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

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

When creating our trailer, we had to think about the fact that our budget was low. This meant that being able to access Web 2.0 worked highly to our advantage. Web 2.0 is the second stage of internet development, and allows users to be producers as well as consumers. Being able to use the internet as a way of creating our own, individual products to share worldwide worked well to our advantage. This is because the internet helps to provide a large variety of products which are free of charge to use – therefore allowing me to create products whilst being offline. I was able to use websites such as Youtube and Blogger, meaning I was able to share my products with others.

One of the first pieces of technology I used was YouTube.  YouTube played a large part when researching which horror trailers already existed.  YouTube provides users with an endless amount videos, it is free to use and this is why it was beneficial to my research.  I watched many existing trailers and movie clips in order to help me gain a better understanding of the codes and conventions which horror trailers follow. I think YouTube has been a very beneficial source as it provides high quality videos that cover a great variety of video clips.  It is very simple to use as it has an easy search bar that contains accurate results as well as being quick to use.  One negative aspect of using YouTube is that there are adverts which often appear when watching videos, however these are easy to work around.  As well as looking at other people’s content on YouTube, we were also able to post our own trailer online which has allowed us to gain our own feedback.  This helps any small budget film company to gain publicity, an audience and possible success.

The second piece of technology I’ve used when creating my coursework is Blogger. Blogger is another website that is online and free to use. It has allowed me to put all my work together that is accessible for anyone who may want to access it.  Using blogger regularly has been beneficial to me as it has allowed me to keep a clear understanding of the work I have completed as well as being able to look back as well as edit the work I have completed to ensure it is at a high standard.  Blogger is easily accessible as it is online, it has an easy to use layout as well as being very user friendly regarding its features.  If I was to carry out this project again, I would continue to use blogger because it is a very good website to use as it helped me to store all of my work in one place, and all in a chronological order.

The third piece of technology I used was Adobe Photoshop.  Unlike the previous two pieces of technology, Adobe Photoshop is not online and a programme that the consumer has to download and install on to their device.  I used Adobe Photoshop to create my magazine cover as well as my poster.  I have used Photoshop before which helped to the speed up the process of designing and creating my poster because I was able to use all of the tools effectively.

The forth piece of technology I used was Microsoft PowerPoint with Scribd.  Microsoft PowerPoint is a piece of software that users are able to download on to their devices and then create their own slideshows.  Scribd then allows the user to upload their PowerPoint to their website in order to post online and share with others.  Using Microsoft PowerPoint was very easy for me as I have a lot of past experience with the technology as well as it being very simply laid out and accessible.  Scribd allowed posting my PowerPoint on my blog easy as it has a simple embed tool that allows this to be straight forward.

The fifth piece of technology I used was FlipSnack.  FlipSnack is a website that allows its users to upload a series of images and paste them in to a document that formats them in to, what looks like, a book.  When carrying out my course work, FlipSnack helped me to upload some of my documents in a unique way.  I found using FlipSnack fairly easy as it is accessible anywhere due to it being online as well having straight forward features.  In particular, I found it easy to change the image orders which was very helpful when making finish touches to my product.  Although I did find it hard to navigate at first, after a short while of exploring the website, I would recommend it to others as well as using it again myself.

The sixth piece of technology I used was Prezi.  Prezi is a website that helps its users create a Slide Show in a creative way.  I previously spoke about PowerPoint which does the same thing as Prezi however, I find Prezi more effective as I believe it comes across as more creative and therefore more professional.  Although I like the overall look and effective of Prezi, I did find some of its features difficult to use.  In particular, I didn’t like the way it allowed me to upload images as it seems a very long process and the image did not appear where, as a user, you would think it would.  Saying this, I would still recommend it as I feel it is an effective way to share information and it has helped me to present my coursework in a unique way.

The final piece of technology we used was Adobe Premiere Pro.  This is the piece of technology we used to actually create the trailer, and piece it all together.  It is a piece of software which allows the user to edit sound and film footage in an effective way.  The tools on the trailer allowed us to make normal footage fit the product we wanted to make in an easy way.  While using Adobe Premiere Pro, I found it difficult at first as I had no previous experience with the programme however, common sense allowed me to work around the technology as it is very straight forward to use as it is similar to their other products- regarding layout and tools.  If I was to make another movie trailer in the future, I would continue to use Adobe Premiere Pro as I found it effective as the tools allowed me to edit footage to a high quality.

Throughout the process of making our media product we used SD cards allowing us to store and save all of our footage and images taken for all three products. As well as using the camera to take the footage and images. For the filming for the trailer we used a video camera as well as the boom mic and tripod allowing us to catch high quality footage to them be able to edit on the Mac's as well as getting good quality sound to avoid audio being lost due to the wind and background noise, while the tripod helped keep the camera steady to avoid shakiness making the shot look disoriented, making the footage more professional.