Advancements in digital technology have changed the media landscape. New media relies on digital technologies and the convergence of previously separate media forms. Key examples include the internet, which allows for video and audio streaming, and the definition of new media continues to evolve as the technologies change. New media offers advantages like being a global platform that is easy to access from anywhere in the world, and it gives audiences more power through user-generated content. While search engines and new media tools provide benefits for research and production, they can also be frustrating to use if not specific enough or can lack certain information. Overall, new media is still developing and offers new opportunities for collaboration, information access, and democratic participation in media.

2. Advancements in digital technology have changed the media today. The media
in the past was primarily based on analogue and print broadcast models.
New Media now relies on digital technologies as previously separate media
converges. The most prominent example of media convergence is the internet
whereby the technology for video and audio streaming is evolving rapidly.

3. • New Media is a 21st Century term used to define all that is related to the
internet and the interplay between technology, images and sound. The
definition of it changes daily, and will continue to do so, as it evolves
continuously, and what it will be tomorrow is virtually unpredictable for
most of us.
• There has been a very big change in media nowadays from print products,
radio and the first televisions compared to the way it is now, and this is
due to new media technology.
• New media is a global development, therefore it can be accessed by
everyone and anyone from all around the world, therefore this makes it
much easier to get an audience as we are able to reach people to view our
work easier than before.

4. • New media is a developing forms of media, usually electronic, regarded as
being experimental. It also means mass communication using digital
technologies such as the Internet. Therefore it is mostly driven by user
generated content which gives the audience more power then they have
had on the past, so we represent ourselves as media students but also as a
production company on our blog.
• Thanks to new media, you can view your work from anywhere whether
that is from home, work, school or on-the-go, therefore this means our
blog is easily accessed from school our at home, so our work can be
shared onto the internet for everyone to see.

6. Advantages of Search Engines
• We found search engines were very useful when
conducting our research and planning. These advantages
include:
• Search engines are quick and easy to use. We used
Google, specifically images, when researching conventions
for film posters and magazine covers in the drama genre.
• We use search engines in our day-to-day lives which
means we are familiar to how they work. We have also
used them for previous projects.
• Conducting a Google search was extremely helpful when
looking up films within the drama genre that had
similarities to the plot we wanted our film to follow.
• This initial search then allowed us to use YouTube to
watch film trailers so that we could see what professional
film trailers include and use this knowledge when creating
our own.
• Search engines bring up a vast range of links for us to read
through. This meant that there were multiple sources
where we could gather information from. One website
that was particularly useful on a Google search was IMDb
as this provided us with plot overviews and film posters
for films in the drama genre. We were able to filter what
we wanted to search.

7. Search engines are very useful when doing our
research work, but can be very frustrating as the
search space is vast. Therefore if we aren’t specific
in the search tab, it can be very time consuming
trying to find what we want, and in the end we
might not even find it.
We found this happened a few times when trying
to find adoption-based film trailer examples. This is
because there aren’t many films as examples
therefore it was quite hard for us to get proof of
other trailers to help in ours. We found this a
particular problem when we were trying to find
drama films with the lot of a girl being taken. We
often ended up on sites about the film ‘Taken’
instead so we had to narrow our search terms.
Using Search Engines can have
disadvantages such as the growth of
wiki culture. Someone might give you
answers to questions you research but
their replies might be all nonsense and
websites need to be validated against
each other.

8. Another downside to Search Engines is
that when researching you can often
encounter pop ups which have to be
navigated and clicked out of several
times. This can become very annoying,
We found Google the most useful out of
all the search engines, but because it is
such a large search engine, it was very
hard to find specific information quickly.
Also, blogs hosted by Google were
plentiful but it was hard to distinguish
truth from opinion.
New media does not have all
the answers instantly to hand
– sheer volume of info is a
problem at times.

9. Finding Music
For our trailer we had to use copyright free music. We had to search for the music
ourselves and for this we used the site freeplay music.
To find the music you would
type in the type of, music you
are aiming to find. For example
we typed in sad drama music or
acoustic music.
Search results then bring up pieces
of music that the sight feels match
your search. This is helpful as then
all you need to do is listen to them
all and find the ones that you like.

10. Free Play Music Disadvantages
Not everyone is so careful about copyright – a
key consequence of new media’s sharing
capacity has been the rise of piracy as
copyright is so difficult to police and protect.
The disadvantages of using Free Play music
were:
• There was endless amounts of music to listen
through and a lot of them we didn’t like.
• Even if you wrote down the name of a track you
liked, it was very hard to find later on when it
came to placing the music into the trailer.
• Even when using the search bar, some music that
didn’t match your search would still be brought
up, so this wasted a lot of time.

