Q4 – How did you use media technology in the construction and research, planning and evidence

and evaluation stages?

Sony HXR MC 2000E

We used the Sony HXR in the recording of our documentary, it’s a solid state hard drive, so this has no moving parts so this makes it very durable. It shoots in 1080p full hd .

This is a screen shot from the documentary shot with the Sony HXR , we used the Sony's on board microphone to record the audio during this interview. This provided a balanced sound, but it did pick up some background noise. We used the mini touch screen to view what we were recording instead of using the view finder as it gave a better view and didn’t restrict our vision.

This is the Manfrotto tri-pod we used during the recording process, this let us to have smooth steady shots, while recording. The tri-pod was essential because without it, the documentary would have had poor, shaky feel to it all. This would of made it hard for the audience to focus on the interview subjects and the overall documentary.

This is a shot taken from our documentary, during this interview we used a tri-pod set and the eye level of the person being interviewed. This shows a steady shot because if it was shot with a hand-held it would be very shaky.

Using this tri-pod allowed use to be creative with the types of camera shots, because some of the shots we could not of done without using a tri-pod. E.g track, pan and tilt. By using this types of shot it kept the audiences attention throughout the whole documentary.

Example of a Pan – Using a tri-pod

Shot one

Shot two

Shot three

As shown below in the photos, this is a pan. We used a pan to engage with the audience to create a feel as if they were actually there watching the band live.

Clip Microphone

This is a clip on mic, we used to record the audio during interview it was clipped onto the person being interviewed clothing, and the wire was ran out of shot.

This picture shows a clip mic being used during one of our interview, it is placed as close to the sound source as possible, but not too close because that would cause the audio to clip and distort.

Adobe Premiere CS5

This screen shot us adding a cross dissolve to one of our interviews, this was done by choosing the video transition menu and grabbing the cross dissolve and placing it onto the part of the video that we wanted it on.

This screen shots shows use editing our sound bed, we double clicked the audio file and opened up the bigger edition and manually turned the track up and down at the points in the documentary when people are speaking.

Adobe Photoshop CS5

This screen shot shows me selecting one of the layers in my poster, doing this allows me to edit the selected layer by adding effects including – blur, sharpen and a range of filters.

This screen shot shows me editing the layer style, this allows me change things such as the blending options, add drop shadow and the colour overlay.

This screen shot shows use taking a still image from an interview in our documentary, we have done this because during the recording of this interview, the camera shows up in the Screen of the Mac. We needed to fix this and remove it from the shot, without having to re-record the whole interview.

This one is the next step, we exported the still from premiere into Photoshop and cropped it down to the area we need to work on, using the crop tool. Doing this allowed us to work on the area without effecting any other areas.

This screen shot shows use zooming in on the area we need to fix, we then used the eye dropper tool to get the exact colour from the screen of the Mac, the we made a new layer of the same colour and dropped it over the area that needed fixing we then used the blur tool to blend it in to the screen.

This shows the final fixed interview, in premiere we imported as a PNG into premiere we then found the parts of the documentarywhere this interview happens and placed the PNG on its own track on the timeline over the top of the interview making sure it fitted and was in time. There was a slight issue with the reflection because as the person being interviewed hands passes through it seems to disappear but we thought this was a small trade off, to save us the time and hassle to re-record the whole interview.

Dell XPS

This is the Dell XPS PC which ran the software, we used it to edit the documentary, and Photoshop. The Pc was capable power to run these programmes with minimal error, and system crashing. The overall feel of this PC was alright, but was frustrating at times because of its speed. I wouldn’t personally choose to editing on these PC’s again due to there prone to error within the programmes and slow running speed and clunky feel.

Youtube

We used Youtube, to gather our achieve footage because of it’s vast amounts of video footage in a range of genres and styles.

We opened Youtube in firefox, we did this so we could take advantage of Firefox’s plugins. This allowed us to download our selected footage in either 720 or 1080p this was very useful because, it kept with the quality of the whole documentary, and it didn’t lessen the professinal feel of the whole documentary by using achieve footage at 360p

Firefox Plugin’s

Internet Explorer

We used sources such as BBC, we used these sources because they are very reliable. We used this instead of Wikipedia because members of the public can editing anything on Wikipedia so you can not trust the valdilty.

We used internet explorer as out internet source, this was because of its wide availability on every pc in the world, this allowed us to have access to a wide range of website to collect our information from.

PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint was used to create power points presentation, we used this because it is the industry standard when making presentations for people to see. It is very simple and easy to use so it made it so easy to make power points.

Adobe Acrobat

We used adobe acrobat to create PDF files, with the results of out questionnaires. This allowed use to create Pie charts and bar graphs along side text to explain what the graphs are displaying.

Excel

We used Microsoft excel, we used this to input data from our questionnaires into graphs.

Blogger

We used Blogger to show our progress as we made our documentary, we posted everything from planning, research and the actual documentary. This was very difficulty because of bloggers poor layout and errors and prone to crashing, which at points to lose your work.