How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?

Sarah Byard.

Physical Technologies

Bloggie.

Our bloggie, Ralph, was used to record our minute extracts (research and planning) and out music video (construction).

The Bloggies record in 1080p HD which is fabulous; however, it does have its setbacks. We didn’t use the zoom very much last year, and so this year we discovered that the zoom is not very good on the Bloggie. This was a bit of a problem, but we managed to get past that by only using one, brief one.

Camera.

This is a Samsung S850. It has a 5x optical zoom and I’m not sure what that means. I used this to take the photos for my digipak and advertising campaign poster. Many thanks to my mum for letting me borrow it.

Apple Mac.We had a Mac which we named Macintosh last year, and this year we have a different Mac. He has no name because he has been nothing but trouble for us. However, this Mac was important in all stages of this process.

Research/planning: used to get onto FCP, use of Powerpoint, researching.

Construction: FCP.

Evaluation: FCP, Powerpoint, Google.

Software/websites.

Final Cut Pro.Integral to the construction of our music video, as this is where all the clips were put together and edited. It was also helpful in our research and planning stages, as we edited together our prelims on FCP, including our one minute extract ‘Wuthering Heights’

• In/out tool: allowed us to choose where on each clip we wanted it to begin/end.

• Crop tool: allowed us to create the split screen effect for the phone call scene.

• Fade in/fade out tool: allowed a transition which wasn’t as harsh as a regular cut.

• Text tool: allowed me to put text in my animatic ‘Fish’.

Photoshop.

I used Adobe Photoshop CS6 in the construction of my digipak and my advertising campaign. We learned to use Photoshop in lessons, and took a few weeks to master.

• Filter tool: use of a violet filter to slightly change the colour and feel of the digipak. This made it more aesthetically pleasing and less harsh.

• Polygonal/magnetic lasso tool: used to cut things out of one picture to enable them to be dragged into another one. This was quite fiddly and I had to keep zooming to make sure I had it right.

• Pen tool: used to achieve the ‘doodle’ effect on the digipak/poster.

Powerpoint

Anyone who knows me or has seen my blog will know I adore Powerpoint. I used it in research and planning and evaluation to present my work clearly and efficiently.

Fontmeme.com

This is where I got the fonts for use of the construction of my digipak & poster from. The two used were called ‘Frankenweenie’ and ‘Sucker Punch’. This site is easy to use; you just type in your text and it generates it in your selected font, ready for you to save to your computer and use however you want.

Surveymonkey.com

This website is how I collected responses for various surveys throughout the process, especially in the research process. This site was also easy to use, as you just told it what questions you wanted and it gave you a link to send to people with those questions in a survey. You can then see all the results together, so they are easy to analyse.

Blogspot.com

Blogspot is fabulous. This is how I’ve been keeping track of all my work this year; by posting it onto my own personal blog. This has been extremely useful in organising my work into one place, and allows Mr Nichola to see it all easily so he can mark it. I’ve used it to post all three aspects of work.

Social Media/Web 2.0

Facebook.

I used Facebook to collect audience feedback. Facebook is a good way of doing this because you can post links, pictures etc. and they just come up on peoples’ timelines, thus making it easier for them to reply.

Tumblr.Also used for audience feedback. I have lovely followers who replied and gave me good feedback. Tumblr allows a ‘reply’ option, so you can post a picture or video etc., and people can reply telling you their opinion. There is also an ‘ask box’ option, where people can post to you anonymously or otherwise. This was invaluable for audience research.

YouTube.

This is the CatsInSpace YouTube channel. We used this to display our videos, making it easier to show to people and to put them onto our blogs. There’s a function for people to leave comments; however, this was not our main source of audience feedback as many people left us Facebook or Tumblr messages instead.