Evaluation Question 4 How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

For the research stage of our project we used technologies such as the internet to help us gain an understanding of postmodernism. Posted presentations from out teacher onto the site ‘Moodle’ prompted us in our research and gave examples of the theories we were to look into. Using Moodle I could access from home material presented to us in class. Our media blogs enabled us to post our work and get feedback from our teacher and allowed other members of our group to view our work. By communicating with other members of our group we could compare and share knowledge and information we’d found out. It also is an easy was to access other group members work as well as look back on your own and check there is nothing missing or anything to improve on. When posting a piece of work on the blog you had to give it a title and category, this made it easy to order my work and when looking back over it I can refine my search by choosing a category.

Powerpoint made it really easy for me to present my research and ideas which could then be posted easily onto my blog. I chose to do all my presentations for this project on Powerpoint so that on my blog everything looked uniform and concise. On Powerpoint I was able to add images to illustrate my writing and could add in links to Youtube clips etc. I decided I wanted to use Powerpoint over Prezzi as I thought this was a simpler way to make the same impact on the reader and that it was more focused on the content rather than aesthetics. On my computer I could see a preview of the Powerpoint I’d just made which I would screen shot and post on my blog with a download link and brief description. I thought by doing this my blog looked more interesting as well as giving the reader an idea of the presentation they are about to open.

Youtube helped me a lot when researching film trailers as I was able to pause, rewind and take screenshots from the clip which I could use to illustrate my presentations researching film trailers etc. because of the vast library of film clips and trailers on Youtube I wasn’t limited in any way and was able not only to research films I already knew about, but find out about films I hadn’t heard of before. When searching for a specific scene Youtube is really helpful as you can write a brief description of the scene you want and it is likely to have it. Eg: ‘Pulp Fiction car scene’ makes it easy to find the exact clip from the film to illustrate your point on your presentation.

For the production stage of our project we used hardware as well as software; we used a Canon EOS 600D to capture our footage, this allowed us to film a high quality picture that we could later edit and manipulate on the Adobe Premiere editing software. The camera allowed us to manually alter the exposure of shots as well as the focus which was important for getting each shot looking crisp and uniform. Once uploading our footage onto the Macs in the edit suit we could label each clip so that we knew which ones we were defiantly going to use and which ones were least effective. By doing this we could then delete all the clips labeled red and upload all the green. We kept any which were labeled orange incase we needed them later on in the editing stage.

Adobe Premiere enabled us to order out footage how we wanted and add visual and sound effects which enhanced the atmosphere of a certain scene. This program was key in the making of our film as it made the footage flow together and enabled us to get the aesthetic of each shot just right. In this screen shot you can see us experimenting with the colouring of a shot; one of the key things we were able to do on Premiere was create the hallucinogenic effect which was an important aspect of the editing stage as we wanted to create visual effects that would replicate the character’s drugged mind. We could also upload a narration we had recorded onto our edit which made the trailer really come together and feel less like a music video which was one of the criticisms we got as many of the edits were in time with the soundtrack. The narrative gave the trailer some context and hinted towards the storyline. We could edit the narration in the same was as we’d edited the footage; cutting it up and ordering it how we wanted and even altering the tone so that the voice sounded lower and more serious.

Using Photoshop we could create graphics which would be used in our trailer to promote a production company we created, using a very simple design I was able to combine text and a shape which has a very authentic and professional look to it. Once the design has been saved as a jpeg we could then upload it onto Premiere and position it where we wanted. we also used the program to create our ancillary products (the posters and magazine cover). The program was especially useful when creating the magazine cover as I could work on each layer one at a time to build up the final design. Photoshop enabled me to edit text and image who I wanted and I think the final outcome reflects the mood of our film well and would draw in the magazine’s readership.

When doing research into fonts for our trailers titles we went onto the free font download site Dafont. The website allowed us to search through a wide rage of different fonts which we would be able to then download onto the computer and use in the same way we could use any of the preloaded fonts. To find suitable fonts which would reflect the nature of our trailer we searched on the website putting words such as ‘dramatic’, ‘scratched’ and ‘distorted’ into the search panel. Once we’d chosen our font we used it for both the titles of our trailer and for our ancillary film posters. Because the font we used is very original we thought by using it for both it would be easy for the audience to make the connection between the two products.

The music sharing website Soundcloud enabled us to search for royalty free music which we could download and use as the soundtrack for our trailer. On Soundcloud we were able to search for the type of music we wanted and listen to different tracks made by Soundcloud users, the tracks were posted directly by the user and would often have a lot of useful information along side the track. You could filter your search according to your intentions, because we wanted to use the track commercially we had to make sure we found a track that wasn’t under any copyright. Before we started listening to any tracks se made sure all the results of our search were under the ‘to use commercially’ filter. Once you download a track from Soundcloud it goes straight onto your computer and we were able to use the track as soon as we found the right one.