Jack Cranston

Evaluation: How did you use new media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Web based blogsThroughout both AS and A2 I used web blogs in order to log all of the

work that was completed including all pre-production, production and post-production work. For AS I used WordPress and A2 I

decided to use Blogger. Both of these are well-known and widely used, professional blog publishing services. I felt that blogger had

a much more user friendly feel to it as well as having some integrated features that linked to my Google account which is why

I decided to use that instead of WordPress in the second year.

YouTubeYouTube is a video sharing website which is

well known all around the world that over 800 million unique users visit each month. We used this as the format to publish and

showcase our trailer in order to gain audience feedback and embed the trailer

onto our blogs

Adobe Photoshop CS5.1Photoshop is professional software that is used

commonly in the publishing and print industries. We used this to create our magazine cover and poster as well as the drafts for these products. It has a great range of tools that helped us in the creation of our products such as: Cropping, resizing, dodging, burning, colour level adjustments, saturation, contrast etc.

Sony Vegas Pro 11.0Sony Vegas is professional video editing software which

we used to create our film trailer. The large variety of tools available to use allowed us to recreate similar styles and techniques of existing trailers through careful cutting, colour correction, transitions, levels adjustments etc. I had previous experience using this from a previous course so this allowed me to roam deeper into what this software is capable of during this project. This was useful in creating a seamless trailer that had a strong sense of continuity through use of careful cutting of recorded clips.

Sony Vegas Pro 11.0

WordleWordle.net is a site where you can type a long list of words and it will present those words in a more interesting fashion than just a simple list. I used this tool to create a list of Thriller trailer conventions.

SlideshareSlideshare is an online tool used to create a

slideshow, or convert an existing slideshow into one that can be shared easily online. I used this after I had created a presentation on Thriller conventions in order to embed the presentation onto my blog, it’s a very simple to use; select the presentation you want to upload and it will provide a link to embed the presentation on a website. I also intend to use it when uploading this presentation to my blog as well.

CeltxThis is professional software that is used to create

scripts. We used this to script our trailer during the planning stages of the production so that we were better prepared for when we came to film, this also allowed our actors to know what was needed to be said during any scenes with dialogue despite our trailer not containing much dialogue.

SurveyMonkeySurveyMonkey is an online based questionnaire site, we

decided to use this instead of paper handouts since it is a lot easier than printing off handouts and finding people with the time to fill them in. Using a web based questionnaire allowed us far more flexibility as we were able to post links of Facebook and Twitter which meant we could gain a much wider audience and generally people who see it on Facebook and Twitter at the time it is posted would normally have a few minutes to spare to complete it. It also included some really useful tools that helped with analysing the results and sorting them which meant we could formulate multiple audience groups from the different people who completed the questionnaire.

Gmail (Email)Using Gmail allowed me and my group to send links and

files to each via e-mail attachments. This was a huge help as we all live far apart from one another and it allowed us to communicate without having to organise to meet up. It also allowed us to receive useful recourses from our lecturer to aid us in all stages of the production.

Facebook & Twitter

These allowed us to communicate with members of the production team and actors, they were also great platforms to carry out primary research and also to display our products in order to gain audience feedback due to the high amount of usage.

Nikon D7000This is a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera that we

used to record our trailer with and take the images for our ancillary products. Since I also take a photography course I had prior experience with using this piece of kit so this assignment allowed me to refine what I already knew and allowed me to gain more knowledge of using the video functions which I had only used briefly in the past.

RODE Video MicWe used this microphone mounted on the camera or as

a separate, standalone audio recorder in order to capture diegetic sound when producing our trailer. This gave us the ability to record much higher quality audio than the cameras built-in microphone, it also provided more flexibility as we could place it right next to the subject if necessary in order to record quieter sounds.

SoundBibleSoundBilble.com is a website that offers sound effects and sound clips that are free from copyright

to be used in a variety of sound projects.We used this as a source for finding sounds that we

were unable to record ourselves or sounds that were difficult to obtain a high quality sample from