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

Andrew Oates

Blogger

‘Blogger’ is a website that allows users to set up and maintain a blog. This website is my primary source of presenting my research, planning, construction and evaluation, and allows me to track my progress from the planning stages to the final project. The ease of updating allows me to maintain my blog and keep all of my information up to date, therefore making presenting my progress to whom it may concern a simpler process.

YouTube

‘YouTube’ was a key website for my project, specifically in the research, construction and evaluation stages. During research, I used YouTube to research and discover existing film trailers in order to effectively learn the conventions of trailers. Furthermore, I was also able to look into existing film noir texts to research the conventions of the genre. After completing my construction, I uploaded the completed trailer to YouTube in order to present it, as well as get feedback from it. I also used YouTube to present work in the evaluation stages, in order to ensure my work was created using a variety of methods. The ease of accessing a wealth of video content was key in my success during the research stage, and without such easy access, the planning stage would have been much more difficult as I would have had a weaker understanding of the conventions of trailers and the noir genre.

Google

While a rather obvious example of technology that I used as a search function, Google was paramount in gathering research, including finding examples of existing media texts such as films in the noir genres, as well as the possibility of using its image function to find examples of magazine covers and posters, in order to discover the conventions of them for my ancillary tasks.

Flickr

‘Flickr’ is an image hosting website, that allows users to add notes and tags to the images they upload. Due to this feature, I used Flickr in my research stage in order to present my findings about the conventions of magazine covers and film posters, as I could easily upload examples and add notes the them, making my research more accessible and specific to the various conventions that can be seen on the images.

Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint is software that allows users to create an easily accessible presentation of information. I used PowerPoint to present my findings on the conventions of film noir, and later to present my answer to one of the evaluation questions (as seen here). This is because of the simplicity of the program, and the accessibility of presentations created using this software.

SlideShare

SlideShare is a website which allows users to upload presentations created using PowerPoint to the internet, in order to easily share them with others. Naturally, I used this website, coupled with Microsoft PowerPoint, to create and share presentations of my work with ease.

Windows Live Movie Maker Windows Live Movie Maker is an

easy to use but extremely basic video editing software. I used this while creating a practice storyboard for a proposed trailer for ‘The Machinist’. While the software was handy and simple, I realised while using it that many of the features would be too basic for me to effectively edit my finished trailer, so I decided to only use it for minor tasks such as the practice storyboard and editing a video created to answer an evaluation question.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is a

photo editing software that I used during the planning and construction of my ancillary task to create a poster and magazine cover. I used it to create mock-ups for the magazine cover and poster, as well as the finished projects. Photoshop was simple to use on a basic level, but also gave me enough freedom to effectively edit my final products and make them as appealing as possible.

Samsung Galaxy SII

Samsung Galaxy SII is a Smartphone with an 8 megapixel camera installed into it. I used this as my main camera for capturing the raw footage required for my trailer, as well as taking the necessary photos for my poster and magazine cover. The reason I chose to use the SII over other cameras provided was due to my existing familiarity with the settings in order to give my products the necessary look to maintain the noir genre, as well as the high quality of the camera itself. Furthermore, I benefitted from the easiness of accessing the photos and videos at home or in college in order to edit them for the final project.