How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction and

Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Charlie Smith
 Uses Of The Blog
One of the main advantages of a blog is that it allows you to harness many
forms of media in one place. During the research + planning, construction and
evaluation stages of my coursework I used many forms of media.

An embedded YouTube Video Publisher File Photos

By using different forms of media it not only allows to you access many types of
resources but it is aesthetically interesting. On the whole, I would define my blog
as a coming together of my research, planning, construction and evaluation
stages of my teaser trailer.
 Uses Of The Blog Continued
The Blogging platform that I used was Wordpress. Overall I was extremely happy with Wordpress, it’s
chronological posting feature allowed me to easily keep track of posts and generally make my
coursework more organised compared to doing my coursework on paper for example.

The ‘blogging culture’ meant that whenever I felt like it I could add my thoughts and findings to my
blog. Instead of becoming a formal document, sometimes I added random thoughts which made
my coursework more personal and individual.

Because my blog was online, it meant that I could seek feedback fairly easily through methods such
as polls and message boards. However the main problem with polls is that people in general
(including me) made appropriate polls yet failed to act on the findings of these polls. In terms of
research data, seeking information from target audiences of specific genres etc was important in
finding out what people REALLY want and are interested in.
 Research
• IMDB- One of the best internet resources that I used was IMDB.COM or ‘the internet movie database’. This tool was
extremely useful in researching films from specific genres, and other important information such as setting locations and
access to current trailers, posters and magazine covers. In the early stages of my coursework when I was researching
genre, I used the psychological thriller page in order to find links to past films from this genre. I find it hard to critique IMDB,
as it was such a helpful resource in the research stage of my coursework, however sometimes it did become a little
confusing as it is simply such a huge pool of knowledge.

• YouTube- The popular video sharing website ‘YouTube’ was also a resource that I used in the research stage of my
coursework. YouTube also has vast numbers of trailers that I viewed in order to gain an insight into other trailers of my
genre/target audience. However I stuck to IMDB predominantly, because the trailers were simply easier to find. YouTube
was also a helpful in finding ‘amateur’ film makers and their trailers/short films. On my blog I left a post about ‘BlackBoxTv’,
a Channel where amateur short horror films are displayed. I really liked the idea of not just trying to research into huge
blockbuster films but learning lessons from smaller productions aswell.

• Poll Daddy- I used Poll Daddy to produce polls and surveys for my blog. In my opinion, I did ask relevent questions in my
polls, for example questions about target audience. However I must admit I did fail to react upon these results and actually
‘learn’ anything from the findings. In the future I would write a blog post evaluating what the polls concluded and what I will
use the results for.

• Publisher and Powerpoint- I used these two pieces of software in order to showcase my research findings and display
analytical documents on my blog. They are both easy to use and I have had previous experience with both of them,
meaning I didn’t have to learn them from scratch. Both made my blog seem aesthetically interesting and avoid boring essay
upon essay. The use of powerpoint and publisher also meant that I had to find a way of putting them onto my blog. I used a
service called Scribd which allows you to upload many file types and embed them into wordpress. After initial struggle and
the use of similar services such as SlideShare, Scribd became an essential tool that allowed me to embed media.
 Planning
• Publisher- I used publisher to create detailed plans for my trailer. I used the scan tool in order to import
my storyboard onto publisher. The storyboard was the centrepiece of my plan, which gave the viewer a
visual outlook onto what I wanted to do with my trailer. However I failed to give detail in terms of writing,
where next time I would add more detailed notes to my storyboard for example camera angles, lighting
issues and length of a shot.

• Photography- I used photography in order to document my progress in the planning stages of my

coursework. Character shots and location shots gave an outline of where I was going with my trailer.

• On the planning aspect of my coursework, I would say that I used too much writing in posts. I did create
detailed lists about what i was planning to do with my trailer in different aspects e.g. mise en scene,
camera shots etc. however next time I would use more forms of media available to me.

