1. MEDIA EVALUATION
QUESTION 4
How did you use media technologies in the construction,
research, planning and evaluation stages?
Charlie Ball
2. BLOGGER
I used blogger for a number of
my posts, as it is a convenient
way of presenting pieces of my
work that largely consist of
text, such as my analysis of the
‘Conjuring 2’ trailer, in which I
wrote over 3500 words on.
Blogger allowed me to set
screenshots of the trailer next
to each relevant paragraph,
making it clear as to which
features within the trailer I
was referring to.
Furthermore, Blogger allowed
me to easily embed clips from
Youtube (such as the ‘tall man’
horror scene from ‘It Follows’
within my transcript of the
focus group that I conducted.
This was helpful in explaining
my analysis of the feedback I
received during the focus
group, as well as showing what
sort of effects I was aiming for
within my film trailer.
Above is evidence that blogger allowed me to do all of the things I mentioned.
3. HP LAPTOP
My coursework would have been much more difficult if I didn’t have my
own HP laptop at home, ready for whenever I needed it. I spend a lot of
time in my room, therefore I could just get on with work during
weekend, adding on to the work I was already doing at college,
therefore helping me to manage and reach my deadlines. I have
PowerPoint, Word, Paint.Net and Outlook installed on my laptop, and
other software such as Prezi and Emaze actually run smoothly on it,
unlike the Mac’s, making it much easier to complete coursework.
4. APPLE
MACBOOK
We took advantage of MacBook Pros almost every day for our research
and planning at college. During lessons we would use them to fill the
requirements that needed to be met. Using them was a challenge for me
personally, as although I used them at AS, I was still vastly more
familiar with Laptops, which are marginally different. The Mac
computer also introduced me to iMovie and Final Cut Pro, which are
crucial software that I had to re-familiarise myself with this year in
order to complete my film trailer.
5. NIKON D3200
We used the Nikon D3200 to record our production as well as take the photographs for
our ancillaries. The camera itself features many buttons and menu options that made
it difficult to navigate. I did learn several things however, such as what a “mode dial” is
and how the various settings change the way the footage looks. With some help from
Lucy during the filming, we quickly re-acquainted ourselves with the camera and its
features, therefore making it quick and simple for us to film and conduct a photoshoot.
The photographs that we took were in a crisp HD picture, optimising the quality of
them on our ancillaries and allowing us to add a number of effects to them without
them becoming too blurry. It also filmed at 60fps (frames per second), meaning that the
shots ran smoothly and we were able to slow some of them down without them
becoming too ‘laggy’.
6. FINAL CUT
PRO X
We used Final Cut Pro in order to edit our trailer. We chose this over iMovie because, even
though the only experience we had with it was during last year’s AS production, we were aware
that it had more features that would help us to create the best production we possibly could. I
learnt how add a dark filter to our shots, which was needed for the trailer, as it was filmed in
daylight, however we required it to be darker to fit the psychological horror genre we were
aiming at. I also learnt how to manipulate the sounds in each scene, making them fade in and
out, or even removing it completely. This was crucial when it came to our production as it
removed background noise and allowed us to import our own copyright free sounds and music.
Trimming scenes down was easy on Final Cut Pro, and it allowed us to pinpoint the exact point
to which we wanted a scene to start and end, however I already knew how to do this from last
year, being the most simple form of editing. As well as this, I learnt how to implement
transitions between scenes, which I was not aware of before due to our former team-mate Dan’s
sizeable influence on the editing. This editing package also had a large supply of fonts to choose
from for the blackouts in the trailer, allowing me to choose a clear, bold font to appear within it –
something that iMovie does not have.
7. IMOVIE
I used iMovie only
briefly, to edit our focus
group audio, which
didn’t take much time.
We didn’t learn much
from it as we already
knew the basics of
editing, and this
particular software is a
simplified version of
Final Cut Pro, which
we used to fully edit our
trailer.
I did however familiarise myself more with implementing pictures in at different times, which was something
I had to do when editing the trailer, as I had to put in the green preview screen, as well as our company logos.
iMovie was also useful as it allowed us to upload our focus group video straight to Youtube, which was
convenient as it saved us a great deal of time.
8. GARAGEBAND
Through GarageBand, I manipulated several sound effects that were included within
our trailer, as we still wanted our sounds to come across as eerie, however many didn’t
quite fit the speed of the trailer, therefore by using GarageBand I increased the pitch
of these sounds, (notably the wind featuring at the beginning of the trailer) in order to
create a fast-paced harrowing atmosphere.
The editing
station on
Garageband
9. FREESOUND
Freesound was crucial when it came to editing my film trailer, as many sound effects
are copyrighted, running the risk of my production being taken off of Youtube due to
their copyright infringement policies. Freesound consists (surprisingly) of only free
sounds, that are available to anybody who wishes to use them. The website provided a
wide variety of sounds, ranging from cinematic booms (which we used a number of in
our trailer) to TV static noises (used for some very short shots throughout the trailer).
There were no problems when it came to downloading, transferring and installing
sounds from my laptop to the Mac using a USB stick, as we had to do the same thing
last year, therefore this was a very simple process.
10. YOUTUBE
YouTube was required in order for us to upload our film trailer (and focus group) to the
public, so that it can be seen by anybody. The process of uploading YouTube videos is
rather simple, and doesn’t take much time to set up or upload (depending on how long
the video is, but ours were quite short). I’ve had previous experience using YouTube, as
I had to use it to upload my production from my AS year, and I watch a great deal of
YouTube videos, therefore I know a considerable amount about it.
