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

Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro was the most essential program for theconstruction of my main documentary production. This softwareallowed me to implement every aspect of my film including the video, the voice over and the editing/transitions/effects. This program allowed more complex edit such as green screen effects whereby I could include any background Iwanted into certain scenes, allowing me to implement gate keeping into my film. Overall this software was very good as it allowed me to create a much moreprofessional film, as it is a much more complex piece of editing software. Howeverthe complexity of the software to things I had used in the past such as Windows Movie Maker meant I had to spend a lot of time getting an understanding of the software as I had never used it before and it was much more complex than what I was used to. This did meant I had less time to create the film itself, but it was worthit because I feel the end product is much better than it would be had I used anotherpiece of software.

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop was a key piece of software throughout the whole creation of my A2 portfolio. Much of the production process required me to use images, which I could edit to my preferences using this program. Many images were used in the main documentary needed cropping down or having the colours on them changed, Photoshop was easy to use and very accessible, meaning I could do so. The main piece I used Photoshop on was the DPS for the Radio Times article. Photoshop allowed us to create essentially every element of the DPS from the iconography to the masthead. I really enjoyed using Photoshop at it allows me to experiment with the things I create and add special effects to them which other software wouldn't allow me to. I was able to easily grasp using Photoshop as I had previously used it in my AS work so I was able to immediately jump in and create something that looked professional and I was happy with. All the codes and conventions for the DPS were easy to implement because of this software, therefore the whole process was made much easier.

Adobe Audition

One thing that needed to be perfect in my documentary was the sound levels, otherwise the film would seem unprofessional and would be hard to watch. To ensure that all the sounds for the clips and voice overs were perfect I used Audition to adjust the sound levels to the level I wanted them to be at. Audition was perfect for doing this as it is software based around audio, and I could put all the clips to the same volume, so that the final film did not sound bad.

Blogger

Blogger served as the framework where I collated all the work for my research, planning and construction. Blogger allowed me to put all the work into e clear chronological order and divide the work up between my group members using tags for each post. I was well aware how to use Blogger from my AS production and was able to embed things I created from third party programs and web services such Prezi and YouTube into my posts. Blogger also allowed me to access all the work me and my group had created from anywhere meaning I was able to make progress whether we were on the Macs, PCs or I was at home.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word was used throughout all the research, planning and evaluation stages for my A2 production. There were various things I used it for such as evaluation questions, Voice over scripts and the DPS article. As word is a very simple piece of software there wasnt much development from AS to A2 however I feel what I created on the products was of a higher quality instead of how I used the software itself. Word has a lot of benefits as it is very easy to use and is flexible in various ways such as creating footnotes, paragraph formats and drop capitals especially for the DPS article.

Prezi

Prezi is a piece of online presentation software that allowed me to create complex displays throughout the whole of my production. For my research I created posts about codes and convention of documentaries which would help me later in my evaluation. For my evaluation itself for one of the questions I created I was able to create a very complex presentation something I had developed and improved upon since AS, as the Prezis I created last year were very basic and not as well constructed. Prezi is good as it allows me to create seamless presentation that run smooth and the user can simply click an arrow to be navigated through the presentation. As it is an online piece of software I was also able to embed videos and images from websites such as YouTube for a more creative presentation. This was also something that I never really implemented in AS and I should have as it is a more creative way of using it and if I can make it look better then I will.

emaze

emaze is another piece of online presentation software which I used throughout my coursework. Specifically I used it to present the questions we would be giving to the experts we interviewed in the documentary. I was able to present the question and then provide additional information to why we would be asking these questions and the significance they had in relation to the topic of mental health. emaze is good as it allows you to be creative especially with the aesthetics of the presentations allowing to create your own appearance or select presets from a series of already made templates. Compared to my AS portfolio the emaze presentations I created were much more coherent and I utilised the unique formatting much more effectively.

Scribd

As we used Blogger all the work I did needed to be put on the blog. For my work I used various different pieces of software so couldnt simply copy what I wrote onto the blog. Therefore I needed a way to be able to upload the documents such as word and PowerPoint to be able to embed them on the blog. Scribd was perfect for this as I could upload any type of document to it and then embed it on the blog very easily. I utlilised Scribd much better this year as I didnt just copy word documents over like last year into the blog itself, using Scribd means it looks much neater and wasnt messed up by the formatting of paragraphs on the blog.

YouTube

We created various videos throughout A2 including production diaries, videos of setting up interviews and also the documentary itself. Uploading all of these clips to YouTube meant that we could access and use them from anywhere at anytime. YouTube is simple and easy to use and it only took a few minutes to upload each video and is very accessible, as we could view the clips without even signing in. Having the videos on YouTube also meant that we could embed the clips on the blog which was useful as it meant we could have all the work we had created in one place.

Apple Mac

The Apple Mac was what I used for the whole production process of my A2 work, including the film, the radio advert and the DPS. This was because of the wide range of software available on them including Premiere Pro, PhotoShop and GarageBand. These were the three main pieces of software that I needed in creating the 3 products and was convenient that they were all on the Mac. However as I had never used a Mac and they are quite different to PCs it was hard to get used to which meant I wasnt as productive as I would have been using a PC. However after a few sessions I was able to get used to using the Mac. There were a few disadvantages to using a Mac for example they are less accessible than a PC and do not give the user as much freedom to manage files such as videos than you would get using a PC.

Audio Recorder/
Data Stick

The audio recorders were hugely useful in the production process. They allowed us to record the voice overs for both the radio advert and the documentary. The voiceovers for these two parts of the production were a huge part of it meaning we had to rely heavily on the audio recorders. An advantage of this piece of technology that it was very easy to use and allowed me to quickly record audio and transfer it onto the Mac when I was done. This software didnt really have any disadvantages and didnt cause any issues.

Video Camera

The video camera was essential to the creation of my media documentary, every shot in the film was recorded using one therefore it was the most important piece of equipment I used. I was able to get various shots such as opening pans, close ups, long shot, expert interviews and VOX POPs. The camera was very useful and very easy to use meaning I was always able to get the shot that I wanted. I was also very easily able to move the footage I had taken over to the Mac ready for editing. The camera I used specifically was good as it was able to record archival footage while retaining decent video quality, which was essential as archival footage played a big role in the documentary

Tripod

The tripod simply allowed me to record from various heights, record pans and also keep the angle of the shot level so it would look good when being put in the documentary They were easy to use and we could carry them around and use them in different areas around the college and also in the town centre.

Garage Band

Garage Band was the software on the Mac I used to create the Radio advert. Using this software was fairly straight forward and I was familiar when using it as I had done so before in the preliminary task at the end of AS. I was able to copy over sound clips from the documentary itself linking the products and also insert new voice over clips I had recorded myself. This software is very good and allows you to manipulate sound files to cut out the best bits and also adjust the audio levels to your needs.

15/03/16

15/03/16