Evaluation Question 4.

Q4:  How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the making of our trailer named Subliminal, we used many programs and pieces of technology to piece our trailer together to make it the best it could be. 

During the stage of research and planning we were brainstorming ideas down onto paper and discussing different types of horror trailers that are rarely exploited and shown rather than going down a stereotypical route. We spent a long time talking about what aspects we wanted to reach with our story of the trailer, looking at plenty of trailers on the internet helped us a lot as we could group together an idea of the pace of shots, the length of shots, how to portray certain characters and many other key points that ended up featuring in our trailer. We also looked for any tips and tricks on how to control a camera and get the best footage out of it as possible, the internet helped us a lot in grouping and moulding together a solid idea for our group to go out and film for, despite our idea being tweaked and changed along the way we were very happy with the final outcome that we produced. When producing our storyboards we were looking at ways that other trailers had set their boards up to show fear and intensity in the stages that they had built it up so we knew we were heading on the right tracks to making a good horror trailer. Also for the research into what type of trailer we were making we designed a questionnaire which would answer all the queries that we had regarding our path to go down, it helped getting other peoples opinions as it helped us mould an idea that we knew people would back up. We made our surveys on Microsoft word and handed out them in our class to see what our other classmates thought, but we also put them online at www.surveymonkey.com for everyone to see and answer as it would broaden our ideas and give us more in depth answers about what we should do. As we were starting off to plan our locations to film we used Google Maps to track down the locations and get a good first view in on where we were filming and whether we deemed it film-able or not. This utility was very handy as it gave us a first look on if we should go there or not, scanning through different places and areas it allowed us to determine a great location without actually going there and wasting time at worse areas.

During the construction of our trailer it was all completed on an iMac. The Apple technology was the quickest for the job and prevented less freezes and crashing on our high memory software that we were making the trailer on. The speed of the computer helped us a lot as we spent less waiting around when putting our clips onto the computer and editing. The main software we used to make our trailer was Adobe Premiere Pro. Once we became familiar with the use of Premiere Pro it became a vital feature as it stored every single clip we had recorded, it was very easy and simple to use once we had obtained training on this piece of software, and our final trailer sample was exported using this program. The use of its trimming effects and title sequences allowed us to make our trailer look very professional and stand out a lot more. We used the transition effect a lot going from scene to scene too, to make it look a lot more flowing and pieced together.For the sound effects included in our trailer we used an Apple product already located on every iMac named Garageband. Garageband has thousands of sounds for every use and we found all of the right ones for our trailer located in its folders. I used photoshop to design all of my promotional pictures for the public to see and be drawn in to, I also used it to manipulate most of my images. I have used Photoshop many times before so I knew what I was doing with the software, but whereas I knew what I was doing it still is a very tricky software which you will need to get to grips with it well before feeling confident in using the program well. I also believe that I used photoshop to the best of its abilities, thus matching up with my ideas that I had for my storyboard too. I used the program paint to analyse research of magazine covers and horror posters that I picked out, this program had features that made it easy and simple to pick out a certain part of the magazine cover and talk about, with such a simple task that I wanted to complete it wouldn't of made a lot of sense using such a technical program like Photoshop for such a simple task. I and my group had no problem when it came to using the camera and video-shooting. We had all worked with a video camera and tripod before so we jumped straight into filming and didn't need to mess about with the camera settings and its abilities as we all knew how to function the devices. We all shot parts for the trailer and we all acted in the trailer too, so we had a good idea of what we all wanted to show through the camera and tried to act it out as best as we could. We all contributed in using and discovering different methods of technology to make our trailer better, and although I went in with a basic knowledge of what I was doing I definitely learned a lot of new techniques and methods of how to film certain parts to express a better and more in-depth story line.



The software Premiere Pro that we used to edit our trailer.

For the evaluation stage I used Blogger to express what I thought was positive, what was negative and many other aspects that I looked at. Blogger offers a wide variety of different choices to express my opinion of evaluation, such as different text, images, embedded videos and many more. As Blogger was also the portfolio for all of my work it was only necessary to have all of my evaluations in the same place. I had used Blogger in my first year of Media Studies so it wasn't new to me and I knew where to place everything and what limits it had. One of its main advantages to me was the fact you could go back and edit your work whenever you wanted, so when I read back and wasn't happy with a certain thing I could easily swap or change it, being if I had done it on paper I wouldn't have the option. I also find it very easy to use and navigate around so it wasn't off putting when I wanted to venture out and make my work more unique and different. It may be quite time consuming but it is by far the best method to use in my opinion. 

Personally, the use of technology enhanced us so much more to make a great trailer as there was so many brilliant features and programs for us to use and run our work through to produce a better trailer, if we had gone for the more simple and old programs we wouldn't have a trailer as near as good as the mark scheme asks us to make, and the use of old programs would have reflected in our final grade. Using so many different technologies for the construction, research, planning and evaluation has allowed me to develop my work to a level which I personally didn't think I could reach, but the use of clever systems and outputs has allowed me to submit m work confident that the outcome will be very pleasing. The use of Blogging all my ideas and preparation helped as I had all of my work on one screen and could easy flick back and forth and check my ideas to see if I was following the conventions that I and my group had set ourselves. Also the ability to check other peoples blogs and compare blogs helped too as I could see where I was at with my work and if specific pieces needed more work or not.