1. Q4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Alice Fuller 202C

2. Initial Research New media technologies were hugely important throughout all the stages of this project from research right the way through to evaluation. The internet, in particular Google search was essential for my initial research into the post-apocalyptic genre. I was able to find information from general information sites, blogs, videos and many other sources. However it was important to remember that not all information would be factually correct so I also read a variety of articles to gain a further understanding.

3. Information Websites Wikipedia is an interesting example here. Whilst it is useful for reference the factual truth of the information displayed on Wikipedia is not always correct. As a student I had to be careful with the variety of academic and commercial websites I used to gain information. There is an ongoing debate about these different types of websites for gaining information.

4. Presentation The presentation of my research also used new media technologies like PowerPoint and even the blog that we presented all of our work on. Both enabled us to include photos, videos and text making presentation more engaging and easier to understand due to visual illustrations.

5. Communication The blog was also useful for communication within our group. I kept a log of all of our group meetings stating who was present, what we discussed and what we all needed to complete before our next group meeting. If a group member was not present for any reason they had this log to ensure they kept up-to-date. This helped with our organisation. I also photographed the various brainstorms and ideas we had each lesson which helped when writing up other blog posts. This meant me using a digital camera as well. Our blog includes posts with videos attached from YouTube helped us to find other apocalyptic film trailers to draw inspiration from for our own in the research stages as well post-production.

6. For example as you can see here only three members of the group were present on this date so I recorded what was completed and discussed that lesson in order for everyone to be up to date for the next lesson. Communication

7. Equipment and Programmes Of course during production we had equipment such as digital cameras and advanced sound and recording equipment. This allowed a more professional final media product. This was also the case for our post-production. Adobe Premiere and Soundbooth were both very important in creating our final trailer as they were our editing software. More advanced than Windows Movie Maker which I had used in the past, Adobe Premiere allowed for more intricate changes to be made such as when editing the countdown section of our trailer. This part needed a lot of attention as it was a key feature and this programme meant we could add flashes of light and make exciting titles. Soundbooth was where we got some of our sound effects like the heartbeat sounds and the radio tuning we added in between news reports and some other shots.

8. Post-Production Another part of the trailer which Adobe Premiere was very useful for was when we put together our found clips from YouTube and integrated them in-between shots of our scientist in the lab whilst the news reporters provided the soundtrack. We had to edit the clips down, remove their original sound and combine them. This was all possible due to new media technologies like the programme we were using. We also edited the colours so the blue of the liquid in this first shot matched the blue- green colours in the second.

9. Soundtrack New media technologies and web 2.0 were extremely helpful when searching for copyright free music to include in our trailer. I had to search on new websites where people had shared their music for free download, without the issue of copyright. I found the music for our trailer on incompetech.com, soundcloud.com and soundjay.com. Without the use of these websites it would have been difficult. Below are three examples of the music or sound effects we used (click to play).

10. Titles We wanted a more unusual font for the title than what came already installed on Adobe Premiere for our film so we went on dafont.com which features thousands of different fonts. We were looking for one which fitted with our genre. Once we found the appropriate one we downloaded it and installed it into Adobe Premiere. We did the same for our ancillary products: our film posters and magazine front covers.

11. Ancillary Products Brand image

12. Poster and Magazine To construct my film poster and magazine front cover I used Adobe Photoshop CS3. Although I was fairly familiar with this programme from editing photos in my photography lessons it was quite new to me making a magazine front cover using text and a large number of layers. However this programme enabled me to create a much more professional looking magazine front cover than a less complex programme like Publisher or Paint would have. I used tools such as the dodging tool to make some areas lighter and the burning tool to make other areas darker. For example I made Megan’s eye area darker to appear more mysterious and so she looked like her character; living through an apocalypse. I used the burning tool to make the brick wall behind Megan darker on my magazine front cover as well.

13. Social Networking Sites In order to gain audience feedback and to present our final trailer we used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We also included these websites in our promotion package and distribution plan. We even created our own fan pages:

14. Social Networking Sites

15. Without new media technologies this would not be possible and audiences would not be able to interact with each other as well as us about our film. It also allows for vast viral marketing campaigns which create a buzz and excitement about a film generating word of mouth therefore widening potential audiences. They also helped with audience feedback as we received comments from members of our Facebook and Twitter pages. People were also taking advantage of the “like” feature on Facebook and sharing our page which helped gain a wider range of feedback Social Networking Sites

16. Evaluation I have also used new media technologies for my evaluation work. This has included PowerPoint, Windows Live Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere and YouTube. I have recorded audio clips using the equipment in the edit suite as well as my iPhone. All of these media technologies allow for visual and audio analysis and evaluation and have made it easier for me demonstrate how and I have constructed my products and why.