Q4 – How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

BY Megan Matthews.

BloggerTo begin our coursework, we first needed a blogger – the same blogging tool that we used in

our AS coursework. I used my already active Gmail account to create a blogger and so there were few steps to take in order to create a blog.

Step 1) First sign into Google, either creating a new account or signing into an active account, I signed into an already current account

Step 2) Now press the button ‘new blog’, this will bring a pop up that looks like this

Blogger – part 2Step 3) Now we made our first post, which was titled ‘brief’.

Step 4) After filling in the post, we’d publish it, though other than our brief nothing was allowed to be written directly onto our blog and instead we used different media technologies.

PowerPoint & SlideshareI’ve used PowerPoints at multiple points during this process, for example for blog work such as comparisons of radio and print adverts as well as now for the evaluation.

When using PowerPoint, we then had to use slideshare to put it on our blogs, this is an online port for sharing slideshows.

Slideshare embedded onto my Blogger PowerPoint uploaded onto Slideshare

Word & ScribdIn the process of creating our documentary, we used Word to bulletpoint our ideas in a clear and manageable style. Due to not be able to write directly onto our blogs, we therefore had to upload our word file to an online port, similar to Slideshare, called Scribd.

Scribd embedded onto my blogger Word file uploaded to Scribd

Camera equipmentWhen filming, we used;

Sony video camera to film all interviews, cut aways, vox pops and our title sequencein order to ensure high quality.

Dolly track – though we decided not to use the footage captured when using this, we found it to be quite tricky to work with and definitely expanded my skillset.

Tripod to hold the camera up to ensure a steady shot as well as ensuring the correct height.

Microphone to obviously capture the interviee’s speech for our documentary.

Camera light in case an interview’s mise en scene called for a higher key of lightthan naturally occurred.

Bluescreen which allowed us to use the chroma key later on to replace it with a picture relevant to our print advert in order to tie the three products together.

Adobe premier When editing, something I worked on the most out of the whole project, we used Adobe premier. Editing was relatively simple and consisted with importing footage into the ‘bin’ and then cropping it to size using the keyboard’s ‘I’ and ‘O’. I’d then drag it to the line and choose where to place it. In this, we alsoadded fades onto the music in order to create a much more fluid crossover.

I also used premier to edit and construct the radio commercial, though this was much more group based, I placed the building blocks of the voice over, the vox pops and the initial music.

Premier – part 2

This is the bin, where you store all of your imported clips – music or video.

‘I’ and ‘O’ are the main tools needed to crop clips into effective lengths.

This window on the right shows the production as it is on the line.

When the clip is cut to size, you’d drag it down onto the line for placement.

This window on the left shows the clip you’re editing, the highlighted part shows what you’ve cropped it to.

This is where you’d find the crossfades for the audio, to smooth out edges.

ZoomThe zoom was used to record one of our voice overs, which I then plugged into the computer in order to retrieve the files. We then re-recorded due to the standard of quality not being high enough, in our group’s opinion, to use in our documentary.

This is the voice over on our radio commercial.

Audacity I used this to record my voice over for my director’s commentary, so I first wrote a script using traditional styling of spacing each sentence apart, on word, and then I recorded it. I later imported it into movie maker to create my director’s commentary.

PhotoshopWe used Photoshop to create our print adverts as it was an appropriate software for our needs. We mostly used the layer tools on the right hand bottom side, which allowed us to alter which layer was on top of which, ensuring our titles and Channel 4 logo were visible. Alongside this, we then used the box drawing tool to draw boxes to put out text in so it was clearly visible and easy to read.

PreziPrezi is a form of online slideshow presentation, it’s a technology I used to present part of my evaluation – an aspect of question 1. You’re able to present it on the website, as shown in the screenshot, but you can also embed it into your blogger which is what I will do when my prezi is completed.

Step 1) You choose a template that suits the tone you’re aiming for in your presentation.

Step 2) You then create your prezi, clicking on each bubble to add a ‘slide’.

Movie MakerMovie Maker is a program that I used in my evaluation process alongside recording my voice on audacity to use as a voice over for the ‘movie’ which explains the conventions followed by our print advert as well as how the three products work together as a whole. This is called a ‘director’s commentary’ and was easy to create following a few simple steps.

Step 1) Open a new project in Movie Maker.

Step 2) Add photos of the topic using the ‘add pictures’ button.

Step 3) Add music or narration through pressing the ‘add music’ button.