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

Throughout my coursework I used many different media technologies. I created a film trailer, a poster and a magazine front cover and to achieve this I used a video camera, a computer, a microphone and a digital camera.

The construction of my coursework consisted of me using the video camera (Canon FS200) and microphone in order to create decent footage for my soap opera. To edit the film I used ‘Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0’ software. Using this I made my clips follow on from each other and inserted different effects such as sharpening the images and making it look like night time and transitions such as fading. I found it to be very easy software to use and grasped it fairly quickly. I also found that it gave a very professional look to the trailer and I liked the wide variety of tools and effects available. I used youtube to upload my trailer.

To create both my poster and my magazine front cover I used a digital camera (FUJIFILM). I used these to take photos of my characters and then used the software ‘Adobe Photoshop’ to edit and develop my ancillary tasks further. Photoshop is extremely good in achieving a professional look but I do find it very difficult and confusing to use. These are some examples of the tools I used on photoshop to create and edit my poster and magazine front cover: (lasso tool, magic wand tool and clone stamp tool).

For the research of my soap trailer I used youtube videos of previous soap operas and analysed the shots and sound. For both ancillary tasks I used google images for research and ideas. I then posted all my findings onto my blog.

The planning didn’t require many media technologies. I used my scanner at home to transfer my hand drawn planning onto the computer to post onto my blog. These included my story board and the drafts I had made for my poster and magazine front cover. I used a digital camera in my planning to capture my location shots which was extremely helpful. I also used ‘Microsoft Publisher’ to create my timeline which helped me when making my film as it showed me what should happen when.

Throughout my evaluation I used many different media technologies; I used a scanner to transfer my written feedback on all coursework tasks onto the computer.I used 'Microsoft Powerpoint' to create a presentation to answer the first evaluation question, transforming it into a slideshow for blogger. For the second evaluation question I inserted a voice note of myself. I then answered the third evaluation question in the form of a video.

Throughout construction, research, planning and evaluation stages I used a computer and the internet to access blogger.

I thought blogger was good as it was simple to use and I had no trouble using it. I thought it was extremely useful how it automatically saves posts as you write them and had it not done that I would have lost my work several times. The only problem I had with it was that in order to insert audio I had to transfer it into a video.