A2 Media Studies Evaluation Question

2. MAIN MEDIA TECHNOLOGY
The way in which I broadcasted the whole of A Level
Media Studies coursework, not just the research and
planning, was through Blogger.
The reason I used Blogger as it was an easy for me to
update day to day, using Blogger as a digital diary.
As well as this, I was able to show the journey of how I
researched real media texts, planned my own main task and ancillary
texts, all the way to the construction in which we created our products. It
was also easy for myself to keep track of my progress throughout the
course.
In addition, Blogger made it possible and straight forward for myself, to
embed images and other means of media technologies in which I
showcased my research and planning (all of which will be included in the
presentation.)

3. PLANNING AND RESEARCH
I used a range of media
technologies for my planning
and research including a
presentation software called
Prezi. This allowed me to
present my research of TV news
programmes in a creative and
interesting way, rather than just
using Microsoft PowerPoint
slides the whole way throughout.
Another presentation
software which I used was
Slide Share.
This allowed me to embed
all my Power Point slides in
one presentation, rather
than individual slides.
To research a range of local and national TV news programmes, I used the internet
and the website, Youtube. Thiss website in particular let me view a wide range of
TV
news programmes, for example ITV Central, Newsround etc…
From this, I was able to gain a wide spectrum of knowledge on TV news
programmes, and I could then narrow it down to just local TV news.
I didn’t just have to use computers for this research as I also installed the Youtube
app on my phone. By downloading this, I go watch and research TV news
programmes on the go, by using my 3G internet.

4. PLANNING AND RESEARCH
I then used Survey Monkey. This let other people I didn’t
hand out the form to, to answer my questionnaire. I felt that
this media technology is very beneficial environmentally
wise, as it would save considerable amounts of paper,
especially if I wanted to reach out to a mass amount of
people. It also allowed me to gain some audience
information, outside of the school as people from home are
able to fill out this questionnaire, as well as people that I
don’t know.
I used Microsoft Word to create my questionnaire out
in which I gave out to my vertical tutor group and also
subject teachers. Using this media technology
allowed me to easily write out my chosen questions,
print it out and hand it to the people filling out them
out. When I received them back, I was able to read
the answers and specify whom my target audience
were.

5. PLANNING AND RESEARCH
I obtained images of people filling out my questionnaires
for evidence. Instead of just uploading them images
straight onto Blogger, I decided to download an app called
Flipagram onto my iPhone. This app allowed to create a
video which contained all the images I took, as well as
adding background music, providing a more interesting
and creative way to display my images.
After accumulating the answers from my questionnaire, I
used Microsoft Excel to put down the data for each
question.
I then turned this data from written answers and circles
into bar charts and pie charts. This provided a more
readable and understandable format for my data to be,
rather than stay in the same confusing format. From this,
it let me compare responses with ease and notice any
patterns.

6. PLANNING AND RESEARCH
Videoed responses were another media technology which I
used for a part of my audience research. This allowed me to
get my fellow peers opinions on local TV news
programmes, focusing on that my age group.
In addition, my A2 class received a response from Bob Hall,
a presenter on The Midlander. This video made it easier for
the class to understand the responses which Bob
explained. We were also able to see again, what a real
news studio looks like.
As I wanted to find out ideas of soft and hard
stories, I thought using social media, especially
Twitter, and viewing local TV news accounts
would be a good idea. With ease, I was able to
grab concepts of different types of stories
which these TV news programmes have used.
This gave me to some ideas to use for my own
news stories.

7. CONSTRUCTION
For the construction of my local TV news logo, I used Photoshop. This
software had tools which I was able to use. For example, I used the text
tool to write each initial of my acronym on different layers. This software
also allowed me to import an image of a train from the internet and
create in to my idea of a silhouette, by using the magic wand tool. The
end quality of my logo looked professional and that of a real media
product.
For recording I used the Canon DV Digital Video Camera
Camcorder and for taking images I used the Nikon Digital SLR
camera. The reason for using these media technologies is
because they both produce high quality images, of which would
look suitable for a professional TV news programme.
With these media technologies, I was able to also zoom in on
certain things, in order to pinpoint that they are important in the
story. In addition, I was able to zoom in and out with ease, so that
my local TV news programme wasn’t just boring and lifeless still
images.
I used a boom mic to get high quality
sound during the recording of my news
studio and also for the recording of my
radio trailer. This ensure the sound was
that of a real media product.
I used a green screen in order to allow
for the weather update to have high
quality images as the background; as
seen in real media products. The editing
of this stage was done by using the
Mass Chroma Key tool which is featured
on the CoralX8 software.

8. CONSTRUCTION
I used CoralX8 for the construction of my main task and two
ancillary texts, making it the most prominent media
technology that I used throughout the course.
When I first started of using this software I found it quite
difficult as I wasn’t sure how to do certain tasks. However, as
time went by, I got to grips with this industry standard
software. I felt so comfortable in using this software that I
used it for all three tasks. With ease I was able to edit, crop
and merge images, videos and audio together; which I found
useful, especially in order to out take mistakes. There was
also a range of effects, fonts, colours and transitions which
were suitable for a TV news programme. I was able to use
this in order to make my media product look as authentic as
possible.
When I finished each task I then easily rendered it as a video
and was able to put up onto Youtube then to my Blogger.

9. EVALUATION
For my evaluation question 1, I used Windows Movie Maker 10 in order to
showcase how my media product uses, develops, or challenges forms and
conventions of real media products. I thought that this software would be the
best to do so, as I was able to include images in the video. This allowed me
to speak on top of the images, explaining the similarities between real media
products and my own. It was a create way of comparing between them.
I used Emaze, which is an online presentation software. I answered
question 2 using this media technology as I had plenty of room to explain
the effectiveness of my combination of the main task and ancillary texts,
instead of just writing it down on paper or Microsoft Word; which would
have been quite basic and less sleek.
For my third question, I decided to straight off
record myself using the Cannon Digital recorder,
and then upload it to Youtube. This allowed me to
explain what I learned from my audience feedback
and what I done in response to that feedback.