Evaluation Question 4 draft

Evaluation Question 4

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

Discuss benefits and difficulties, how they helped to produce better work. Focus on planning, production and evaluation

Blogger

I used blogger to post all my planning, construction and evaluation work throughout the making of my trailer. The benefits of using Blogger were that I could regularly update my work and have it all in one place where I could edit my work and at the same time my teacher could look at my blog and see what work I am doing and if I’m keeping up to date with all my work. I also did not have to worry about losing documents if they are on blogger because they are all published on the internet. The Difficulties with using blogger are that once you make a post you cannot re-organise your posts therefore everything has to be posted in the correct order.

Prezi

I used Prezi to make a presentation on film industry, an analysis on the exorcist website and poster, representation in our trailer, equipment list for filming and to write my evaluation question 1. The benefits of using Prezi are that it is a good way to make text heavy presentations whilst still including photos and videos. One of the difficulties with using Prezi however is that when you have a lot of text it’s difficult to fit it all on one slide so instead you need to break up the text and put it in different slides, however for the work I have done this has been appropriate.

IPad/mobile phones

I used my mobile phone to post on Facebook the questionnaire mood boards and I took screen shots on my laptop of the results. I also used my phone to contact the actors and plan out when we were filming. The Benefits of using my phone were that I could make posts and updates on my phone wherever I am so long as I have internet connection. The disadvantage of using my mobile phone was that it was very slow and didn’t work in some places because I didn’t always have internet connection.

Cameras

I used a DSLR camera to film all our footage for the trailer. The benefits of using this camera were that it was compact, lightweight and easily portable which was ideal when carrying it from my house to Elton’s house where all the filming took place. This camera also had a photo setting which was useful when it came to taking shots of Elton in the clown costume walking towards the camera. The difficulties with working with a DSLR camera were that when doing filming and looking through the screen on the camera all the footage looked crisp and had good exposure but when I transferred my work onto the mac to edit I found that all my footage was grainy and under exposed.

Wix

I used Wix to create my official trailer website and my evaluation question 2. The benefits of using Wix were that I could make an easy intractable website that is easy to access so long as you have internet. The tabs on my websites clearly label each page, each page has large font and some images, none of which are too text heavy because I spread out the work on separate pages. I didn’t come across any difficulties when working on Wix this time however in the past I had troubles with using Wix because I had a slow internet connection and some of the buttons stopped working and unfortunately I lost most my work I did on Wix and ended up having to make the website again from scratch when I was at home and had a better internet connection.

Padlet

I used Padlet to write about our target audience and to write my evaluation question 3. The advantages of using Padlet are that you can display all of your work on a wall which means that the entire content of your work is displayed on one page without having to click any buttons to another page. This was useful for my evaluation question 3 because it allowed me to answer different questions about my work all in separate boxes but still on the same page. The difficulties with using Padlet are that when you have very text and image heavy work and you try fit it all close together on Padlet I find that this looks very clustered and difficult to follow as opposed to have few boxes with some text and maybe a few images overall.

Macs

I used the mac to upload all my footage so that I could edit the footage together for our trailer. I also used other editing software. The benefits of using a mac are that the software is different and in some cases more advanced. I also found it easier to work on the macs as I am used to working on one from home, which gave me some advantage when it came to using the software. The disadvantages to working on a mac are that they don't have all the same applications as windows does on a pc, however windows can be installed onto a mac to make the same software available on a mac that you would have on a pc so this would be an avoidable difficulty.

Serif Page Plus

I used Serif page plus to create my poster for my horror trailer. The benefits of using serif page plus are that it is an ideal programme for creating posters and other publications such as magazine page design because it works in a way similar to a work document but at the same time has simple editing skills which allows you to easily create posters. The difficulties with using Serif page plus are that the photo editing software available on the programme is too simplified and does not allow you to edit photographs to a great extent.

