Evaluation Question 4How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction & Research, Planning and

Evaluation Stages?

Throughout the different stages in the coursework such as Research and Planning, Production and Post Production and Evaluation, we have made use of different technologies.

Some technologies were new and some were familiar as we had developed skills from our AS coursework.

The technologies has really helped us to meet the genre and has allowed us to create a trailer that we intended to create by following conventions.

Technologies

Apple Desktop Macs was the main technology that had been used through the project. The advantage of doing the editing and other work on the MAC compared to the laptop was that the MACs had more memory and RAM which was good for other technologies like Final Cut Pro and After Effects when it came to the rendering as it was a lot quicker. We had experienced the use of MAC’s in AS so it was an advantage.

Apple Desktop Mac

The After Effects editing had mostly been done on the editors own laptop. This is because the Apple Mac’s had an older version of After Effects that had been installed which did not allow some of the plugins and presets to work.

Therefore, own laptop was used as it was compatible with the latest version of After Effects.

Laptop: Lenovo G580

There were several different technologies that we had used throughout the Research and Planning as this was the stage that got us prepared to make our products like the trailer, poster and website.

Some of the technologies used were: Wordpress, Slideshare, Scribd, YouTube, Digital DSLR Cameras, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, After Effects, Google and Facebook.

Research and Planning

WordPress is an online tool that we used to blog our coursework and post news and update for our target audience to see.

WordPress was useful to us because it allowed us to post information on our research, ancillary tasks, production and feedback. It was easy to use as we had experienced using this in our AS Coursework so it was straightforward for us to use

Slideshare is another tool that we had used last year so we knew how to use it. It was really helpful for us as it allowed us to post our documents like Word Docs and PowerPoints, however, we used it mainly to post our PowerPoints on it.

It was very quick and easy to use and made us manage the blog efficient instead of having the text into posts with images as the blog would go on and on. Therefore, we decided to use Slideshare and embed the PowerPoints in.

Scribd allow us to upload documents onto it and get an embedded code fro WordPress. Again this was easy and quick to use and we had used it before and knew what we had to do. It was easy because instead of us creating a post on our blog, we were able to show the whole document.

We uploaded things like script, shot lists, feedback and so on

These are all the documents that we have uploaded on Scribd and to the blog.

We used SurveyMonkey for our work to get feedback from the audience. SurveyMonkey allowed us to create and conduct an online survey. Firstly, it was hard to get around when creating the questions but there was help provided so didn’t cause much problems. SurveyMonkey also allowed us to analyze the results and see individual responses with graphs. This was beneficial as it gave us a visual into the answers.

YouTube was really helpful to use in the coursework. We used YouTube to do our research into similar texts because the trailers were found there. This was beneficial as it allowed us to make note of common codes and conventions of the genre.

From our target audience research, we found out that they were more Web 2.0 based and for them YouTube was the best method to update them with our post-production and how we were doing.

We had no trouble using YouTube as we had previous knowledge on how to use it and we ourselves are Web 2.0 based so we can relate to the target audience and know what they wanted.

iMovie was used by the editor Krishan Patel last year, however Jayesh Mohane decided to take on the editing role this year. We started of the editing in iMovie but we were facing problems with iMovie as the work did not auto-save on the MAC and we had to redo everything. We were going to use iMovie to edit the trailer and the feedback we get. It wasn’t a struggle but then we decided to move onto something new and try using it. So we moved onto Final Cut Pro.

iMovie

Final Cut Pro X was something that we came across for the first time. Getting to learn FCPX was not hard as it was similar to After Effects and iMovie but there were some areas where the editor needed help and so we used Google to find out the answers.

Final Cut Pro X was used to edit the trailer and put the footage together as well as to edit the feedback and other things we had to edit.

Google was something that everyone was familiar with. It is a well known search engine that we used to research into similar texts trailers, posters and websites. We were able to get secondary pictures from Google as well.

Google was also used to research into things we needed help with for example, the use of some features in FCPX; we used Google to get the answers for our questions.

Google provided us an easy route to the websites we needed to research into.

Facebook was social networking site that we had used to build our relationship with our audience. We used this to communicate to the audience and keep them updated on our progress by updating statuses with texts, images and videos.

Because of our research and knowing our target audience is Web 2.0 based, Facebook is a site they used everyday, so it was convenient for us.