11. Planning

12. Here we presented our
storyboard to our class mates
to receive audience feedback.
We made rough drawings of
shots on post it notes that we
wanted to include in our
trailer.
We drew a timeline using the three act
structure, so that it gave us a rough idea of how
long our trailer would be, and where we would
put each shot in each act.
Drawing the storyboard allowed
us to have more creativity, as
we felt more connected with
our paper drawings at this time.
Represents a mix of
old (drawings) and
new media (film) –
no reason why both
can’t be used.

13. An important step on from the
storyboard was putting images
taken from the original
sketches into FCE and editing it
rather as we would our actual
coursework.
This helped us to work out if
our dialogue timed well, if our
music choices worked, if we
needed transitions and so on
and above all helped us keep
our trailer running to time.

14. Presenting our Research and Planning
on Blogger

15. Presenting the Planning on Blogger
Shows the
number of
views we per
day, month
and overall
time.
This shows us where the views of
our blog are coming from. It
shows that we are getting views
from all around the world due to
how accessible our blog is.
This demonstrates the
sharing capacity of new
media and its global
potential.

16. We were able to view the
other blogs from various
groups in our school. We were
able to give feedback and they
were able to give us feedback
which allowed us to improve
and move forward
This is a prime example of new
media which is associated with
the establishing of creative
communities.

17. On Blogger we were able to combine text,
images and videos on each post therefore
it produced a creative range of work and
our formats looked much more eye
catching and we could always use a various
of range of formats.
By having images and text together
our work becomes more visually
appealing to the audience
Audiences don’t expect to read large
amounts of text online which is more
associated with ‘snacking’ behaviour.
This kind of technological
convergence is another
feature associated with new
media.

18. .
Using Blogger allows us to view each other’s progress.
After each change we made to our work, we took a
screenshot of it.
This gave us a before and after image to compare the
progress we were making.
The value of being able to see the progress we were
making allowed us to see how much more work we
needed to do. This meant that we could then focus on
what needed to be done.
It also helped as we could evaluate each others’ work
and provide constructive criticism to help each other
improve. This motivated the group to keep working
and pushing harder to make each product look better.
It was also another way of seeing what we could do to
improve and what needed to be done.

19. We planned on using new media such as social network sites as a way for the
audience to get in touch with the main actor but also be able to talk about their own
experience based on the main issues in our film which is identity issues around not
being aware of your birth parents until later in your life.
It also would have been used as a form of communication between the audience
themselves. This way they could discuss what they thought of the film as a whole but
could also talk about whether the trailer made the film seem better or worse than it
really was etc.
This would have been valuable because having an outside opinion on our work
could help us see if there is anything that may need tweaking or changing. It would
have also meant that we could learn from things we were doing wrong if they are
pointed out. This would be extremely useful as future products we produce would
be better as we would learn from our previous errors and mistakes but would also
then have knowledge of what our audience likes in our products.

20. New Media for
Construction

21. Photoshop
A lot of new media technology revolves around commercially available
digital packages and sites. Photoshop is not cheap and is therefore not a
good example of new media increasing democracy.

22. Manipulation of Images
This use of tools with new media is referred to by Manovich as a new kind
of creativity – a “creativity of selection”.
Tool bar gives
access to a
range of tools
for extracting,
moving,
resizing,
blurring, adding
colour, adding
shapes and text
etc.
Layers window
allows us to
name, move,
link, blend and
merge layers and
use different
channels

23. Magazine Cover
New media is creating new ways of thinking
– thinking in layers is one of them.
We extracted the image and the
shadow separately so they could go
behind and in front of the masthead
and add depth.
The text and other shapes and
images had to be layered on and
moved around to achieve an
attractive and authentic format and
layout.

24. The main manipulation here
was adding the smaller
images, working out where
to add a tear effect using a
combination of a rubber tool,
several layers of the same
image and some effects such
as glow and shadow and
placing these around the
main image.

25. Manipulating Images
On our magazine cover we decided to manipulate the original image for one of
our smaller images in preview by cropping it, decreasing the contrast and
adding a colder temperature to the whole image. There are a lot of
manipulations that can be carried out with software that comes as standard
before moving to expensive products like Photoshop.

26. Does the reliance on pre-packaged tools provided by new media
products reduce creativity? Or allow a wider range of people to be
creative?
We were able to add many
layers onto our original image –
text, further images, shapes and
so on. This allowed us to create
a professional looking product
despite the fact none of us are
particularly artistic.

