• It also had guidelines and frames, which helped me to distinguish
the boundaries of the page.

7. Social Media
• Social media was a useful research tool as it allowed people from all over
the world to comment on my work.
• The social media that I used was Prezi, Slideshare, Scribd, Wordpress and
Flickr. These sites helped me research my project as they have a worldwide
audience on the internet who were willing to give me feedback.
• To use Scribd, Slideshare and Wordpress I simply had to upload the
documents to the websites.
• However with Prezi and Flickr, I gained the freedom to annotate, and
become more creative with the presentational style of my work.
• For example in Flickr I was able to use notes to annotate the key features on
the newspapers for my analysis.
• On Prezi I gained the ability to guide the user through my presentation,
whilst laying out my work in a more satisfactory way than Slideshare
allowed me to.
• The internet also helped me research my project through useful sites like
the expressandstar.com and the birminghammail.net that had information
about their ownership.

8. Questionnaire
• The questionnaire helped me collect data manually and
ensured that I was receiving some form of feedback from the
audience.
• Microsoft Word was used to construct the questionnaire.
• To collect my data I used the picture site Wordle to present
my results in an aesthetically pleasing way.
• To present my data I simply had to type in the answers from
each person to distinguish the most popular. The most
popular on the image were shown by their size.

9. Planning and Evaluation

10. Microsoft Word
• To plan the project I used Microsoft word.
• The programme was used to show what the website and local
newspaper were to be laid out like, and were then uploaded
to the social media site Scribd.
• The programme was easy to use as I have years of experience
using the software.
• The text box and shape tool were useful to construct the flat
plans that I needed to use as a basis for my project.
• I also used the programme to write a production schedule to
make sure that the work was being completed on time.

11. Digital Camera
• The digital camera was used for test shots for the project.
• The original images were used to test out how the digital
camera worked under sunlight, and to plan, if they didn’t
work, another way of taking the images that I needed.
• The digital camera also showed the difference between a
manipulated and unedited image. It helped to establish the
differences between newspaper and magazine photography.

12. Powerpoint/Prezi
• Powerpoint and Prezi were used to present my evaluation in a
more interesting way than just writing it down as a blog post.
• Powerpoint allowed me to collate my information and then
upload the presentation to Prezi and create a visually exctiting
presentation.
• Prezi allowed me to collect the relevant information into
different sets on the page so my work was easier to navigate
around.
• For example I used a title to attract the audiences attention to
a set of information, and the information was collected inside
the title screen to make the presentation easy to understand
and follow.

13. Slideshare
• Slideshare allowed me to upload my Powerpoint presentation
to the internet and then embed them onto my Wordpress
blog.
• For example I was able to create the presentation for this
piece of work but had no embedding code and no audience to
view and give me feedback on my work.
• To combat these disadvantages I decided to upload my
presentation to the social media site Slideshare to allow
feedback on my work and to allow technological convergence
on my blog.

14. Flickr
• Much to the same effect of the analysis Flickr was
used to add notes to the images.
• Flickr was used to answer the question ‘In what
ways does your media product use develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?’
• The social media website allowed me to annotate
images that I had uploaded to the site to convey the
similarities and differences between my products
and real newspapers.
• The ‘add notes’ tool allowed me to highlight an area
of the images and then add a tag. When the
audience hovers over the highlighted area a tag
appears showing my information.