Evaluation Question 4

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

Through the proliferation of Web 2.0, I have been able to research, plan and evaluate effectively via social networking mediums such as YouTube and Facebook.

Planning, researching and evaluating

YouTube provided me with a vast source of teaser trailers which I needed for my product research. This gave me the ability to understand conventions of trailers more thoroughly, so that I could either subvert or adhere to them whilst creating my own product. Whilst official teaser trailers were occasionally difficult to find (due to the growing convergence of producers and audiences through Web 2.0, in that individuals now have the ability to create their own unofficial products), I believe that being able to draw comparisons between different trailers throughout the years would have been much more difficult had YouTube been unavailable.

For my audience research and feedback, I used both Facebook and Yahoo! Answers. This gave me the ability to target a large audience quickly and easily, rather than the slower way of distributing questionnaires by hand. Moreover, because the World Wide Web has become so integrated into our lives, I knew that many individuals could be online at once, therefore researching and feedback would be much less time costly. I also think that the majority of people who spend time on social networking sites are either trying to avoid work, or else whiling away the time, therefore by filling out my questionnaires, they'd feel more productive, increasing the likelihood of gaining answers quickly. However, I asked several people who didn't end up filling in my audience research why they couldn't and the majority said that they found it difficult to motivate themselves into doing anything worthwhile when they were online. This raised the issue of whether or not I got a wide range of feedback from my audience members.

I used the 'weblog publishing tool from Google' "Blogger" to record my findings. I thought this was an effective way of noting down any ideas or nuisances that I had throughout my Advanced Portfolio journey. This proved useful as a reference tool for when I needed to check any of my research or progress. However, Blogger perhaps was not the best social networking site to choose, because it was fairly limited in terms of uploading audio clips, something that its competitors (e.g. Tumblr and Wordpress) are capable of doing. Thankfully, I was able to work my way around this by either posting a hyperlink to the audio clip I wished to use, or else I created a YouTube video only using audio (with a blank screen) and this worked just as effectively.

I used Google's calendar function to plan the day-to-day work I had to put into my production. This enabled me to organise both my thoughts and actions so I was able to complete the tasks I'd set much more easily. Although for the most part of my production, Google calendar was useful, I feel that I perhaps would have benefitted more from a calendar which notified me (via email or SMS, for example) whenever I had a deadline approaching. The Hotmail calendar may have been a better option, because I would have been able to change the settings so that it would alert me had I needed it. However, overall I think that the contribution of Google calendar in my Advanced Portfolio has been extremely helpful.





I used Prezi, a tool which allows people to create 'zooming' presentations that can be embed on blogs, etc. online. This was useful because it allowed me to concisely deliver my evaluative answers in a different form. Whilst it was useful, it perhaps was not the most user-friendly interface and took a little time to get used to.

I used Vimeo, a video sharing website, to upload my teaser trailer. I felt that this would be a better website to use rather than YouTube because Vimeo are seen as an organisation for "creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make." This fitted in with my ethos because I wished my teaser trailer to be seen by likeminded individuals, as opposed to other people who may not be particularly interested in my product. In addition to this, vimeo allowed me to upload at a better resolution, as well as a more suitable size for 'Aberration': when I tried uploading it to YouTube, for the most part, the picture was generally either too dark or too pixelated.

Constructing

I decided to use Premiere Pro CS3 for my main product, the reason being that I wanted more control over my final cut. For my AS psychological thriller opening sequence, I used iMovie HD because it was one of the easiest packages to learn, however, I realised that the cuts were not as ‘clean’ as if I were to use a more professional product. I believe that this was important to take into account, seeing as I needed as much control over the software as possible whilst making a teaser trailer, which conventionally consists of fast action shots. Moreover, because my teaser trailer’s main auditory sequence was a newsreader, I needed to have the ability of overlapping layers of both film and sound, rather than only sound..

Overall, I believe that this decision was effective, in that I was able to explore a new software, thus strengthening my ability to use a variety of media technologies. However, a negative aspect of using this software was that I had to learn a complicated programme in a short space of time, meaning that I perhaps was not able to spend the optimum amount of time I needed to on both the planning and execution of my final product.

Although I have never used Photoshop before, I found that Photoshop gave me the capacity to manipulate different layers in order to create a more finished product. This was invaluable whilst creating both the poster and magazine, in that they both generally have a mixture of both text and images (especially mainstream magazines, which I was aiming to recreate). On the other hand, as with Premiere Pro CS3, I had to learn to use an unfamiliar software. This meant that, whilst I was attempting to edit some of my images, I spent far longer on it than if I were to use a programme I was already accustomed to. However, on hindsight, I believe that it was necessary to invest time into learning how to use this product, so that I could control the finished product more thoroughly.

Web 2.0 is generally classed as being any application which allows its users to participate in the making or sharing of information. This is what dafont allows its viewers to do: a hyperlink named 'Submit a font' allows anyone to post fonts which they have made themselves, so that anyone online can use it at their own leisure. This was a huge asset to me because I was able to search fonts by type (e.g. horror) and choose according to my preferences. However, as with most user-generated sites, the amount of content is not limitless, so I found it difficult to find the font I wanted and occasionally had to settle for second best. Without websites such as dafont and fontspace, it would have been extremely difficult to produce a creative or 'individual' product.

Another media technology I used in the construction of my production is different free sound websites. I needed to utilise these because I did not get permission from any famous, published songs. This meant that I had to find audio files which were royalty free and could be used by the public (sometimes a 'shoutout' on the product created was necessary, but that did not cause any real hardship). The easiest way to do this is to search online, because there is a large amount of choice from user-generated websites such as freesound. However, again, the content is limited and may take a few different websites to find a suitable audio clip to use. I found this whilst I was searching for an audio file of birds chirping, the reason being that most recordings were of non-native birds (mainly from the USA), therefore the realism of my final product would not be as true to real life.

The main camera I used was a Sony HDR-FX1. I feel that this was a good camera to use whilst taking footage for my teaser trailer because it was able to shoot in high definition (HD), which would overall create a much better image for the audience. However, I feel that there were a few restrictions for using a Sony camera such as this one. For example, there were no independent audio controls which would have allowed me to perhaps get rid of most of the background noise which can be heard in the newsreader's script. This would have therefore created a much more professional product, which could lead to the audience enjoying the finished product a great deal more than now.

For most of the shots (with the exception of the ones in which 'Ellie' was trapped in the teacher's office), I used a tripod. This helped improve the quality of my teaser trailer, because if I had not used it, shots would probably be either wonky or shaky. Whilst this is a major benefit, I feel that there are some negative aspects of using a tripod. For example, because of their size, they are extremely inconvenient, so therefore, for the shots which had to be taken at a height, I found it difficult to walk up and down the stairs with. Overall, I believe that my end product would look very unfinished had I not used a tripod, so it was worth the inconvenience.

 I used a Sony DSLR camera for the pictures which went on both my poster and magazine cover. I chose this over a point and shoot camera because it generally creates less digital noise. I tried to avoid this as much as possible because I knew that I may need to resize/zoom into my photos, which would cause the overall quality to disintegrate whilst any digital noise worsened. On the other hand, DSLR cameras are generally larger and more bulty than their point and shoot alternatives, which sometimes made it difficult to carry around. I believe, however, that this issue was far outweighed by the quality and speed of the DSLR.