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

Question 4

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

Throughout our A2 media coursework we have used many different technologies to create our product. We used software such as IMovie to help us edit our trailer, ITunes to get songs we wanted to add to our trailer, Photoshop for our poster and magazine, the internet to help us research conventions of a trailer and allow us to upload all our work to our blogs and Microsoft word for all our written documentation. 

IMovie allowed us to edit our trailer: piece it all together and add music to it. We began using to after we had filmed the majority of our footage; this meant we could establish the narrative of our trailer first then add to it and get the editing just right. This software also allowed to and in transitions and put music in, this was very important to the final production as the transitions and music add the real essence to the trailer. IMovie also allowed us to speed up and slow down certain shots, so that we can make an actin scene look faster and smoother than it actually was. We first through of this when considering our fight scenes however we weren’t sure of the logistics or if it was really viable however we did some research and found that this technique was also used in star wars episode 1 the phantom menace, once we found this out we looked into how they did it and followed suit. We played out our fight scenes much slower in real life and then speed them up in IMovie the result was very much to our liking and we felt that it made our action scenes much more interesting and quick paced. IMovie really allowed us to get the most out of our footage and produce a product that was professional looking and wasn’t too difficult to produce. We also used IMovie to edit our focus group video so that all the members in our group could see what the focus group had said so we could then adapt the product to the work.  

ITunes was used to gather music for our production, we looked around and through long and hard about what music would go well with our trailer eventually deciding upon a few choices we went to ITunes and picked them up. Once we had acquired the music we then went about importing it into our trailer, we did this once again with IMovie, which allowed us to put the music in then edit it, to make it louder, fade in and out and play it make it longer or shorter depending on the clips we wanted the music to play over.

Photoshop was used for all our print work, whenever we needed to create or manipulate an image we used this software. For our poster we used a shot of the talons cape and had our actor stand behind it in normal school uniform. We did this by taking to separate photos, one of him standing as a normal boy one of his back with the cape on. We then selected the T in the cape and slightly faded it out different areas utilizing the eraser tool so that the actor was more visible yet still subtle inside the T of the cape. During the production of our magazine front cover we had so issues with sizing of text and the colour scheme. At first it appeared like it would take a lot of time to adjust it so that we could get the magazine write, however through lining certain layers we were able to salvage the magazine and manipulate the background and resize the fonts as they were all linked.   

The internet allowed us to carry out all of our research, it helped us develop our product and learn about media theory in more depth. This meant we could apply the theory more appropriately in our product and thus produce a more coherent and defined product. Through the understanding of media conventions we could then subvert or adhere to certain conventions to produce a product with our message.

 We took advantage of blogging technology as well using it to present all of our work online in a user friendly format that was easily accessible. It allowed us to regularly update our work and efficiently manage the project when we were not at home as we could see what each member of the group was uploading and when it was being uploaded.  It also allowed us to upload focus groups that we did for our audience research so we all had access to it. 

We learnt a lot about all different technologies during the course of this project, we had to utilize many different forms of technology in order to succeed. We learnt a lot through practicing and looking up solutions on the internet whenever we encounter a problem that we felt we couldn’t solve. This meant that towards the end of the project when a lot of editing was taking place we had a lot of experience with IMovie. The same also applies for Photoshop however I personally have had lots of past practice with this software, and therefore can operate smoothly with the software and produce a produce that I am happy with.