Jack Bricknell used various media technologies for researching, planning, constructing, and evaluating his media products. For research, he analyzed existing trailers on YouTube and Google to understand professional conventions. He analyzed the trailers for Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Underworld, and Planet Terror as inspiration. To construct his trailer and poster, he used Adobe Photoshop and Premier. In Premier, he edited clips together and added fading effects and synced the audio. In Photoshop, he cut out images, added text and effects like thresholds. To evaluate his work, he posted his trailer, rough cut, and feedback video on YouTube and displayed his products on his blog to get feedback from peers and

1. A2 MEDIA EVALUATION PART 3
How did you use media technologies in
the construction, research, planning and
evaluation stages?
By Jack Bricknell

2. How did you use new media for research
and planning?
Section A:
For my research and planning I had to look at a lot of existing media products such as trailers
and posters so that I could see how professionals lay out their work, this was useful because it
would help me find a conventional way to present my media products and also give me
inspiration for my products too. I mostly used YouTube and Google to find professional trailers,
posters and magazine covers to look at because they have a large variety of videos and
images. Imbd was also a very useful website to help me find out information about the trailers
I watched such as the year of production or the director of the film.
The three trailers I analysed were Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Underworld and Planet Terror. I
chose Tucker and Dale because it shared a lot of similarities to what I wanted my trailer to be
like because it included both gory horror and comedy elements, Planet Terror also had these
elements but with even more gore which was exactly as I would’ve wanted to make my
trailer, it also had a similar style. I chose underworld because the trailer featured a lot of
action and horror elements whilst still including good narrative which were also things I would
have included.

3. How did you use media technologies for
the construction of your products?
Section B:
For the construction of my media products I used the ‘Adobe Master Collection’ or more
specifically ‘Adobe Photoshop’ and ‘Adobe Premier’.
For my main product I mainly used ‘Adobe Premier’, I used several techniques to make the
finished trailer which included editing different clips together by cutting them with the ‘razor’
tool which was the primary technique I used because it was simple and effective to get the
basic layout for my trailer. Another technique I used was the ‘fading’ tool which allowed me
to fade out form one clip and fade into another, this effect was used a few times in the trailer
but not too much because it would loose its effect on the audience with repeated uses. The
last technique I used was with the audio/ music for the trailer for this I first had to find some
music that wasn’t copyrighted and then had to import it, the technique I used involved
getting clips in time with the music which would have created an emotional effect on the
audience. I also used the ‘fading tool to get the music to fade out as well.

4. Continued
For my poster I only used Photoshop but I used a wide variety of techniques within the
software which included importing photos and using the selection and magic wand tools to
cut out a particular piece of an image after doing this I also went around the edges of the
cut out image with the soft edged ‘eraser’ tool which gave it a smoother look. To edit the
image even further I went on to use the ‘Threshold’ option that can be found in one of the
drop down menus by doing this it converted the image to black and white and also gave it
that stencil effect. I went on further and edited the colour of the weapon to red which gave
it the effect so that it looked as if the character had killed with it. I also downloaded some
blood splat paintbrush effects which I scattered on to the characters knuckles and face to
increase the visual effect. For the text I used a website called dafont.com which had a large
selection of fonts up for download and used one for the main title, for the slogan I used one
of the default Photoshop fonts and cut pieces of it by using the blood splats in eraser form to
give it a crumbing/ worn effect.

5. Continued
For my magazine I also used Photoshop, for the main image I used the same effects as I did
with the poster except for changing the threshold. One other effect that I used on this main
image that I didn’t in the poster was where you can see the head overlapping the master
head, to do this I used the copy and cut options on the top of the images head and brought
the layer above the master head layer. For the master head I used the Same website for the
font and again for the ‘Butchered’ font used too. With the taglines I used a standard
Photoshop font and used the outer glow option in the blending options which gave it a
ghostly glowing effect. I then used the bloods splat option on the paintbrush tool to add the
blood splat behind the taglines so that it didn’t look so empty on one side of the cover.

6. How did you use media technologies to
evaluate your product?
Section C:
I have used several media technologies when evaluating my media products, the most
important one of these is my blog which has been used to display my work to the public,
class mates and tutor so that I can get feedback on my work for suggested improvements.
YouTube is another important Media Technology used to display my work to the public
however this was only used to upload videos to the internet including my trailer rough-cut
and finished version as well as the class feedback video. Email was also used to share group
work to the rest of my group through computers which was very useful for us all.
However because we aren’t well known to the rest of the world and we haven’t advertised
at all I haven’t had a great deal of views on my blog or videos which is unfortunate because
more opinions on my work may have been helpful.