The document discusses the various planning, research, construction, and evaluation stages of a media coursework project. It describes using tools like Blogger, Microsoft Word, Adobe Fireworks, Prezi, Survey Monkey, Kwik Survey, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Adobe Photoshop, and Slideshare for planning storyboards, distributing questionnaires, researching genres and audiences, editing videos and sound, designing posters and magazines, and presenting evaluations. Reasons for choosing each tool include sharing work online, embedding media, transforming documents, conducting research, and creating interactive elements for readers.

1. Planning:

2. From the start of our A2 coursework I have used blogger to record the journey i have undertaken, from the planning and research stages of my coursework, right through to the production of my promotional package. Blogger is an efficient way to share media online, enabling you to organise your posts in a logical order which allows your work to be understood and followed easily. Furthermore Blogger uses technological convergence to bring together a myriad of media through which you can express your thoughts, opinions and knowledge. Examples of this would be to add images, video, slideshows and presentational work in your posts, which is made easy by the direct links to blogger from websites such as, youtube and slideshare.

3. During the planning stage for our film trailer, we needed to create a storyboard. To create our storyboard we chose to use the programme, ‘Microsoft word,’ due to being already installed on our computer, allowing us easy access. To create our storyboard we firstly created a 6x3 grid from which we added text and images. Once we had finished our storyboard we used print screen, enabling us to copy our storyboard into the software, ‘Adobe fireworks CS4,’ again this programme was already installed on our computer, allowing easy access. We used Adobe fireworks for our planning stage as it allowed us to save documents as an image file, so that would could share our work on blogger as an image. This was effective because we could then write about the image we had created in the same post.

4. Another way in which we could use documents on our blogger other than as an image file, was to transform our documents into an iPaper file, which is a rich document format similar to a PDF built for the web, allowing us to embed documents into a web page, such as blogger. Scribd is a Web 2.0 based document-sharing website which allowed us to exactly this. My reason for using Scribd to transform my documents into various formats, was so that I could keep my blogger fresh, allowing the users of my blog to actually interact with my work, causing them to process it more efficiently. Scribd is also free to use, and non-time consuming, making it a sensible website to use for the planning stage of my coursework.

5. Prezi is an ‘online zooming presentation editor,’ which allows you to transform normal spider diagrams into a dynamic, exciting presentation, with the additional perks of being able to upload videos and images. I decided to use Prezi for some of the spider diagrams we had created in the planning stages of our coursework, to once more, create something that the users of my blog can interact with. The users therefore will process the information more efficiently, than they would from looking at an image. Another reason for using Prezi in our coursework is because it is visually effective, as well as being another form of media included in my blogger. Prezi allows students to gain a free access to the uses of their website.

6. Research:

7. Last year for our As coursework we used a website known as ‘Survey Monkey’ to produce to questionnaires that we used for our audience research and feedback. However Survey Monkey had limitations when used freely. This put constraints on the depth of research we wanted in our questionnaires this year due to a limit on the number questions allowed per questionnaire. For this reason we found another website to produce our questionnaires on. ‘Kwik Survey,’ not only was free with no limitations, it also sorted our results into graphs online, and produced an embed code so that we could display the questionnaire we had produced on our blogger. We used ‘Kwik survey’ to produce both our audience research and feedback questionnaires for our A2 media coursework.

8. We used facebook to distribute our audience research and feedback questionnaires to our target audience. We were able to do this by creating a new email in which we included a link that sent our audience straight to our questionnaire. We both sent separate emails because we felt that we could possibly generate different results, due to having a range of different friends of different age groups in our contact list. This therefore would make our audience research and feedback results more reliable because the of size of our overall sample which was asked. Furthermore the use of facebook to distribute our questionnaires saved us a lot of time. Traditionally to distribute a questionnaire we would have to post it through peoples doors which would have been, very time consuming.

9. Google is the main source of all our research. Throughout our coursework we used Google to research into things such as, common media conventions, themes, genres, audiences, brand identity, symbiotic relationships, subliminal messaging, advertising, film trailers, film posters, film magazines ectr. More over Google has helped us discover all of the websites we have used from the planning stages, through to the production of our promotional packages. These are websites such as, Scribd, Prezi, slideshare, Kwik Survey ectr. Without the use of Google, my blogger and my promotional package would have half the success I feel I have achieved.

10. Youtube was extremely useful when it came to the research aspect for our film trailer. All existing official film trailers can be found on youtube with an included embed code, enabling us to upload them onto our blogger. Due to the varied material contained on youtube, we discovered it was extremely useful when used it to research into types sound tracks and sound effects which we could add to our film trailer, helping us to create tension, atmosphere and realism.

11. Construction:

12. Equipment

13. Last year to edit our opening scene for our A’s media coursework we used an editing software known as ‘Premiere Elements 7.0.’ We encountered some difficulties with this editing software, for example, it was extremely slow, and crash unexpectedly, deleting any unsaved changes. Another issue we had with Premiere Elements was its simplicity, although it was extremely easy to use, enabling us to edit our footage to a high standard without much difficulty, there was limitations to what you could do, for example, you were unable to edit sound as though it was footage. This year however, we had planned to edit our soundtrack, using specific parts to relate what was happening in our film trailer. Due to the problems which we encountered and the limitations of Premiere Elements we used an editing software known as ‘Magix Movie Edit Pro 17.’ This editing software was far more advanced, without being overly complicated, enabling us to edit our film trailer time effectively, with no limitations to what we could edit.

14. We used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to edit both the film poster and my film magazine front cover which we had to create for our promotional package. We mainly used Photoshop to make the imagery used in our film poster and my film magazine front cover more effective and relatable to the themes and genre of our film. For example in the film poster I added tears to the female characters face, reflecting the themes of pain which is associated with the tragic aspect of the hybrid genre for our film. Furthermore I added a tattoo the male actors arm, containing the name of our film underneath a love heart, roses and angel wings, reflecting themes of death and love, and again representing aspects of the hybrid genre for our film. I found Adobe Photoshop could be as complex or as easy as u made it, however with a lot of practise it become easier to use, and I was able to create better effects, as you can see from the results of the ancillary texts from my promotional package.

15. Evaluation:

16. Similarly to Scribd, Slideshare enables you to transform documents such as, power point presentations, into an iPaper file, which is a rich document format similar to a PDF built for the web, allowing us to embed documents into a web page, such as blogger. The difference between the two is that Slideshare is specifically for power point presentations. I have decided to use slideshare for part of my evaluation because I feel that it was important to use a range of media to create something that the users of my blog can interact with. The users therefore will process the information more efficiently, than they would from looking at an image or by writing an essay out onto my blog, making my evaluation boring.

17. For my evaluation I did use other media technologies, however only ones which I had already talked about in earlier slides. Other technologies I used for my evaluation were; Prezi, Microsoft Word, Adobe Fireworks CS4, Youtube ectr.