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

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

To successfully create our final media products for our trailer Fluoxetine we used a variety of new media technologies.

For some of the media technologies we used we had experience from AS level media for example I movie and YouTube however others were completely new such as Wix.com and Blogger.com. Thereforewe had to learn new skills however as a team this wasn’t too difficult.

iMovie

The main technology we used was Imovie on the Apple Macs, we decided to use this program as we had previous knowledge and knew it created well presented professional looking  edits. We used I movie for the construction and evaluation stages of creating the trailer. I movie was used to import our footage and edit into the final trailer using tools such as cropping, adding text and using filters to change the colour to black and white. We had used I movie in AS so had a good understanding of it however there were still skills we learnt such as the stabilization feature which was good for our beach shots because it was so windy when filming.

I movie was mainly used for the teaser trailer however we also used the software to create the website background and our evaluation questions. This was due to us knowing how to use it and so to keep all our A2 media tasks consistent in the way they looked.

YouTube and Vimeo
These are both video sharing websites; we used them in our research and evaluation stages. In the research stage they were used to search current trailers of our genre, such as Quadrophenia and The Weekender. We used the trailers we found to gain as much understanding of the genre as possible by doing deconstructions of them. Also in the research stage we looked at popular artists of the MOD era and watched their music videos for 60s inspiration such as The Who and The Beatles. We also looked at current artists music videos who are inspired by the mod era such as Jake Bugg.

We used the video sharing websites in the evaluation stage to publish our first draft of the trailer and the final cut.This was to gain feedback from a wider audience to see what they liked and what improvements should be made. YouTube and Vimeo were appropriate for this as we could count the views our videos had, people could ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ thev ideos and also leave comments. This was useful us when making sure our trailer was suited to our target audience correctly.

Microsoft Word
Another software we used was Microsoft word; this was used in the construction stages to create the anchorage for the trailer. On word we created the extra pages to add in the book with our actors names on. We created these by importing pictures and adding text, we then edited them to make them look like a newspaper article so they fitted into the book. We printed the pages off and slotted them into the book to make it look as though they had been printed into the book. This worked well as our group had a vast amount of knowledge using Microsoft word meaning we could edit the page to look realistic.

We also used word to create the banners used in our trailer for the reviews. We created these by using coloured textboxes and adding text, we then changed the font and the angle. An advantageof creating them in word was that they could easily be imported into I moviemaking the teaser trailer look professional and neat.

Cameras

We used both still and moving imagecameras. The still image camera was a Sony Alpha SLR 330 and was used in theplanning stage to take location shots. The SLR was also used in theconstruction stage to take photos for the poster background; the advantage of usingsuch a high quality camera meant the tablets were in high definition which isimportant as the poster needs to look as professional as possible. The moving image camera  was used throughout the construction stage to film all our footage for our trailer. Both cameras were hand cameras so lightweight and easy to use, meaning we could achieve a variety of angles andshots with them. When using both cameras we used a tripod to steady the camera and make sure all the shots were horizontally straight.

Blogger

One of the major parts of ourevaluation stage was keeping a blog throughout all three stages of research,planning and construction. We created our blog on blogger.com and updated it asmuch as possible. Things we blogged about included research into our genre suchas key artists and icons in the 1960s, planning such as our storyboard andshooting script and also updates of the trailer and websites such as our firstdrafts. The bog was simple and easy to keep as we could use text and images tocreate a post then publish it onto our blog. Blogger.com also gave us the feature to edit the blogs appearance such as change the background, text andlayout. This was beneficial as it meant our blog was closely linked to theFluoxetine trailer as it included similar text and images of our footage.

Wix

To create our website for our trailerwe used wix.com which is a website that helps set up and design websites. Weused it because it is simple and basic to use however creates professionallooking pages. To start with we chose a template which we would then alter tomake it related to Fluoxetine. We started by putting in the title and someinformation such as ‘coming soon,’ ‘A Chemical Productions film’ and ourtagline. We then had to choose to have an image as the home page background orto use a video imported from YouTube, either our trailer or a selection of ourfootage. We chose to create a mini video for the background as we felt we hadenough spare footage to use and that it would make the home page moreinteresting due to it being a moving image. Next we finalised the home page byadding in some reviews over the mini video, changing the tab links and creatinglinks to our social networking sites, Twitter and Instagram and also our blog. Althoughwe had never used wix.com we learnt how to use it quickly by experimenting andwatching tutorials, which helped us make the website look as professional and realisticas we wanted it to look.

Google
In the research stage we used internet search engines such as Google to search conventions of our youth culture genre and to find current films of the same genre. We also used Google when creating our film website as we looked at existing film websites and posters and also the conventions of them. This helped with the research stage tremendously as it meant we gained a wider knowledge of our genre meaning we could create the trailer either fitting to conventions or challengingthem. It also meant we found other youth culture films in which we hadn’t heardof either because they were older or due to them being not well known such as Cherrybomband Ginger Snaps. 

Windows Paint
We used the Windows software Paintfor a few parts of the project such as website and poster deconstructions whichare published on the blog. We used paint because it’s a very simple and basicprogramme which doesn’t need any expertise. It was suitable for thedeconstructions as all that was needed was text and arrows pointing todifferent parts of the print screened image.

Another task which we used paint forwas when we created the mod sign to go into the ‘O’ of Fluoxetine. We needed touse paint as once we had saved the image it had to be edited to have a transparentbackground. This was simple to do in paint and once done it needed to be savedas a ‘png’ file so it could be successfully imported into iMovie.

Dafont

To keepconsistency throughout all our media products we needed a title font whichsuited our genre and time period of the 70’s. To find an appropriate font weused the website Dafont.com where you can download different fonts from thedefault ones on Microsoft Word and iMovie as these are too basic and wecouldn’t find one which we thought would be suitable. After searching throughthe selection available on Dafont.com we found one we liked called Mouse Deco.We downloaded it and imported it into our trailer to see if it looked suitable,once we had tested it, we changed all our title fonts to Mouse Deco. Thisincluded the poster text, website text and trailer text. We hadn’t usedDafont.com before however we didn’t need previous experience to know how to useit as it was as simple as downloading the font and then applying it inMicrosoft Word and IMovie.

Social Newtworking Sites
For part of the evaluation stage weused social networking sites to share our video from YouTube so we could gainfeedback from a wider target market. Social networking sites we used includedTwitter, Facebook and Instgram. Fluoxetine has its own twitter account which weupdated as we went along, we also posted links to our trailer which wasuploaded to YouTube so people could watch and either tweet us back or commentunder the video on YouTube. Facebook was used by our group members to share theYouTube video among our friends to that our trailer had more views andopinions. Between Facebook and twitter we read through the feedback we weregiven and made changes. These social networking sites were really beneficial asit gave us a platform to share our videos to people we didn’t know in otherages groups and countries. All group embers had previous knowledge of thesocial network sites meaning they were easy to set up and manage.

Instagram was used to share picturesof our trailer as it was being filmed in all our locations. Again we hadprevious knowledge of this site so managed it well and made it look neat andprofessional, as though fluoxetine was a real trailer.