- Media technologies were vital for research, planning, construction, and evaluation of tasks related to horror genre conventions. DVDs, projectors, and websites like IMBD were used for research and analysis of key films. - Microsoft programs like Word, PowerPoint, and Publisher supported planning, organizing work, and presenting evaluations. Photoshop and cameras were used to construct photos and edit ancillary products. - Adobe Premiere was instrumental in constructing the main task trailer, allowing editing of footage, sound, effects, and transitions. Flickr and PowerPoint facilitated evaluation by annotating work and presenting analyses visually.

1. How did you use media technologies for the construction, planning, research and
evaluation stages?
Media technologies have been a vital part in the execution of my main task and ancillary
products. Many different platforms of media have allowed me to progress my work
ability and enhance my production of each task. I understood that by using a myriad of
advanced technology would allow me to present my work in detail with accuracy and
better presentation.

2. Before we could start any of our main products we had to make sure we were
knowledgeable on the themes and conventions of the horror genre. Research
became a very important process for our workload; we needed to make sure
that we understood not only about horror but also about different auteurs and
theories. DVD players became vital for allowing us to watch and analyze a
variety of different horror films, alongside educational DVD‟s about the
production and development of horror itself. The class projector was also used
on numerous occasions so that we could talk and discuss as a class about our
thoughts and opinions on key horror films. We were able to view films such a
Psycho, and Dawn of the Dead that are both vital for our knowledge that
needed to be known in the exam and the coursework and therefor this helped
significantly to allow us all to watch the films together and talk about the
horror conventions within them.

3. Microsoft programs allowed us to focus our attention on generic horror
conventions. Microsoft Word helped us type up our research and to plan for
future events. Microsoft Word became extremely important within the
planning stage of our main task, as we needed it to write essays on particular
films. An example of this is when I made a spider diagram on Microsoft Word
with different tangents of what could occur in individual scenes. Word has also
been very important for our evaluation stage, it has enabled me to express my
views and ideas about each question, and allowed me to type it up before
putting it onto Microsoft PowerPoint.

4. IMBD.com was another vital tool. It allowed me to research with detail about
different horror films. This site allowed me to have accuracy that is vital when
researching into particular people such as cast members or the backstage crew
from particular horror films. IMBD was one of the easiest sites to use and made
my information more precise. Again this helped me understand the work of
Hitchcock more and also about his film „Psycho‟.
YouTube has been the key search engine for looking up and analyzing horror
films. YouTube is filled with very influential and inspirational trailers that
uphold a variety of different techniques. Not only have we used YouTube to
look into other trailers, we have also uploaded our various cuts onto YouTube
(Rough, Evaluation, Final) so we could see the progress of our editing.

5. Throughout all the stages from the planning all the way through to the
evaluation stage Blogger has had a massive input onto my work. Blogger is
used to represent all of my work, and to upload all of the relevant work that I
have produced. Blogger allowed me to organize y work into each section of
progress. Blogger also allowed other people to view my work and leave
feedback, alongside making the communication between my teacher and
myself easier. (He could access my blog at any time to see if I was on the right
track.)
Throughout the planning stages I really needed to organize myself so that my
work was easy to read and was in a very structured way. I used Microsoft
Publisher to structure my shot list and then uploaded it to Blogger so it could
always be referred to by The Demented filming group.

6. Throughout the construction stage of the production of my main task I was
very hands on with using digital media such as a hand held digital camera or a
video camera both needing SD cards to then transfer information over to the
computers. Without these forms of technology then the actual trailer and
photos could not have been produced and therefore are an important part of
how things were executed. We also had to take the photos in the college‟s
media studio with three different light sources that could be manipulated to
create the correct low-key or back lighting required to create a horror
atmosphere. Using these lights I was able to adjust the shine onto a particular
part in the scene (either the demented girls face, or a key object) you can see
this in my own work (poster) as the doll has a tad more lighting on it compared
to other objects in the scene. The construction of my magazine and poster
would not have looked so professional without the lighting and camera
facilities that were available to us.

7. For the construction of my ancillary tasks I needed to use Photoshop to edit
and manipulate the photos to show how I wanted them to be presented.
Photoshop was used heavily throughout as I wanted my work to be edited in a
professional way. Photoshop allowed me to do things that other media
technologies could not such as darken my images, add writing to symbolize
different meanings and to also make the photos exactly how I wanted them to
look like. I darkened the images by playing with the brightness and contrast,
meaning I was able to manipulate the work to the level in which I believed
worked better to create a more conventional horror feel.

8. DaFont.com provided the next key stage. This website allowed me to find a
font under the „horror‟ section that was different and suited my main product
better than the normal fonts on Photoshop. Photoshop allowed me to add
multiple layers and therefore I could edit my work many times until I was
happy with the final product. Photoshop had a myriad of tools that helped to
edit my particular work e.g., different blending options, drop shadows, stroke,
glow, gradient effects, contrast, brightness, image adjustments, color balance,
vibrancy, filler effects. All of the above factors contribute to the professional
depiction of my ancillary products.

9. Adobe Premiere was used consistently throughout the construction stage of my main
product. It allowed me opportunities to import all of my shots and edit them onto the
timeline. The use of the cut tool on Adobe Premiere allowed us to determine the length of
each shot, alongside cut things out from the clip that we did not feel necessary to be
included in. We decided to use this when figuring out where to place particular parts in
our trailer. In our first attempt at creating our trailer this tool was used on many
occasions. We used it on the part where Frankie was being dragged backwards as the
shot was too long and didn‟t have the same affect as a shorter clip. Premiere allowed us
to have multiple sound tracks, meaning we could emerge multiple tracks together to
create a sequence of music that was appropriate for our style. We used music being
emerged together throughout our entire trailer to get different sounds mixed together.
This was a good way for use to build tension throughout as we could also decide on
what particular music was the most dominant part and adjust the levels for speech and
different variations of music. We were also able to put footage over other footage that
worked perfectly for our horror genre, as we were able to blend the footage and make it
creepy and give it a very ghostly unnerving feeling. Premiere also allowed me to add
effects onto my existing video. We could make it darker and give it a low-key lighting
feeling by playing around with the brightness and contrast (found under “color
correction”). This can be seen when the „demented girl‟ is on the swing because we had
to edit the moving image to create a more darkened and mysterious scene.

10. Overall, Premiere offered us many key aspects that helped with the success of
our trailer. The pen tool allowed us to do different transitions, such as dip to
black and fades. Audio affects were very important for making our trailer seem
more professional. “Denoiser” helped to remove unneeded crackling sounds
and adjust the volume of each soundtrack that we have. We used this in our
jump scare scene as we had an unneeded crackling noise. Clearly, Adobe
Premiere was vital for the development of our main task, it allowed us to use
industry standard equipment and arrange our clips to create our official trailer.

11. When it came to the evaluation stage, Flickr allowed us to annotate our work in
a more professional and “new media” way than Microsoft Word. It allows us
to hover over particular photos and a caption/summary to appear of what our
reasons were for adding this particular horror convention. I used this to
evaluate my own work to a higher level, especially when analyzing my main
tasks and ancillary products. Flickr was also interesting when researching into
other people‟s work as it made it easier for us to read the relevant parts. Flickr
was helpful at picking out the „quality‟ rather than the „quantity‟ aspect of our
work. In my own work I was able to see that key words were more important
to categorize things than long and complex sentences.
To finally present our media evaluations we had to use Microsoft PowerPoint.
PowerPoint allowed us to present our work more visually and helped to
separate each task into sections with detailed examples. I used PowerPoint in
my evaluation to separate paragraphs and add in photos.