27. Final Cut Express
• Final Cut Express is the software we used to edit our
trailer
• Problems we faced with it is that we did not have it
outside of school as the package costs a lot of
money, so we were limited with the amount of time
we could spend on our trailer

28. Trimming, Layering, Ordering
Key functions of digital editing
packages are to allow us to select
clips from our footage, trim them to
exactly what is needed, order them
in the desired sequence on the
timeline and layer them with other
images, audio, titles, other text etc.

29. A key benefit of digital editing over
older methods is the ability to
reverse decisions and return to the
source material which is unchanged.
This encourages more
experimentation and creativity
because changes made are not
permanent and can easily be
reversed.

30. Final Cut allows audio to be balanced by being able to layer, merge, adjust length,
speed tone of sound and also add various effects and filters to improve or change the
quality of the sound.

31.  The help section was used to solve
any problems that we had and
was user friendly
 There were lots of tutorials online
on websites such as YouTube to
help with some of our concerns or
to help us to become more
experienced
 Collaborative digital editing was
able occur as our individual pieces
could be transferred from
different computers
 The software had a large variety of
editing techniques that we could
experiment with
 The software was very expensive
so it could only be accessed at
home and we only use it at school
 Becoming familiar with the
software was time consuming
because there were a wide range
of tools
 Remembering to use the tick tool
when editing our pieces was
frustrating
 The software sometimes crashed
and work was lost

32. The new media technologies and their benefits allowed for
the evaluation of work to be made much easier

33. • Comments can be seen
and made by anyone
• Allowed us to receive
feedback on our
coursework products
through the comments
made on our blog
• Example of feedback come
from comments posted by
a professional trailer
producer.
• Comments were used as
an evaluative tool and for
collaborative creativity.

34. Label Function
As we were able to construct our own
reality / persona through the use of these
technologies, the labels then helped to
identify exactly what was our own to be
able to show this off.New media allows us to create
online identities
Labels allowed us to easily search for work on our blog. You can set the search
for the authors name and any key words through the search bar.
This was a great integration Blogger has as it
allows us to see what posts we have done and we
can compare our work to those in our group.

35. Allows choice of format:
Edited Presentation
Having edited presentations that placed
different drafts or cuts of our products
together was a useful tool just before
we gave our conferences on audience
feedback. It allowed us to look back on
some of our earliest ideas and actually
watch the slow transformation of our
coursework into the final product. This
was a good way of seeing how much of
our original storyboarding and sketches
remained and also seeing how changes
had taken place across time.

36. Allows choice of Format:
Power Point Presentation
Not all new media technologies
work efficiently 100% of time
• The use of PowerPoint
meant we could all
collaborate as a group at
the same time,
specialising in certain
aspects that we were
more knowledgeable on
so that the quality was at
a higher standard. We
shared this via google
docs, but had some initial
teething problems with
the formatting changing
and edits being saved.

37. • Presenting ideas around new media technology as an interview format
following the style of the 80s ‘talking Heads’ series allowed us to really
challenge ourselves on how we used this technology – we had to think of
every angle and come up with examples and individual ideas if we could. This
also encouraged us to focus more closely around the key concepts associated
with new media such as collaboration, interaction, democracy etc. rather
than focussing solely in the practical uses we made of the technology.
Allows choice of Format:
Court Room Drama

38. • Some of our evaluations were best presented as filmed presentations in
which we could all participate and add our views. As we had worked as a
group all through the process, it seemed sensible to continue to work in a
group in this phase of the coursework also. We were then able to edit the
presentations with illustrations of the points we were making and could all
watch it back to ensure we had covered all aspects and left no gaps.
Allows choice of Format:
Court Room Drama

39. Allows choice of Format:
Contact Sheet
The use of contact sheets
meant that we could gather a
range of images and show
things such as our thought
process, inspirations and also
key elements of our products
whilst commenting on them in
a post.
Without this it would be harder
to present quite sophisticated
concepts in a visual form.

40. Allows choice of Format:
YouTube Tutorial
This was a useful way of presenting
our ideas around how our products
complemented each other and
were able to achieve a distinctive
brand for the film. By giving a
tutorial, we were basically
explaining what worked for us. We
were also able to give the ideas a
wider context as most promo
campaigns have more products
involved than we could actually
make.

41. Summary
New media is invaluable for producing media projects. The key benefits are:
- Collaborative work and variety of available formats
- Sharing with a remote community
- Digital technology’s ability to make us all producers
- Availability of information.
Our question marks would be:
- Availability – how available is it really from a global perspective?
- Use – how many of us are really taking advantage of it?
- Creativity – can both enhance and limit this – you have to be careful to stay
creative
- In development – old technology still has a place and at times we found we
preferred making old-fashioned lists and sketching on paper.