Media Evaluation Question 4-How did you use media technologies in

the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

SlideShare is something that I hadn’t used in my previous projects and I found that it enabled me to make the presentation of my blog look very neat and professional while helping my to keep my work creative. I have used it for several pieces of my work such as Plot Blocking, Ancillary Research, Survey Responses etc. I really liked using SlideShare as it was easy for any reader/viewer to navigate and work out. I found it especially useful when using Blogger because Blogger doesn’t allow me to put a Powerpoint onto in therefore, I could upload it to SlideShare and embed it from there so, it actually helped me solve some issues I was struggling with, another good point is that it also works with word documents which allowed me to upload and present my shot list/script without any trouble. SlideShare itself has a built in system that lets you know how easy your presentation is to find and what tags to use etc. even though this doesn’t apply to what I need I believe this is good idea when it would come to marketing/distributing a film itself.

Like I previously just said, I would create a PowerPoint with I would upload onto SlideShare and embed from there so, I have rarely used PowerPoint for these projects before however, using it this year has allowed me to go into more detailed visually then I did before as it’s easy to place pictures/screenshots into it just like I have done on this slide. You can do this easily on Blogger however, the positioning and sizing isn’t as free as it is on PowerPoint allowing me to positioning things to fit the structure or move everything exactly how I want it and when I can’t do this on Blogger it can be slightly annoying so, PowerPoint is a happy alternative. I have used PowerPoint for a few of pieces of work such as explaining my production logo ideas/decisions, Ancillary Research etc. I have been happy with how all of them have turned out and how I’ve been able to use this method of presentation throughout both planning and research effectively.

I had previously avoided using Microsoft Word as I didn’t like the layout when on my blog however, now having the alternative of uploading it to SlideShare I used it for more pieces of work such as my shot list/script and film review draft. While doing previously doing some work on a script to help practice my skills to write the one for this project when I found that Microsoft Word actually had a Plug-in which can make it easy to select the correct settings for each part of a script for example, dialogue will automatically be placed in the middle with the characters name instantly underlines, another is the first 2 transitions being placed to the right and the rest the left. I have found things like this helpful when learning the layout for myself but also to apply it to my pieces of work to help my achieve the best I can out of the piece.

Blogger is something I have used the most throughout this project as it what I upload all of my work to whether it’s straight from Blogger or embedding work from alternative places. I’ve found that even though it’s hard to position things sometimes due to Blogger’s setting it’s still an effective way of presentation and can be as creative as any other. I have used it for a large proportion of my work, I have used it for all of my moving image textual analysis’s which I found was very helpful as they’re extremely text heavy and Blogger allows me to preview how my work would lookon my blog which helped me to estimate how much to write and actually helped me to make sure I didn’t go off topic while writing. Something that I like about Blogger that the others don’t do as much is that you’re able to go back to older work and adjust/tweak them if needed and there’s no need to fuss with re-uploading etc. it also, has a built in spell-checker which is helpful for my as I always forget to proof read my work and sometimes miss my grammar mistakes.

This was actually my first time using Bubbl.us and I am glad I did. Bubbl.us is a online software, where you can easily mind-map things out. I only used this for my second idea developments as I wanted to vary and widen my methods of presentation but also, I felt that if I was to go wrong on bubbl.us I could easily just erase something or hit the back button but if I drew it out and went wrong the presentation would look as good. I did come across a few issues while using it though for example, when it came to actually uploading it to my blog I attempted to download and upload it as a .png while but it just wouldn’t show up on the blog post at all and when I changed it to .jpeg it was too small which resulting in me having to crop it and use Photoshop to place them side by side so that it was evident how the layout was suppose to go. Even though it was a struggle it did provide my piece of work with a nice layout and ultimately helped me to decide what route I wanted to take my storyline on.

Prezi is something I have previously used and I tried to limit how much I used it this time to help me with my variation of different presentation methods however, I still used it for a couple of my pieces of work such as, my three poster analysis’s, audience profiling etc. I find that Prezi is a create software to make your work interact and sometimes more memorable as it has a lot more features then anything else I have used for example, you can have music playing over the top of the presentation, you can play clips within the prezi, movements can be controlled by the viewer etc. This is also the only other software from Blogger that allows you to go back and alter/change anything at a later date without having to re-upload or anything which is afeature I really like. It also, has some creative and professional pre-done templates which I found helpful as this saved me some time when creating my prezi’s but also you had complete control over everything within the Prezi when creating it.

