Tom Chamberlain (3241) Harrogate High School

A2 Media Studies

Final Evaluation

How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Research and Planning – Edublogs

I used Edublogs.org to post all of my documents onto an online blog. I found Edublogs very easy to use as the workflow between posts, editing and pages runs flawlessly; increasing my productivity as I have gradually completed the course. The simple page layout and design allowed me to customize my blogs appearance through themes and thus improve the overall presentation of my work.

•Post anytime from anywhere.

•Edit, upload and amend from multiple technology platforms and devices; such as my iPhone, laptop and tablet.

•Upload images, video and links to illustrate my writing more clearly.

•Post any ideas, thoughts, progress or modifications to my production as a form of diary throughout the completion of my media production.

•Used to track my progress and cross reference any documents that were still outstanding.

Research and Planning – YouTube and Vimeo

Both YouTube and Vimeo are video sharing websites used around the world to post the majority of videos onto the web. I found YouTube very helpful to view student films, while Vimeo was used to watch professional short films from a diverse range of directors focusing on many different subjects and genres. All of my findings were highly inspiring and consequently allowed me to write a textual analysis for multiple moving image products and led me to make the final decision of choosing the Science Fiction, Post-apocalyptic sub-genre.

•Related links to similar videos from the same genre, actor, director or producer.

•Easy to search, navigate and save content that needed to be watched and analysed at a later date.

•Very fast buffering speeds, allowing me to watch high definition video and see all of the detail the director intended for the audience to see and understand.

•Easily share my findings with my peers before conducting an analysis, as a basic form of audience feedback for my research choices.

Research and Planning – Microsoft Office Suite

I chose to use the Microsoft Office Suite as I felt highly proficient in Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Before some of my work was uploaded onto my blog, the complex and important documents were word processed to ensure their safety if my blog encountered any problems or errors. PowerPoint's were used to assist my presentation of my work, while Excel helped to create spreadsheets, charts and graphs to provide a visual representation of my planning documents and research.

•Work was easy to access as the applications were installed on many portable devices and computers.

•Graphs, charts and tables made all data simple to interpret and analyse.

•Used as the fundamental form of media technology in my production.

•Create clear layouts and a add variety of choices of presentation to my media blog in attempt to make it look more appealing and interesting.

Research and Planning – Slideshare

During the research and planning process, I discovered an interesting website which allowed me to upload PowerPoint's onto the Internet. This website helped me primarily during my research into similar ancillary products, as many other students use Slideshare to post their work online in order to gather feedback. This new form of media technology proved highly successful, as I received a view count growth of over 1100% within the first week of posting my work onto Slideshare.

•View similar slideshow presentations related to the same topic, for instance the structuring of audience feedback from a research questionnaire.

•Upload different types of files if needed, such as uploading an entire ‘word’ document containing rich data text.

•Save and download the best slideshows and analyse their effectiveness.

•The process involves, create PowerPoint, save PowerPoint, upload to Slideshare, convert file and post link onto media blog.

Research and Planning – DaFont

I used a website called DaFont to search through thousands of different fonts available for me choose for my production. As my aim was to create a strong sense of band identity, I was aware that the style of font would impact both my main task of creating a short film and the construction stages of my two ancillary products. I found DaFont very easy to use, as it has a complex category section which allows the user to narrow the search for the specific font being desired. The website also has a preview font system, enabling me to view the text in the custom style before downloading, and thus improving my efficiency as I didn’t waste time downloading the style and deciding it would not work for my production and genre.

•Download many different fonts for free.

•Skip through a diverse range of categories and styles instead of the standard availability of only San Serif and Serif fonts.

•Easily compare and contrast font styles, while analysing their design and therefore beneficial meaning to all three of my products.

•View fonts from genres, such as ‘Horror’, ‘Science Fiction’ and ‘Action’ making it easy to find a font for my genre of film text.

