Question 6 – What have you learnt about the technologies when constructing your product?BY JOSEPH BOWMAN

Blogger

Blogger was the centre of this Project and is what I have been uploading all of my coursework to throughout the year. I used it because it is extremely easy to use and is a great way to display your work. It is a good alternative to simply writing down your work onto paper because there is no chance that you will lose it and there is also no chance that you will hand it in scruffy and un-neat. However, it does have some disadvantages. These being that Blogger is really limited in it’s capabilities and should not be used if you want to create anything complex.

Microsoft Word and Publisher

II have used Microsoft Word to write thee scripts for my videos and audio commentaries so that I would not have to improvise and would make my speech sound a lot more clear so I could get my message across to the Bloggers much easier. I used Microsoft PowerPoint to create several of my presentations because it is very simplistic and easy to use making my presentation very organised a clear. I used these tools because they are easy to obtain and to use. However, because of their simplistic design and functions this does mean that they are limited as to what you can do with your text or pictures. There is little virtual animation options which means that is not the best option to create something out of the ordinary.

Slide Share

I used Slide Share to transfer my PowerPoints onto the internet and eventually onto Blogger. I used this because it is easy to use. All you have to do is logon to your account, choose the presentation from your documents and wait for it to upload. It’s that simple. It also takes a short amount of time to upload the presentation and you can embed the same presentation into Blogger within the next 5 minutes.

Prezi

I used Prezi to create my other Presentations as an alternative to PowerPoint. I did this because it is a lot more complex than PowerPoint as it is a virtual Presentation creator. This means that my presentations will include movement and can be interacted with. The only drawback is that it requires a lot of power to run plus a good internet connection. Otherwise, you will not be able to run it because it is attempting to create the movement animations. I was able to use it for free as I was using it as a student (as long as I used my College e-mail address).

Windows Movie Maker

I used Windows Movie Maker as the editing software for my videos and audio commentaries. In my opinion, Windows Movie Maker is one of the best free editing software around as it is easy to use and upload videos to YouTube. However, I think that this editing Software is extremely limited as there are no major effects and it is difficult to create videos in a high resolution like 720p or 1080p. This was not a major disadvantage to me however as I did not need to use complex features and only needed to use simple footage. I was able to use this editing software better than I originally thought due to my previous editing on my opening sequence and should become useful during editing in the future.

YouTube

I used YouTube to upload my videos to the internet in order to upload them to Blogger. The Blogger video options are very limited and hard to work with. A good way to manoeuvre around this is to upload your videos to YouTube and then embed them onto Blogger. This is a much easier way to get your videos onto Blogger. However, it can take up to 15-45 minutes to upload your videos to YouTube so takes a long time. Luckily, you can annotate your videos to add in any thoughts or notes that you wish to share and the comments can be disabled to avoid gaining inappropriate comments.

Sony A35 HD Camera

When it came time to film, the College offered us the equipment that we needed. However, we had access to better equipment. We opted to use a Sony A35 HD Camera which was kindly lent to us by Lauren Burnham. This camera offered better video quality and better sound quality than the cameras that the college had offered us. This camera came with advanced features such as the ability to adjust contrast and brightness. However, with these advanced features came some problems. On several occasions, we had a problem with the camera automatically un-focusing which delayed some of our footage being shot. Otherwise, this was a very good camera and one of the best I have worked with.

Adobe Premier Pro CS6

We used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 to edit our opening sequence with, we used this because one of our group members: Tristan Hale has access to this editing software on his Laptop. We were offered by the College to use Final Cut Pro, however we decided to use Adobe Premier Pro due to the fact that it has much better capabilities. For example, Adobe Premier has advanced colour correcting, special effects and we were able to implement a Letterbox view to our product to make it look more professional, this is something that Final Cut Pro can not do. The only problem is that apart from Tristan, none of us in the group had experience with this editing software, so it took some time to get used to.

MSI Steelbook Laptop

Instead of using a collection of iMacs that the college were able to provide for us, we were able to use an MSI steelbook laptop that Tristan was able to use in order for us to do our editing. We found that this was a far superior computer in comparison to the iMac because it was smaller which meant that we could take it to multiple locations whereas the other students were forced to stay in one location for there editing. We used this to our ability and took time to edit our video outside of College. However, we did run the risk of damaging the Laptop as we were carrying it around to multiple locations.