Question 4

1. Question 4
How did you use media
technologies in the
construction and research,
planning and evaluation
stages?
By Josh Baugh

2. Throughout my media studies course, digital technology played an
important role when creating a magazine package at AS level;
containing a music magazine front cover, contents page and
article. It also helped me create a film package; including a film
trailer, magazine cover and poster.
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign was a main source of digital technology that we
used to create my magazine and poster.
I worked with the software to produce the whole layout for my
magazine cover, and poster; experimenting with sizes of fonts and
images using the re-size tool. And using the grid lock feature to
ensure that the text, main splash and mast head were all cantered –
making the whole thing look professional. This allowed me to
visualise my poster and insert any features into the correct place.
Question 4
By Josh Baugh

3. Photoshop CS6
Photoshop was also another piece of digital technology that was used
throughout my A2 production.
I used Photoshop to edit my main image of my film magazine cover. I
added various contrast corrections and sharpness enhancements to bring
out the details within the image. I also cropped around the image to create
a studio look to the image, following conventional features of film
magazines.
These techniques allowed me to achieve a more professional look to my
magazine, showing great development from the preliminary task.
I am very confident when using the software and like to experiment with
new ideas. For example: on my magazine cover, I decided to take two
photos of the main character in our movie trailer; one of her as the
character, showing the menacing make-up and battle scars. And the other
one showed her as an actor.
These photos were then manipulated to make it look as if my model was
wearing half of her make-up. The design itself was challenging to get the
pictures to match up neatly. But when done well, it looked really effective.
Question 4
By Josh Baugh

4. A third piece of software used throughout my A level media course was
Adobe Premiere Elements 12. This is a video-editing piece of software which
was used thoroughly throughout A2.
It was used to create the animatic, where we inserted individual images into
the timeline to make the storyline to our trailer. It also included elements of
sound, including a soundtrack and various diegetic sound effects such as
gun shots and thunder claps.
When creating the movie trailer we added in a number of similar diegetic
and non-diegetic sounds that enhanced the experience when viewing the
trailer. The trailer was more challenging to create but, with a group effort,
we managed to overcome the problems and adapt quickly to the new
software. And learn to meet deadlines as a team. From taking part in
creating the animatic beforehand, I had a lot better understanding of how
to create a professional looking movie trailer.
Adobe Premiere
Elements 12
Question 4
By Josh Baugh

5. Blogger is an online blogging system that was used to track our progress
throughout the course of the year. At A2, we used Blogger to show our
progression and development of ideas when producing our magazine and
poster. Posts consisted of research into real media text, primary research
such as questionnaires and even rough drafts of the pages themselves. I
found that blogger helped to keep track of my development of ideas. I
utilised it as a diary, so I knew what to do and when to do it. Blogger was
also used to get an insight of my other classmates’ work to see the kind of
ideas they were using. This benefitted me, as I got an idea of what I should
be producing.
Blogger also played an important role when we had to work in groups, and
Blogger was used to keep track of, not only my work, but my classmates’
work to ensure that we were all up-to-date on deadlines and group work.
This year, I have used Blogger to keep track of my work by posting what I did
in production lessons: for example we posted behind the scene shots of our
production to show my audience how things were done and to remind
myself for future preferences. I have been visiting my group’s pages to keep
up to date with our group work and share various ideas that is apparent
throughout our whole groups’ productions, such as the title of the film and
billing block.
Blogger
Question 4
By Josh Baugh

6. Question 4
Digital camera
The digital camera was the main source of technology needed to create
the products we did this year. It was used to create the animatic, the trailer,
and the photos for the magazine and poster.
We used one of our group members’ camera as she was confident that it
was a high performance piece of equipment and therefor gave us great
quality images and video quality.
We took the camera out with us on every individual shoot and used the tri-
pod which I had from home to keep the shots still and prevent any
unprofessional looking shots and videos.
When the clips were recorded and the photos were taken, we then
removed the SD card and inserted it into the computer in the media suite to
transfer the files and use them to create the trailer, poster and magazine.
By Josh Baugh