The student used various media technologies at different stages of their soap opera project. During planning, they researched existing soaps like Hollyoaks on YouTube to analyze trailers and get ideas. They used Google to search for reference images and information. WordPress was used to create a blog to log work. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint were used to create documents, analyze surveys, and make presentations. Photoshop and Premiere Pro were used on iMacs to edit photos and construct the trailer. Cameras were used to film scenes and Nikon to take photos for the poster and magazine cover.

1. Evaluation Question 4
How did you use media technologies
in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation stage?

2. During the Pre- Production stages of our new soap
‘Langley Vale’, each member of the group
researched existing media products in order to give
us some ideas and motivation in what we wanted
our trailer and other media products to look like. I
decided to conduct research into the existing soap
opera ‘Hollyoaks’, mainly due to the fact I was
familiar to it as it is a soap it end to watch quite
regularly, and secondly due to the fact that the soap
is hugely successful.

3. I got most of my help from the Internet and websites such as YouTube. After
watching several existing ‘Hollyoaks’ trailers on ‘YouTube’, I was able to
analyse the key technical features used throughout a variety of trailers, these
include their use of sound, camera, editing and mise-en-scene. I did this on
the iMac. I also used YouTube to do more research around film trailers that
were already produced by other A2 Media students. Being able to look at
other media products from A2 students gave me guidance on what to do and
what to avoid repeating in my own project. Finally, I used YouTube to share
my trailer making it accessible to all and sundry to watch and YouTube offers
users the opportunity to leave comments which may be prove to be useful for
my trailer. Google was another useful search engine that I used while
undergoing my research, I used Google to search for photos of posters from
my genre, information about soaps, images of settings to help decide what
we wanted our setting to look like, etc. My phone was also available for
research. I used the Internet on my phone when we weren't near a computer
with Internet access and we if we needed to find out quick information to
help our media project. This was helpful when we were out filming on the
downs. E.g the right lyric of our song or reviewing previous emails.

4. Wordpress was an important step that was necessary for me to take, I
set up a blog that would enable me to log and keep track of our work
that I intended to produce for both my teacher and the examiners.
Setting up the blog page was quite straight-forward and simple. We
had the choice to choose any theme we desired. I chose the theme
that was simple and allowed me to insert my ‘Langley Vale’ logo,
making it look individual to me. The website permits anyone (mainly
my teacher) to leave feedback on my work I have put so far on the
blog. Being the type of theme it was, it offered a plethora of features
that I found to my advantage. Overall, the blogging site allowed me
easy navigation and accessibility through my blog. It also allowed me
to upload all forms of work with several forms of media. Through all of
this, the website didn’t prove to be difficult and enabled the
construction of my blog to be as effective and successful as it can be.

5. I used Microsoft Word for a range of things. Microsoft Word
incorporated features that allowed my overall research to be
presented in a professional way. For example I used it to type out my
prop list and other pre production recourses. I also used Microsoft
Word to construct my questionnaires and survey and provide analytical
and critical responses to them. Microsoft Excel was instrumental in my
research. Any written results accumulated from surveys and
questionnaires were converted to quantitative data in the forms of
graphs and pie charts on the software. I feel Excel is the best program
for things like this as the program is designed to organise and handle
data helping to simplify things for my use. Microsoft PowerPoint was
the most utilized of all the software as I made presentations on there
to convert onto Slideshare. This allowed me to upload them to my blog
page. Its simple features meant adding images and a text effect to
create a more professional look was simple.

6. We used IMac’s to carry out research and
planning but also to construct all of our
products. These had Photoshop and Premiere
Pro on them, which helped produce professional
looking work to industry standard. The IMac also
enabled us to surf the web during research and
planning – helping us find out more about Soap
operas and examples of posters and magazines.

7. I used the Nikon to capture the shots for my film trailer in order to
construct it. I took as many shots as I could so that I had a variety of
clips to choose from when editing my film trailer together. I also used
this camera to capture the pictures used on the poster and the
magazine front cover. We used multiple cameras because it meant
that we had the ability to film the action from many angles which was
important in achieving continuity in the trailer. This was evident when
filming the milkman scene where we used around 5 different cameras
to capture the different angles. Therefore when editing post
production we could easily achieve seamless continuity editing.

8. At AS Level we used Photoshop CC5, compared to A2 were we used
Photoshop CS6. Everything was slightly tweaked, from the redesigned icons
(the Pen and Lasso tools now indicate their active hotspots more clearly) to a
crisper, more consistent layout. This at first was confusing but overall it
actually made the ease of using Photoshop even simpler. Photoshop was key
in the production of my poster and Magazine front cover. The main
advantages of Adobe Photoshop are the side bar tools I used to edit
photographs. One of the tools I mainly used was spot healing brush tool,
which helps to clear blemishes from the use of clear regions of the
photograph and I used this to take away any imperfections. This was
especially essential on the protagonists on the front cover. By using this tool I
was able to create an airbrushed effect just like what is seen on magazines
like ‘What’s on TV’. The software has everything from fonts to lighting effects,
although we did not use Photoshop for its font instead we used DaFont, this
software was also very useful to us as this program has a large veritably of
effects allowing you to do everything from photo-manipulation to creating
amazing visuals effects.

9. In order to create the final trailer me and my team uses Adobe
Premiere Pro. After importing my media there were several ways to
create a new sequence to get started. You could either right click on
any piece of footage and choose “New Sequence from Clip” and Adobe
Premiere Pro will automatically build a sequence optimised for the
media. Alternatively, I could drop a clip into the empty timeline and
Adobe Premiere Pro will make the best match for the footage.
To make this process quick we used folders, also known as “bins”, to
organise footage so we could easily find the clips relating to that scene.
We then used in (I) and out (O) points to place the clips we desired to
use into the correct place onto the timeline, which allowed us to speed
up the process whilst still retaining a professional standard. Using the
Ripple Edit (B) tool enabled me to ensure continuity was present from
one shot to the next when editing the trailer.

10. For the evaluation I made the decision to use many online
presentation software’s as it meant that I could then embed
them to the blog. To do this I wrote the initial draft on
Word. Once this was completed I transferred it to
PowerPoint and and then added screenshots ready for
uploading to the final media. In the production of my unit
G324 Advanced Production Portfolio I have been able to use
different technologies to my advantages to create different
media products, which are effective and appropriate