Serif Photo Plus

I used Serf photo plus to edit some of the photos I used when making my draft posters. The benefits of using serif photo plus are that it is a simple version of Photoshop which does not require you to watch any tutorials to understand the software however the difficulty that I found with serif photo plus was that it didn’t have all the same or as many options as Photoshop and since I am used to editing images in Photoshop from doing A Level photography I decided I would edit the image for my final poster on Photoshop and this software did not meet the standard of Photoshop.

Photoshop

I used Photoshop to edit photos for the poster and website. The benefits of using Photoshop are that it is the most advanced form of image manipulation software that I am able to get access to, I am familiar with the basic uses of Photoshop and so I found this very useful when editing images and on my blog you can see an example where I used Photoshop. The difficulties with using Photoshop are that if you are new to the programme then it is quite complex to use and this software is also only available on some of the school computers, mainly in the art and photography departments, but having access to one of these computers meant that this was not a problem for me.

Audio recorders

I used the audio recorder on my mobile phone and on garage band to record some of the sound featured on my trailer. The benefits of using an audio recorder as opposed to a video recorder and only using the sound is that you get a clearer, crisper sound with less background noise. The difficulties with using an audio recorder is that if you are matching the audio to a separate video then it can prove difficult to sync up the audio with the video footage, however this was not so much a problem with my trailer, it was more so fitting the audio to the length of the video shot which meant I had to cut some script and in some cases speed up the audio recording or just in general speak faster.

Garage band

I used garage band to make some audio for my trailer, this audio was mainly the clown voices that Elton heard in his head. The benefits for using garage band are that you can use a proper microphone with this programme, which I did; this gave me a clearer and crisper sound. You can also record and overlap different voice recordings, which proved to be useful when recording the whispers featured in my trailer. The difficulties with using Garage band that I ran into at first when I had not much experience with the programme was how to export each of my different recordings with all the sound effects on top.

iMovie

I used iMovie to make my questionnaire analysis for the storyboards I made, my focus group and the results for the focus group, my storyboard, the rehearsals, bloopers video and finally my Evaluation question 4. The benefits of using iMovie as a video editing programme are that it is simple to use with options to add images, video, audio, and text this is the most ideal editing software I have access to from home as I do not have final cut pro at home, this is a simple substitute which has proven useful through out my work. The difficulties with using iMovie that I ran into were that when I transferred my bloopers to iMovie when I had selected the clips, cut them and merged them into one clip and attempted to make this into a video on iMovie I found that the video clip would then not work and the programme was not responding, this is the first time that this problem has occurred when using iMovie, the only other difficulty that I have is that I can’t have still text heavy slides and instead I either have to have scrolling text or minimum text per slide.

YouTube

I used YouTube to upload all my videos I created on iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The benefits of using YouTube were that I could upload my videos online to then distribute them onto social networking sites for feedback and upload them onto blogger for my teacher to see. This meant that when I finish editing my video I could then have my final copy uploaded on the Internet in case I ever lost the original file. The difficulties with using YouTube are that I have to be careful about copyright purposes that I might have on any of my videos that have music in the background. My other issue is that uploading to YouTube at home takes a very long time.

Final Cut Pro

I used final cut pro to make my trailer and I used it to select my bloopers footage and merge them into one clip. The benefits of using final cut pro are that the software is the best video editing software that I have available to me this ensured that my trailer would be the best it could possibly be. The difficulties I had with this programme however were remembering how to add all the different effects such as titles and audio editing. I also did not have this programme available to me at home so I was only able to use it at sixth form, which meant I was not as experienced with the programme as I could be.

Facebook

I used Facebook to upload some of my work to get feedback from my target audience I did this by posting an image or video and tagging people in my target audience and asking for some feedback. The advantages to using Facebook were that most people I know and that are in my target audience are on Facebook which meant that they were likely to see the post within 2 days when being tagged in a post, it is also an advantage that this social networking sight is available to anyone who has internet. The difficulties I had with using Facebook were that the people I tagged were not all definitely going to reply to my post and give feedback where as if I go directly to my peers and ask them some questions I am more likely to get some feedback.