How did you use new media technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

Question 4

New media technology was the essential element to this project, from research and planning right through to this final evaluation. New media technology has meant that I could display my research and planning in an effective and different way, it enabled us to actually create our production work, and made my evaluation to be interesting compared to using a typical Microsoft Word document report.

New media technology development has been fundamental for the hardware's we have used throughout our project. My research and planning was completed on a laptop so that I could use the presentation software's to display my work; I used Microsoft Word to write out all of my documents and then used software's such as Slideshare and Powtoon to make these into engaging presentations.

We used a digital camera in both the planning and production of our work. It was used in our planning to make a post-it note animatic storyboard for our trailer rather than creating a static storyboard, therefore meaning that we could re-arrange our storyboard to create and manipulate the continuity and we could re-watch it in the post-production stage of our work.

This same hardware was used to capture our original images for our two ancillary tasks. We used my Samsung DV90 which uses a sixteen megapixel camera, meaning that our images were in focus and were of a high standard of quality. The development of new media technology in relation to cameras has meant that we could view our images on the screen to tell whether we needed to take more photos instead of having to re-do our photoshoots.

We used the hardware of a Sanyo Xacti camcorder so that we could film our trailer using a high quality video camera. If we did not have new media technology, then we wouldn't have been able to record our trailer at all. We then edited our trailer in post-production on an Apple iMac computer, allowing us to use the software iMovie which isn't available on other brands of laptops and computers as it is an Apple software.

Our main software used in the production of our trailer was iMovie. This use of iMovie allowed us to edit our trailer and manipulate all of our clips. For most of our clips, we tweaked the brightness and contrast, making the shots appear a lot darker to connote a feeling of darkness and eeriness. Also, it allowed us to create transitions, like our jump cut, as the large preview the software gives us means that we can analyse the difference between the size and length of the shots. We were able to add in our soundtrack that we exported from Garageband, and we also used the preset soundtracks on iMovie to add tension to our trailer.

iMovie also allowed us to create professional looking title cards. We were able to open a preset project theme that the software has installed, which we were then able to apply to our own project. We chose the project that had the mountains production company logo as we felt that it looked like the Paramount Pictures production company as it connotes professionalism and creates a link between the two companies due to the relation of the logos. If it wasn't for this new media technology, we would only have a collection of video clips and we would not have a trailer.

Adobe Photoshop was the most used software for our ancillary tasks. We were able to manipulate our images almost entirely through the use of this new media technology. We toyed with the brightness, contrast, exposure and contrast on both the poster image and the magazine front cover image. On our poster image, this software enabled us to duplicate our protagonist on the same image and overlay her double with a cracked effect to connote her being broken and to foreshadow her death in the film.

The main new media technology we used in the project was Blogger. This has been used from the start of our Advanced Portfolio right to the end of it. I have used this to present all of our work into a simple webpage, which means that it is easy to navigate through my work. I have been able to embed my presentations straight into blogger so that they come up as a small widget on the post and it can be viewed directly on the page.

Microsoft Publisher was used for both of our ancillary tasks. Publisher was vital for our layout of our poster and our magazine front cover as it means that we could easily arrange the bodies of text in different orders efficiently. Also, we were

able to use the text boxes on Publisher to create our other text that we did not create on the software DaFont and we were able to select a typography from the software's preset fonts.

We have used new media technology in our research, planning and evaluation by using presentation software's, like Prezi, GoogleDrive, OneDrive and Microsoft PowerPoint. This meant that I had successful ways to present my work which all contained different styles, animations and designs. Also, it broke up the text from large blocks of writing to small paragraphs, meaning that it was clearer to read and easier to understand and analyse.

Garageband is a new media technology software that we used to create our music and soundscape in planning and research. This again can only be activated by Apple products, which is another reason as to why we used that specific hardware. I used Levi Strauss' Bricolage theory and applied this to the planning of the music; deleting the motifs of the piece that I felt were irrelevant to our genre and our trailer and used addition to increase the length of the music and to create an impact of tension with the surreal and loud volume selections of the music. We used Garageband in our soundscape to use the preset sound effects on the software to create a piece of music with these effects that we thought fitted with our genre of psychological thriller for our trailer.

Soundcloud is a relatively new software, being founded only in 2007. Therefore, this is a prime example of new media technology, which we used in our research and planning and I have used in my evaluation. We uploaded our soundscape and our original music to this so that we could present it without creating a visual presentation to go with it.

We used SurveyMonkey to create a survey to send to our target audience regarding our proposal for our initial audience feedback. This allowed us to create questions with answers consisting of one tick box, multiple choice and a text box in which they could their own write comments and constructive criticism. We were then able to analyse our results and produce graphs on the software.

I used Windows MovieMaker and Cyberlink PowerDirector 12 to edit my video in my evaluation. Using MovieMaker allowed me to crop my video clips to attempt to keep the continuity in my video presentation, as I recorded the different conventions descriptions as different clips. I then exported this to an MP4 file so that I could open it in PowerDirector to add the different images in as a visual presentation of what I was discussing.

I uploaded the videos that I created, like the videos made on iMovie of our title cards and my evaluation video, to YouTube so that I could embed the videos onto Blogger. If it wasn't for this new media technology, I would not be able to upload my videos on Blogger as they do not have a preset video upload. Therefore, this allowed me to present the videos onto my blog.

I used the software Audacity to crop my sound files for question 1 for my evaluation before uploading it to Soundcloud. As I recorded these in separate clips, I needed to crop them and link them together, hence I used the new media technology of Audacity to effectively tie the final audio.

We used DaFont.com to create the typography for both our poster and our magazine. This enabled us to create professional looking text and it made our work more appealing to the audience. Also, it helped our work to share conventions between our projects and also to real media texts. If it wasn't for new media technology, then we would have plain and simple text that looked to unprofessional and simple.