Danielle Ferrier used various media technologies throughout the stages of her documentary project. During research, she watched other documentaries for inspiration and used the internet to research appropriate institutions and narratives. For filming, she used a Panasonic camcorder to record interviews. During editing, she used Premiere Pro on her MacBook Pro and VLC media player to organize footage. She uploaded clips to Vimeo and images to Imgur to include in her blog. She also used tools like Voki and SlideShare to engage readers of her blog evaluation.

1. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES IN THE
CONSTRUCTION AND
RESEARCH, PLANNING
AND EVALUATION STAGES?
Danielle Ferrier

2.  The main use of technology throughout this project would be that the
majority of the work is completed on a MacBook Pro. In the previous year
we had used the MacBook Computers so it was slightly different having to
edit our work using a laptop. The MacBook Pro had all the same programs
such as Premiere Pro, which I was familiar with due to the previous media
projects. However the way in which we had to handle our footage was
slightly different, we had to use VLC which is an open source media player
to view our clips and rename them, this was to narrow the chances of any
further issues with our footage.

3.  When researching for the idea of my documentary technology was used
such as the Internet and other documentaries. After watching Nick
Broomfield’s ‘The selling of a serial killer’ and Andrew Jarecki’s ‘Capturing
the Friedman’s’ they gave me a lot of ideas for creating my own
documentary. The video diary effect within ‘Capturing the Friedman’s’ was
highly influential to me and can be seen within my documentary. The
Internet had helped with research on other areas such as which institution
my documentary would most likely be shown in or other documentaries that
followed the same type of narrative.

4.  For the filming I used a Panasonic camcorder, although the technology of
this model is more advanced and improved than our old cameras it wasn’t
too difficult to realize how it had to be used. I checked reviews based on the
camcorder I was using to see whether there were any comments on how it
picked up sound, the reasoning for this was that I didn’t want to use an
actual sound recorder to be less intrusive when interviewing people.
However the camera was perfectly fine at picking up sound which wasn’t
really much difference to the Zoom Sound Recorder.

5.  During this project I have also used a lot more media within my blog such
as integrating YouTube clips, pictures and pie charts. Except from using clips
from YouTube I created my own account on Vimeo, this allows you to
upload clips, which you can then use the URL for so that it appears on your
blog. The only time I used this is when I created a sub clip from my footage,
which was my own opinion on my documentary so I wanted to transfer it
onto my blog. For uploading images onto my blog I also used Imgur, this is
also a website which allows you to edit images and change the size
dimensions, yet again you use the URL given to you in order for it to show
up on your blog.

6.  I’ve also recently used Voki which is a cartoon video that allows you to
type and a virtual character will speak what you have typed, I felt this would
be a less boring way of presenting shorter posts. SlideShare Is another
website I’ve used in order to present my evaluation questions within my blog.
I didn’t have many issues when it came to editing the footage as I feel I
already had quite a bit of knowledge on this particular aspect. However I did
learn a new way in which you can cut clips which is by using Markers. Simply
whilst watching of the recorded clips you click the ‘Mark In’ button on
where you would like the beginning to be and ‘Mark Out’ at the end. Then
like a normal clip you drag it into the video section and carry on editing as
normal.