Question 4- How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Planning WhatsApp –This was extremely helpful for our group. We created a conference group and

spoke about ideas, updates and tasks which needed to be completed. We also sent images, trailers, audio notes and production work to each other. Due to our clashing timetables within school, WhatsApp made it easier for us to communicate as a group and share our ideas.

Skype – We used Skype for important discussions. Similar to WhatsApp we shared our ideas and thoughts about our production work and research. This was extremely helpful as we saved time in our production timetable and could focus on producing and filming our product rather than planning and researching.

Research• Internet and search engine sites – Search engines such as Google and Yahoo

allowed us to access a wide range of media texts for our product research. It also helped us gain ideas for our own print work. Using the internet was fast and accessible. While researching we could access a range of media texts on the internet from my IPod and mobile phone, this made is easier for me to share my ideas and compare them with other media products.

Constructing our product

YouTubeYouTube was extremely helpful in researching and constructing our product. We searched trailers and movie clips on YouTube and embedded them on our blog and product research. YouTube also helped greatly with our print work. Due to my occasional use of Photoshop, I wasn’t very confident in constructing our print work. Issues such as using the quick selection tool were solved through YouTube Photoshop tutorials. While watching a variety of tutorials I learnt about hue and saturation effects which allowed me to change the colour of my main image from brown to green. This was significant advantage as while planning we found it difficult to find a distinctive eye colour for our main image.

iMovie

iMovie 11 played a significant part in the construction of our product. iMovie was easy and simple to use, the new software presented us with a variety of transitions and editing options. While constructing our trailer we uploaded different versions of our trailer onto YouTube and shared it with our friends, family and teachers in order to receive detailed feedback. iMovie made this easy and simple for us to upload straight onto networking sites.

Initially we created our voice over on Garage band but we weren’t pleased with the outcome as it didn’t correspond with the scenes within our trailer. The ‘mike’ button on iMovie allowed us to record our voice-over while our trailer played, resulting in our voice-over corresponding with the action within each scene.

Prezi Prezi – I used this to construct my product research, it was easy and reliable. It

allowed me to brainstorm my ideas and add hyperlinks and images. A great advantage of using Prezi is the route creation which allowed my ideas to link together. While filming our product Prezi was easily accessible from our mobile phones and allowed my group and myself to look back on conventions of horror movies and implement them within our own work.

PC Tablet – The typography of our film was inspired by the Uninvited film poster. We used a PC tablet to handwrite our title.

PC Tablet

Photoshop • Photoshop – Initially I was nervous about using Photoshop to construct our print

work, as I found it extremely complicated. The issues I encountered were regarding the different layers, I was unsure about how to access and unlock them. I also found it difficult to fade images into the background. However, with the help of YouTube tutorials and internet sites I gradually gained a better understanding of how to use the tools and functions on Photoshop. Originally our main image was of a brown eye, however the hue and saturation tool allowed us to change the colour of our main mage to a green eye, which connoted evil and jealously which directly linked with our narrative.

Mini DV camera While filming my AS production I used a Sony HDR camera. We found it slightly

difficult uploading our scenes because we encountered problems with accessing the memory card. This year however, we used a mini DV camera. Having an built in memory made it easier to upload our footage on Mac computer. We arranged our scenes to be filmed in segments so we wanted to upload our footage straight away, the new cameras made it easier for us to upload our scenes and was a significant advantage while constructing our product.

Digital DSLRFor my print work, I used a Digital DSLR. The high quality of the camera made the

images easier to manipulate on Photoshop. Using a digital camera was easy and reliable as our images could be uploaded to any computer by using the memory card.