Blog posts discussing planning and the use of

photography
•
Construction
Video- Video was used in the production of my trailer. I used a relatively old camcorder, however it was simple and quick to use. If I
had used a more sophisticated camera then the video quality of my trailer may have been slightly better. Some features of the
camera were inadequate for my trailer, for example I wanted to perform a focus pull yet the camera was simply to tricky to set up.
Uploading my footage to my video editing software was also quick and easy.

• YouTube- also used the popular video-sharing website YouTube in order to showcase my trailer going through all of the stages of
construction. I chose YouTube because the website supports many video formats and the upload times are relatively quick. The
website is also compatible with Wordpress in that embedding my trailer into my Blog was quick and easy. However I did have a few
problems with failed uploads and copyright issues with music, but I did manage to overcome this in the end. I also used YouTube for
the conventional starting titles, such as the Universal logo.

• SoundCloud- I used SoundCloud in order to upload audio to my blog. Again I used this tool because it is easily compatible with
wordpress. I used SoundCloud to showcase the soundtrack that I hope to use on my trailer.

• Video Editing Adobe Premiere Elements 2- Overall I would say that adobe elements had many features which helped a relative
‘newcomer’ to video editing yet it did take some time to get used to. In terms of evaluating the software, I would say that it held me
back in places such as titles and transitions, where the options were limited. I wanted to have the text to ‘flicker’ or move in a
aggravated manor yet the options for titles were limited to a roll or a crawl. Perhaps if I had used a newer video editing software
package it may have improved my trailer as these options and features could have been available to me, as elements 2 is around 5
years old. Due to Adobe Premiere not having certain tools available, it took me a considerable amount of time in order to add the
REC button and other handheld mise en scene such as a gritty or grainy quality. I had to seek these from alternate sources such as
YouTube and download them.

• Photo Editing Adobe Photoshop- I used Photoshop in order to create my magazine and poster. Photoshop is a complicated bit of kit
that is to a professional standard, however I have experience from AS level in this software. In my opinion, Photoshop was
extremely good at creating professional looking media products, with a huge variety of fonts, colours etc that I used in both my
magazine front cover and poster. I have found it hard to criticize Photoshop, the options for photo editing (picture bottom right) were
highly detailed and allowed me to adjust the levels of my background picture in my poster and magazine. Options such as this would
not have been available to me in alternate software such as Microsoft Publisher. The ‘layers’ feature was also one of the most
valuable parts of Photoshop which made my poster and magazine have a professional and convention layout. The options of
‘opacity’ gave my media product real depth and made them less 1 dimensional. This is apparent in my poster, where the 3 photos
merge into 1 to give the audience a better understanding of the themes and issues raised in my trailer.
 Evaluation
• I tried to use different forms of media in order to present my evaluation.

• Powerpoint- I used Microsoft Powerpoint in order to showcase text and pictures. In conjunction with a
powerpoint embedding tool called Scribd. I enjoyed using powerpoint because it made my blog seem
more aesthetically interesting with fonts, colours etc, yet it still allowed me to showcase detailed and
relevant text. One of the biggest problems I had was actually getting my powerpoint files into wordpress,
yet after a few months scribd enabled me to do this.

• Video- I used video in order to answer self evaluative questions but the main advantage to using video is
that it enabled me to gain feedback off other people in front of the camera. This was invaluable because
people can pick out things which personally I could not see. I asked people many questions to do with my
media products. Some very simple questions which gave a vague idea of peoples opinions of my trailer,
for example best/worst bits. But also more structured analytical questions to do with my trailers
conventions and similarities to ‘real’ media products. However, I think it would have been more
appropriate if I would have received more detailed feedback during the construction process as an
oppose to the end of my coursework, because then I could have made appropriate changes and possibly
improve.

• Although I want to use different forms of media in order to present the evaluation stages of my
coursework, sometimes the best option was to create simple blog posts. By focusing on creativity more
than the content of my work, sometimes I didn’t concentrate as much on the level of detail and accuracy
of the evaluation questions.