The production of the trailer, poster and website was done as a group as we all put in ideas. There were different technologies that had been used to produce the different products.

These include things like Final Cut Pro X, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, DSLR Cameras, WIX, and YouTube.

Production

Last year we had used normal hand held cameras and we faced difficulties with the quality of the footage. Therefore, this year we decided that to make the trailer stand out and appealing, we would use a HD DSLR camera because of the quality of the footage was high definition and our cameraman, Mark, had experience using it even though we suffered minor problems.

We used the camera throughout the course to record the footage we need an to get audience feedback on our work at different stages as we needed to know what they thought and how we can improve it to meet their needs.

The camera was also portable which allowed us to carry it around as we shot few scenes in the park.

Digital Camera

Final Cut Pro X has been used throughout the production stage. It was used to edit the trailer and put the footage we had together. We used different transitions that were provided by FCP in the trailer to make it match the convention of the genre we had chosen.

FCP was a good choice as it worked well with After Effects because After Effects allowed us to edit the footage with the CGI effects that we needed. The clips from After Effects once edited were put on FCP where they were colour graded and changed to match the storyline.

After Effects was used on the own laptop of the editor where all the computer generated interfaces (CGI FX) were made.

Because of prior knowledge on how to use After Effects, it was not a problem, however the things he needed help with, were found online through websites like VideoCopilot and AeTuts+.

After Effects

Since we knew what genre we were doing, we knew that the genre can only be defined as the genre if it had some CGI effects and we knew After Effects allowed us to create and edit the CGI effects.

It was an accessible software as it was installed on the school MAC and the editor, Jayesh had bought it for his laptop. Most editing for this was done on his laptop during school as the school MAC had an older version which was not compatible some effects like Trapcode Particular and Optical Lens flare.

The text on screen that we had was also edited on After Effects.

After Effects…

These are the CGI FX Folders.

AETuts plus was an online website that was free to use that had tutorials on different motion and visual effects that we had used.

It helped us to edit some of the things like the texts we have in the trailer and the teleport jumper effect.

Additionally, through the research we came across Video Copilot which also provided tutorials for After Effects which we used in our production to see the tutorials and improvise it and adapt it in our own coursework. Video Copilot was hard to use and get around as it was the first time we were using it but we managed to find our way around and watched tutorials of effects like Sub Surface Skin etc.

AETuts+ and Video Copilot

We used Adobe Photoshop to design one of our ancillary tasks which was a poster. Because from last years experience and IT experience we did not have much difficulties using the software. We used Photoshop to design the poster for our trailer.

WIX was an online tool that was free to use. It allowed us to create our second ancillary task which was a website. Through research from Google we found WIX and we found it was easy to use despites that face we used it for the first time, and had few problems, but we managed to overcome them and solve it. We were planning to design the website on Adobe Dreamweaver but we thought that would be not a good idea as the layout would look messy whereas WIX has templates we can design and work on from scratch.

YouTube was used in the production stage to post our final cut and the drafts that we had made. We had used this as it is popular and we know that our target audience is YouTube based because of Web 2.0. We uploaded the trailer onto our blog through YouTube by using an embedded code and we all had knowledge on how to use YouTube so we had no difficulties.

For the evaluation, we used different technologies to put our evaluation across.

We used a Samsung Mini S4 voice note recorder to record our voice for the podcast. Since it was a smart phone it was able to pick up the voice quickly and clearly and we had knowledge on how to use it.

Final Cut Pro was used to edit the podcasts we had recorded and also edit the footage for the other question. We had to edit the podcasts to make sure there was no pauses in the recording and we added in clips from our trailer to back up what we were saying.

YouTube was used to post our evaluation videos and podcasts so that we can embed it into the website we had created. It was a great tool for distributing the questions we answered. Again, we had no difficulty in doing this because we were very familiar with YouTube.

Prezi was a software that our editor was familiar with as he had used it at GCSE. Therefore, there was no problems in using it. Prezi works like a PowerPoint however, Prezi allows the presentation to be interactive with videos, sounds and images. It had a transition effect from one text box to another which was really interesting and Prezi was a good choice to show our wide range of technology use.

To put all our answers to the evaluation questions, we decided that we will use a template from WIX and add in the answers to the questions we have along with out trailer, logo and link to our Facebook Page, WordPress blog, YouTube channel and the group members.