One of the YouTube
videos that I
uploaded
11. PAINT.NET
Paint.net was the most prominent piece of software
that I had to get used to this year, as I had no previous
experience in editing print work, therefore when it
came to designing my magazine cover and poster, it
was pivotal in maximising the quality of them. Getting
used to the image manipulating features was difficult,
and I just had to play around with the sliders when it
came to softening/adding a glow effect to a picture, but
I got used to it after a while. The ‘layers’ feature was
also a difficult one to become accustomed to, as it is a
struggle to navigate the menus of paint.net, and
deselecting and re-selecting layers proved to be a
rather big challenge, which was really hard to get used
to.
Poster Ancillary
Magazine Ancillary
12. DAFONT
Dafont is a website which provides a number of unique fonts, created and
submitted by the public. Without this, I wouldn’t have found the crucifixion font
that I used for the title of my production (Delilah). The website is easy to
navigate as there is a search bar in which you type in a word (e.g Delilah) and
it comes up with a list of fonts spelling out that word, meaning it is easy to see
if the letters in that font are clear enough to be used on a film poster. It also
provides a number of sub-categories of fonts, so that I could narrow it down to
horror-related fonts only, in order to find one that was conventional, yet
unique enough for me.
13. MICROSOFT WORD
I used Microsoft Word on more than one occasion
during the research and planning section, as it
enabled me to structure pieces of writing to a more
appropriate standard than blogger when needed,
(like my focus group transcript for example) which
allowed me to allocate a specific colour to each of my
participants, which in turn made it much easier to
analyse what they said, and distinguish them from
one-another.
Word also allowed me to implement my transcript
evaluation alongside the transcript itself, as all of
my evaluative points are in italics.
I didn’t have to make myself familiar with Word, as
I’ve been using it for years to type up essays and
produce other types of documents, therefore it was
easy to jump in and use it for parts of my
My transcript and
evaluation that I produced
using Word
14. MICROSOFT
POWERPOINT
We used Microsoft PowerPoint quite
frequently during our “Research
and Planning” section of the course,
(and our evaluation, as I’m using it
for this!) because it makes it easy
and simple to create attractive and
colourful designs that look well-
presented and are more interesting
to navigate than if it was all typed
up plainly. We learnt a few more
technical things to Microsoft
PowerPoint, such as how to remove
the background to an image, which
I used for my ancillaries as I found
the tool on PowerPoint to be more
effective than the one on Paint.net.
An example of when I used PowerPoint
during my research stage (making it easy
to discuss each possible film title
separately.)
15. EMAZE
Emaze is similar to PowerPoint, however it is an online service, whereas the
latter is offline. It offers many unique layouts, one of which is shown in my
‘Narrative Theory’ post, which helped to make my work look well-presented. I
personally find it more difficult to use than PowerPoint, due to having a
smaller amount of experience with it, and the Macbooks that I used for a lot of
the coursework struggled to run it smoothly, which is why I often reverted back
to Microsoft PP, which generally was significantly more convenient for me.
A unique and
interesting
background on emaze
with interactive props
16. SLIDESHARE
We used Slideshare multiple times throughout our Research and Planning
stages, in order to upload PowerPoints that we had made in order to receive an
embed code that we could paste into our blogs. The service that the website
provides is free and simple to use, and acts an alternative to ZOHO. When
using Slideshare, I noticed that after embedding a PowerPoint onto my blog,
there would be absolutely no lag when switching slides, which was a slight
problem when uploading them through ZOHO.
One
PowerPoint I
Uploaded on
Slideshare
17. ZOHO
This website enabled us to extend our software use to
Word/Powerpoint, as it allowed us to easily convert our
documents into PDF files so that we could upload them to
our blogs smoothly with little time or trouble. We used this
software during our AS year, and it was just as reliable this
time around (although I’d always forget where to find a
document’s embed code on it).
18. PREZI We saw Prezi as an alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint. It harbours many of the
same features, but is presented differently, in a more interactive way. It is more
complex than PowerPoint, due to the extensive amount of transitions and other
features available, however what attracted us to it was the vibrancy of the
website, and the fact that we could get an embed code straightaway, rather than
processing it through ZOHO. Using Prezi takes more time and patience than
PowerPoint, however the designs available on it differ hugely, and are more
extravagant than those that are usable on PowerPoint. We used Prezi a number
of times throughout the research and planning stages.
Examples of
research and
planning that we
used Prezi to present
19. BUBBL.US
We used bubbl.us to create spider diagrams in order to brainstorm our ideas and then
present them in a professional manner which enabled us to easily make connections
between points. There are a number of other spider diagram like pieces of software
available, however this was the first that we came across during our AS Media
planning last year, therefore we decided to stick with it this year too.
A props
brainstorm
that we
created using
bubbl.us
20. SURVEYMONKEY
SurveyMonkey played a pivotal part in our audience research,
as I took advantage of it to make the survey that we used to
analyse audience feedback. It provided us with an embed code
which allowed us to embed it into our blogs, as well as
presenting the results and responses of the survey in a
number of different ways (bar charts, line graphs, tables and
pie charts). We used these graphs to analyse our audience
feedback effectively, which led to many changes in the
direction that our production took.
Our survey on the many conventions of the horror genre,
and which our target audience thought we should follow or
subvert from using.
21. OUTLOOK
Outlook is an email service provided my Microsoft, which was convenient to us when we had to email
a professional (whom we unfortunately didn’t get a reply from). Furthermore, we used Outlook to
spread the word of our Horror Surveys, sending them directly to some of our classmates and teachers.
Outlook is the standard email used for all members of the college, therefore we were very familiar
with it, and it really didn’t take long to add everybody that we were sending the survey to, as it has a
drop-down menu suggesting who you should send the email to, including everybody you’ve sent an
email to previously, therefore we selected a majority of people from that list, saving us a significant
amount of time.
Our email to a professional
that we sent using Outlook
