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

For the construction of our trailer, we used FinalCutPro and SoundtrackPro. The tools on FinalCutPro such as inserting text, cutting clips and changing the pace of certain clips were ones that were neccessary for our production and were used the most. We had little experience on FinalCutPro therefore a lot of practise and trial and error was needed to get the correct effect we wanted. We also needed to cut the original and natural sounds from the trailer. We had several problems with the images working as the message 'media file offline' appeared several times and we had to reupload the images yet once we had worked out why this was happening we were able to stop it. We also used a microphone to record the voiceover and then had to transfer this onto the trailer. SoundtrackPro was used to create the music. We did not do much layering as we didn't want it to sound too heavy and therefore after creating several tracks, decided on one.
Photoshop was used for the poster and magazine front cover. We used a lasoo tool and contrast tools to edit the pictures and give the effect we wanted. We also changed the size of the images, making our main character slightly large than the others to make it clear she was important. Our images within the trailer were also editied to give a more 'old' effect using another editing tool on photoshop.

The majority of our research was carried out through the internet, with youtube being a key source. Firstly, we looked at the conventions of a chick flick and popular films in the genre. This provided us with an idea of exactly what we wanted to do. We then watched several film trailers and each picked parts we liked and thought were effective. We looked at current magazine coveres such as Studio and posters such as St Trinians which we found off the internet to create an analysis of the key conventions.  Some of our ideas came from music videos too in which similar styles were used e.g. the photo effects in Olly Murs video.We also carried out our survey through survey monkey and sent this link via email and facebook therefore this was neccessary for our production. We also used Microsoft Outlook to email teachers about using props and certain area's of the school.
Our planning was done through the use of media technologies. A graphics pen was used to create the storyboards and for some of the analysis as this was more convienient and provided a better quality. The layout templates were created on publisher to give some idea of where we wanted things to go, which made it easier to transfer the images and text and create the image intended.
The graphics pen was also used for some of the writing on our ancillary products such as the poster's slogan.

We evaluated our text through the use of peer assessment being recorded. By recording people talk about our text we were able to get clear ideas about what should be changed and what was good. We also used slideshare to create a lot of our evaluation materials to make it interactive and interesting.


BY JORDENE