Research and Planning – SoundCloud

SoundCloud was used to download different royalty free tracks for my short film. At first I found this website quite hard to navigate, as there was no clear indication whether or not the music file was either copyright free or free to download. I used a YouTube tutorial in order to gain some insight into SoundCloud and the different steps needed to establish a way to get the sound tracks I needed. I consequently found SoundCloud allot easier to use once I downloaded a few pieces of music, as I discovered that you could pick audio genres, such as ‘Film Scores’, ‘Electronic Ambience’ and ‘Instrumental’ music.

•Preview a song before downloading.

•Save music tracks to my user library.

•Look at other user’s saved music libraries.

•Look at composers and producers user pages to find more of their music in the same genre and style.

Construction – Adobe Premiere Pro

Adobe Premiere Pro was used to edit all of my footage together to create my short film. The software is non-linear, meaning I had a greater level of flexibility regarding positioning the video files on my timeline and cutting the clips together. As my short film was non-chronological, this method of editing was exceptional in allowing me to ‘overlay’ and ‘roll edit’ the footage. Once my short film was finished, I used the inbuilt link to ‘Adobe Media Encoder’ to export my film in two different formats; one for the web and other for the media awards screening to gain audience feedback.

•RAM preview all files before exporting.

•Cut, re-edit and re-export using Premiere Pro’s simple editing interface.

•Switch between Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects using Premier Pro’s advanced workflow.

•Software was very easy to use as I already had experience from my foundation portfolio and freelance work from outside school.

•Manipulate audio, by using waveforms to increase or decrease the pitch, bass and overall volume.

Construction – Adobe After Effects

While editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, I used After Effects to compose my footage and send it back into my primary timeline. I used a selection of plug-ins with Adobe After Effects, including ‘Magic Bullet Looks’ to colour correct and colour grade my footage and ‘Magic Bullet Grinder’ to transcode the original video files into lower bit-rate versions for my computer to handle without it lagging or causing significant delays. As After Effects is a motion graphics application, I chose to use this to create my titles at the start and end of my short film; as effects could be applied directly to the text by using a plug-ins called ‘Twitch’ and ‘Digi Effects Damage’.

•Compose different footage together.

•Colour correct and colour grade.

•Create titles and apply effects.

•More options to fine tune the audio tracks by using the software to create ‘key frames’ to link the sound file directly to the editing of the footage.

•Stabilize image motion to reduce camera shake and improve the quality of my shots.

Construction – Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop was used to create my ancillary tasks of a magazine review and film poster. I could have chosen to use Adobe ‘InDesign’ to create my magazine, but I felt more proficient in Photoshop as I constantly use it to edit my personal photography before uploading my pictures onto my website. I transferred my skills and ensured all photo manipulation and transformations were carried out correctly, and the resizing did not distort or warp the images in anyway. At all stages of production, I constantly exported the media products and analysed the next process that needed to be carried out, such as adding or removing conventions, changing image colours or rasterizing text font.

•Easily choose from a range of fonts to create a specific house style for my production.

•Design my own production companies logo for ‘Spectrum Films’ and a magazine called ‘Lore’.

•Superimpose image files using layers, the clone stamp tool, free transforming, rasterizing, content aware tool and the magic wand tool.

Other Technologies

I used my iPhone to contact my production assistant and cast member to organise times and dates for filming, and inform each member on the total progress of my production. I also used my Apple Macbook as my main computer during the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages of production. I chose to bring my machine into school, as the computer software at my educational institution falls sub-standard to my own editing packages available to me at home.

An application called iCal was used on my Macbook and iPhone to sync dates recorded for my production. This app became my organiser and planner, as notes could be logged and sent back to me in order to write up details onto blog and produce the final ‘call sheet’ for the dates of my production.

Evaluation

For my final evaluation, I used Slideshare to upload my slideshows I created on Microsoft PowerPoint onto the Internet. I used Microsoft Word to write up my script for my evaluation videos that were constructed in iMovie 09 and exported using Apple QuickTime Pro.

I feel it is not necessary to write in-depth about the technologies used in my evaluation stages of production, as all process have previously been detailed in my work on research, planning and construction.