Adobe Photoshop CS6

Right from the beginning I knew I was going to be using Adobe Photoshop CS6 to construct my Ancillary tasks however, throughout my project I found that I was able to used it through every aspect: research, planning etc. even if it was for little things such as, placing two images next to one another or creating a mood board. Even though I have used Adobe Photoshop for awhile I still learnt new things/skills through this project such as, blending two background into one another (double page film review) or even co-making a font for my film title. I even used a section of this software I didn’t know existed which was the photo editor, it can only be used with .NEF pictures and it allows me to manipulate, change and alter things such as, the saturation of the image, the shadows etc. this is something I experimented and used with my piece of work ‘Antagonist Make-Up’.

DaFont is a website I commonly use to download interesting and creative fonts, I used it a lot more in this project then I have don’t previously as I felt this was an area that I need to spent more time and research on. I used DaFont to find any possible fonts I could use for film titles/ production names and I found that his was very helpful when it came to decisions and audience research/feedback. An issue I did come across with this website though is it, for my title I planned to use a Greek work which required some accents and certain layouts and DaFont did not having any fonts with these conditions which let to me having to download some fonts and alter/customize them myself which actually helped my to development some of my Photoshop skills. DaFont font’s did actually help with the presentation of blog posts as I would sometimes use their fonts as titles to help make my posts more creative

Survey Monkey was a vital part when it came to my research section as I was able to easily create surveys and distribute them even easier which helped me to reach both my target audience and others to help me collect results and compare them against one another and the horror conventions, to help me make decisions. I found that SurveyMonkey was very helpful and effective when it came to me analysis the results as it providing me with the most popular choices and simple statistics which I was able to include in my research itself. However, something I did limiting about this website is that I was only able to ask 10 questions which meant I was able to ask everything I wanted and It would be as easy to compare the two separate surveys as it would be just the one.

Youtube is where I distribute my Main Task to (short film) but I have also used it as another presentation method for things such as my Focus Group, Final Pitch and Ident Drafts. I have also found that it’s a good way to show to progress and process of my editing for the Short Film and things such as the ident as this is something I didn’t do much last year except screenshots whereas, I feel like this method it more interesting. It was especially useful for my ‘A2 Focus Group’ as when I uploaded it to Youtube a transcript was generated for it automatically, a bad point of this is that the transcript wasn’t 100% correct however, it still saved more some time which I was able to put towards other pieces of work.

I was able to use Final Cut Pro X for more then just the construction/editing of my main task (short film.) I was able to use it to edit things such as my A2 Focus Group, taking out any long pauses and making it more interesting to listen to but also, I was able to overlay pictures on the screen while the audio/speaking played so that it wasn’t just a boring plain screen. I also used it to show the construction/planning of my Ident ideas through speeding them up and editing them only slightly to help show the process I went through to create them in a more interesting way then just typing and screenshots.

Final Cut Pro x

QuickTimeEven though QuickTime it conventionally used to view/watch videos, it can also be used to record your screen so I used this feature to record my screen as edited/created my first ident draft so that I would be able to speed it up in Final Cut Pro and upload it to my blog through Youtube to make the presentation more visual and creative, I also thought that by doing it this way it’s more self explained as I find that it can be hard to explain an editing process so instead I decided to show it.

Nikon D5100

Soft-box lighting

The Nikon d5100 is the camera I used to both film my main task (short film) and take the pictures for my ancillary task (poster & double page film review.) This camera does come with some pre-done settings/ menus which can be helpful but I have also done a lot of research into the technical side of Nikon camera’s which I found helped me a slightly when working in low lighting along with how to apply lighting to the shot but make it seem darker on the camera when filming.

I only used the soft-box lighting for my main task and ancillary task (film poster) I used them to help with the amount of grain that I always find a struggle within my clips usually and found that it did actually work. Also, I especially needed them when taking pictures for my poster as the lighting require was for it to be much darker at the bottom of the characters face then at the top to help make the photo seem sinister and with the soft-box lighting this was much easier.

Apple Mac/Laptop

HP laptop

For 95% of my project I used a Apple Mac Laptop or computer as that is the technology I have available at home where I did a majority of the work. Also, most of the software that I used was specialized to apple products such as, Final Cut Pro X. I also found this the easiest computer to use when it came to taking screenshots and adding them to my blog and it was an easy two step process but on computers such as HP which I used when at college it was much more difficult and time consuming.

For the other 5% I used a HP laptop which was usually when I was in college and I found this very useful when it came to small Photoshop jobs such as creating to drafts for my ‘look closer/fact section’ and also for completing text heavy blog posts.