3. WordPress
During the research stage we got a variety of feedback due to
the comments given to us by our target audience through our
blog which helped us to improve our documentary.
However research from the blog was very unreliable, there
were times where our blog yielded no feedback at all and we
had to get research through other means.
4. Digital Camera
Having digital cameras allowed us to film our audience while
giving us feedback which we could use as reference when
creating our improvements for the next draft.
Having video feedback is much more effective than written
feedback because this way we can see exactly what kind of
people liked what depending on their sex/age/etc.
However a problem with this method was that the battery
often ran out which delayed us in our work.
5. Digital editing
Before we started our main documentary we edited a quick
promo, and this allowed us to get our audience engaged and
interested in our documentary while also giving us ideas and
feedback that help us make decisions when creating the actual
documentary.
However we didn’t reveal a lot in our promo so the narrative
was very hard to understand if someone didn’t have previous
knowledge of the documentary which confused some members
of our audience.
6. Internet Websites
We used a variety of internet websites for research one of the
main websites that we used was Youtube which we used to
research and access resources such as real media texts which
we used to identify key conventions that would be suitable for
our documentary.
The good thing about this is the fact that people can comment
on these videos which tells us what people think of real media
texts.
7. Internet Websites
For our print advert we mainly used Google images to quickly
and effectively get a range of channel 4 documentary print
adverts on one pages which clearly shows the similarities and
codes and conventions that channel 4 uses for their
documentary print adverts.
However sometimes it was difficult to determine if the advert
was created by the institution or if it was created by a random
person.
8. Internet Websites
Youtube also helped us to gather audience feedback.
We made a Youtube account however we choose to upload our final
cut on a group member’s Youtube account as there were more
subscribers which would help it to reach a larger audience.
9. Internet Websites
Youtube also offers some tools that allows us to see who are audience
is and where they are coming from. This is very useful as it gives us
an idea of who we should aim our media products at.
10. Web 2.0
We used Wordpress, Facebook and Youtube to acquire feedback
from our target audience and opinions which helped us plan
our future decisions to create a successful media product.
12. Wordpress
Wordpress has helped us to organise our work
using suitable categories and this in turn made it
easier for us to evaluate our progress which
enabled us to stay on track and manage our time
effectively.
Wordpress also acted as an “agenda” where we
could create posts and within these posts we set
dates for important events which we could access
and remind us of these important dates reducing
the risks of missing any deadlines.
13. Mobile Phones
Mobile phones helped us keep to communicate without having us be in
the same room. This long range communication helped us plan events
such as filming dates and also discuss our plans and future action.
14. Macs/PC’s
Computer software such as
Skype also allowed us to
communicate with each other
when we were at home. This
long range communication
helped us plan events such as
filming dates and also discuss
our plans and future action.
We also used hotmail to send
emails usually with important
work attachments.
16. Ipads
Ipads helped us during the production stage as we could use
them as prompters. This was easily done as there was an app
that could do this and this made production much easier as our
actors were able to read the script without making many
mistakes.
However this also made our characters look like they were
reading of a scrip which didn’t make the documentary look
professional.
17. Digital editing
We edited the media product using a
variety of editing software including
iMovie, final cut pro and adobe premiere.
Using a Variety of software allowed us to
use a wide range of tools and experiment
with our video clips.
Certain editting software could do things
that another software couldn’t do.
18. Photo manipulation
We used Photoshop to create gaming style titles/name plates. To
give the documentary a gaming theme/look.
This was an effective way to reveal our characters as these titles are
also intersexual as the same designs are used within the game.
These titles are also symbolic as the victory colour (blue) represent
the supportive views of Karan’s decision and the defeat colour
(red) represent Mr. Baratheon’s counter views to Karan’s decision.
19. Photo manipulation
We also used Photoshop to create the print advert. We used
Photoshop as we all had prior experience using the software which
sped up the process of producing the print advert significantly and
reduced the chance of any problems appearing that we would have
encountered if we were new to Photoshop.
20. Voice recorder
We used voice recorders to record the audio for the radio advert we then
imported the audio file into garage band to edit the sound.
However we had never use garage band before which resulted in very bad
quality sound so we decided to re-record the voice over and edit in Sony
Vegas.
Sony Vegas has great tools that could reduce the static sound and remove
audio jumps which improved the sound quality significantly.
21. Internet Websites
We searched for tutorials and guides on Youtube to make the
product more professional.
22. Internet Websites
We used Dafont to find a suitable font that we could use in the
intro and name plates/titles.
This was a very time consuming process as there are so many fonts
to choose from.
We used Slideshare to embed power points into our blog as it was
the most effective way of publishing power points.
23. Digital Camera
We used digital cameras to shoot our main documentary. We
used to film with standard Sony camcorders which were very
easy to use however the quality was very poor.
so we switched to a DSLR which was very confusing to use at
the start however we learned as we went along and the quality
was much better.
And again there were some issues with battery life, we were
required to do regular checks prior to filming to make sure
battery life was sufficient.
25. Prezi
We used prezi to create an interactive and
engaging presentation to answer question 2 in our
evaluation This also provided a visual aid for our
audience as a voice over is narrating over the
prezi.
However we were all very new to prezi and it took
us a while to understand how to use it properly.
26. Ipads/Mobile phones
Ipads/mobile phones were used to gather feedback as we could
walk around showing passing students to take a look at our
documentary which we played directly from Youtube. This
helped us in question 3 as we were able to receive feedback
from a variety of people due to the fact that it was so
convenient.
27. Digital Camera
We used digital cameras to answer question 3. we thought that
this was a good idea as we already had previous feedback
videos and rough cut videos that we could include when
answering the question in video format
also another benefit would be the fact that its much faster and
more accurate to just show the footage rather than explaining
what feedback we got and what changes we made.
28. Digital Editting
We edited the voice over for question 1 in order to increase the
sound quality. (remove static, etc.)
We also edited the video that we used in question 3 using Sony
Vegas. This was the most convenient choice as we all had
windows operating systems so editing with software such as
iMovie was impossible as none of us had a Mac operating
system at home.
29. Apple Macs/PC
Having a computer allowed us to access software tools in order
to build a website and present our evaluation in a more
interactive way.
We used wix to create the website and this has allowed us to
organise all the videos and evaluation documents on one easily
accessible site.
30. Audio Recorder
We used an audio recorder to create a podcast when presenting
question 1 and to make it more interesting we also decided to
add images, etc. from our coursework to act as visual aids as
we narrate over the topics.
Adding images will clearly tell people what we are talking
about.
Having only the sound element in our question 1 answer could
be hard to understand as we identifying and describing which
codes and conventions we used/broke.
