Evaluation response

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

2. Media technology was a big part in making my
main product and ancillary tasks success. I used many
different types of technologies to help with format
research, planning/creating my trailer, creating a
company, evaluating my products and making my
trailer. These technologies range from software's such
as Adobe Photoshop, In Design and Adobe Premier
Elements, to websites like WIX, Pic Monkey, Google
Images, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. As well as that
I used hardware's such as a Computer/Laptop and an
IPhone.

3. When researching I made a focus group to ask a
series of questions to find out information from my
target audience, I did this by using my IPhone to
film them sitting round a table to discuss my
questions which were as follows;
What is your favourite horror film?
What did you like about your favourite horror film?
What do you believe to be more scary; a fake scare
where the tension builds, or a full on scare? & why?
Do you believe that seeing the 'villains' face in a
horror film or it always being a mystery scarier? &
why?

4. What is your favourite horror film? &
Why?
The reason why I asked what was their favourite horror
film and why it was their favourite horror film was so I
could then do further research into them films and I could
view why it was their favourite horror and how they used
it to create a successful horror. I did this by looking at the
camera angles, lighting and music they used at those
points and whether it was the story that was the reason
why they liked it I looked at what they did to the story, for
example did it have lots of twists or did just have normal
codes and conventions of a horror trailer.

5. What do you believe to be more scary; a fake scare
where the tension builds, or a full on scare? & why?
I asked my focus group which they preferred, a fake scare or a
full on scare. This was to know which had the best effect on
the audience and which I would then use in my
trailer. Predominately the answers were that fake scares had
the best effect on the audience as it builds the tension very
well but a jump scare was also very effective once built up by
the fake scares. This is why in my trailer there is a lot of
tension building throughout the trailer with people following
my main actor and then at the end of the trailer
the perpetrator finally revealing themselves and appearing
next to my main actor. To try make this successful I was then
going to watch their favourite film and see how they used fake
scares and full on scares to try use techniques of them films to
include within my trailer.

6. Do you believe that seeing the 'villains' face in a
horror film or it always being a mystery scarier? &
why?
• Then my final question was to find out whether
revealing the villain near the beginning or near
the end was most effective or just whether to
reveal the villain at all was a good idea. The
reasoning for asking this question was because I
did not think that if the audience saw my villain it
would be as scary and would look very tacky so I
thought that if my audience thought that not
seeing the villain was scarier it would be good as I
could then work on making it more realistic by
not revealing the villain.

7. If I could I were to do it again and improve my focus
group I would have held it more than once and
asked more detailed question on other key aspects
but overall this was very helpful for my format
research in creating a basis for my trailer.

8. The media technologies 'Google' and 'YouTube'
were a key part of the development stage of my
productions. I used them throughout my research
into information about creating almost everything,
from my company to my trailer, as they had very
helpful tutorials on how to use certain software
that I was not that experienced in like Adobe Photo
Shop and Premier Elements. They had detailed
videos on exact things that I wanted to do which
made it much easier and quicker to complete
instead of spending a lot of time trying to figure it
out myself.

9. When creating my company I used three media
technologies to create my animated company logo for my
trailer. Google images, Pic Monkey, Photo Shop and
Premier Elements were used to make my logo. Each
added a different detail of its own to the logo, Photo
Shop allowed me to create different versions of the logo,
by making them in different colours. Pic Monkey allowed
me to add text to the image so that the company name
would be present and Premier Elements enabled me to
animate my logo and add sound to the animation for my
trailer. On all these aspects these software’s were
specialised in the detail I wanted to add to achieve the
final design.

10. In the creation of my Trailer the media technologies that I used were Adobe premier Elements, Photo Shop and YouTube. These
are all accessible on my school computer. Adobe Premier Elements is an all round editing software that is rated fairly high as an
editing software. which was good for me as it was free and accessible at school. Premier Elements allows you to cut clips, speed
them up, alter sounds and many more features. This was very useful in creating my trailer as it seemed to do everything I
wanted, as I needed to create a horror so I had to make many different alterations to the clips for it to suit the horror genre. An
example of some ways that I used Premier Elements was in clip timings such as scenes where my main actor was being followed.
For these scenes I continuously filmed him walking and being followed which came out to be a few minutes long on each take.
This obviously was too long for one scene in a trailer, so I used Elements to cut down the footage so that it was of a decent
length to show that my main actor was being followed and also to show the moving camera angles that I had researched into
(Peering around the tree). This process was fast to do but took some time to create the right lengths of the scenes to have the
full effect which was done by judgement and trial and error. Elements tool for cutting was very easy to use and made it as quick
as possible to do by making it possible to simply drag more of the clip open if you edited too much or too little of the clip. In my
opinion Elements helped me edit the clips down to a good size so that it was of a length appropriate of a trailer. I also used
Premier Elements to edit a few clips so they were more fast paced. The software has an easy to use tool that can make it so that
you can change the speeds of clips which is really simple to do. As well as that some scenes were filmed in poor lighting so the
shots appeared darker than I wanted but Elements had a drag and drop effect which changed the lighting of the scene that again
was very easy to use as all you had to do was drag and drop the desired effect onto the clip and then you could adjust the
brightness settings to compensate for the poor lighting of the scene. This feature also came with templates of certain types of
effects that you might want to add to scenes such as black and white. I did try these effects but thought that I would use the
original footage to maintain the realism of the footage.
Premier Elements was basic and good in all areas of editing a trailer, however it did have some downsides. It would make some
clips missing when you opened up the project which was very annoying as you would have to try find the original clip each time.
As well as that the clips would be very poor quality and would be very glitchy when trying to watch it at periods of time so you
would have to keep rendering the video which was very time consuming.
Overall the editing software was very useful and good at doing what I wanted to do to my trailer and it was very easy to use for a
first time user of that type of editing software. There are more advanced editing software but the cost of them were much more
so premier elements was very cost effective.

11. The main media technology that I used throughout
the research, development and final stages of my
trailer was YouTube. One of the main reasons for
my success is due to YouTube being a big help and
factor throughout. YouTube has become such a
huge popularity among youngsters and even adults
now a days that it is a very good resource to learn
new things and gather feedback. YouTube users can
like, dislike, comment and share videos via the site
that makes it a very good domain for feedback. It
also was good to help me learn new things and
research the horror genre.