Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction

and research, planning and evaluation stages?

To store and present all of our coursework we used the web creation site Weebly. It’s a very useful website and easy to navigate and import data into. The use of the divider tool helped us to easily arrange our work onto the page. This helped to make it look neat and sophisticated. At the top of the web page we were able to add in a menu bar. This allowed us to put our work into the relevant sections and make it easier for both us and the viewer of the website to navigate and find exactly what they are looking for. The site provided us with a HTML icon. This enabled us the embed work from websites such as Slideshare and successfully view them via our website. Other icons such as the YouTube link allowed us to embed YouTube links onto our pages which made it possible for us to show videos we found on YouTube that related to our research or for uploading our own trailer to the website.

We regularly used Google as It was an excellent online tool for our research as it worked to our advantage in finding us information about films, narrative structures and general information relevant to our coursework. we also used it find images such as film posters, magazine covers and photos for our mood board. Google was a core part throughout our entire piece as it is easy and fast to use as well as providing us with all the websites and information needed.

Along with YouTube we often used IMDb as our source when researching into and analysing existing film trailers. The website is well known throughout the internet and has become a very trustworthy source. Therefore when reading articles and reviews about films we knew the information would be trustworthy and valid. The site also gave ratings out of 5 stars on each of the films so we knew which ones would be good to analyse and take ideas for our own trailer.

YouTube was another website we frequently used both when researching for the trailer and for downloading videos of film company openings and the green restricted audience page for the beginning of our trailer. YouTube is a worldwide phenomenon so we were not limited when searching for trailers and genres in our research. The videos were also easily embedded into our website. Lastly we used it to upload our finished trailer so as it could be easily viewed on the internet.

All of the sound effects were downloaded from Freesound. We looked at a variety of other music websites such as Sound Cloud and Freeplay Music. However found that Freesound provided us with the best sound effects that fitted in well with our trailers pace and genre. For the main soundtrack that played throughout the trailer we downloaded it from Sound Cloud as the sound clips on Freesound were too shot and tended to be sound effects rather than full soundtracks. both websites were easy to use and let us search keywords of music titles within the website so as it was very easy for us to find good music and sounds. In order to find suitable sounds we searched for words like ‘horror’ ‘tension’ and ‘suspense’ as they would fit perfectly within the genre of our trailer. When searching for our sound effects we searched for things like ‘heartbeat’ and ‘cinematic boom’ which instantly came up with suitable sound effects to put in our trailer. Lastly all of the music and sound effects on Freesound and Sound Cloud were copyright free so we are able to easily download our chosen music and import them into Adobe Premiere Pro.

In order to pass information such as dates and times onto the actors we often used Facebook to communicate. This method was quick and efficient. As well as this Bradley and I used Facebook messaging to talk to each other out of college hours as well as via text to discuss any further ideas or plan who will be doing what. Lastly we used it to broadcast our trailer to people we know. We received some good comments and this gave us confidence in thinking that our trailer was effective to our target audience.

Similar to Facebook we also occasionally used twitter to communicate with each other. As well as broadcasting our final film trailer. We did this in order to gain more public interest and gain more feedback. The results from Twitter were 2 favourites and 3 retweets. This then meant that it would be broadcasted further which ultimately ended up giving us more views. By putting the video on both Facebook and Twitter made us realise just how important broadcasting it through different websites was as it got around quickly, which if it was a trailer for a real film would drastically increase its public interest.

To create our magazine we used InDesign. Rather than being used to edit an image like Photoshop, InDesign is used to put images together to create a document/page or cover for products like magazines. This is why we chose to use InDesign to create our magazine front cover as it provided us with suitable things to help make the cover look professional and realistic. For example being able to make the font backed onto a different colour. As the programme gave us a lot of different ways to present our fonts we ending up experimenting with a lot of things before coming to the final choice. We think that this helped us as by trying a variety of different things it helped us determine what looked good and what didn’t. As well as this we were able to look at the overprint view, this allowed us to see what the magazine would look like if it was printed. By having this choice we could continuously look at the magazine in more context and notice what needed to be changed in order to make it look more professional.

The use of Adobe Premiere Pro played a huge part for our coursework. We used it to put together and edit all of our footage, then turning it into a trailer. When we first began to use it we found it quite difficult to use, understand and navigate around. However after sometime we began to have a better understanding of how to do things within the programme. Once we were confident in using it the editing process began to get a

lot easier and quicker. We especially the ‘Razor Tool’ found very useful as it enabled us cut up clips to the length we wanted, therefore fitting with the right timing to the timeline. As well as this we could import music and sound effects that could also be cut down. One of our main aims was to match the beat of the montage music to the movements, the use of the ‘Razor Tool’ made this possible.

The programme also provided us with the facility to insert intertitles throughout the footage. This was easily done and helped show strong conventions throughout our trailer.

We used Photoshop to edit both chosen images for the magazine cover and the poster.

Magazine Cover

• Airbrushing (skin, eyes, lips)• Brightness/Contrast• Cropping• Cutting around the face so it can be placed over

the masthead in InDesign.• Colour LevelsOnce we edited the image for the magazine we imported it into InDesign and continued the editing from there.

Film Poster

• Brightness/Contrast• Cropping• Colour Levels• Adding text (masthead, tagline, billing block)• Institutional logos

Unlike the magazine cover we edited the image In Photoshop and put it together with this programme too. As we both have regularly used it in the past we found it quite easy to use. However the font styles were quite unprofessional and we had to download suitable ones from Dafont in order for the title to follow conventions and represent the horror genre.

We only used excel a couple of times to create pie charts after conducting questionnaires to gain audience feedback.

The information was easy to enter in and create the pie charts. By using this it enabled us to clearly represent information about audience thoughts and needs. As well as this we were able to change the colours of the sections in the chart so that they stood out on the website.

We frequently used PowerPoint throughout research, planning and production. We wrote everything up before uploading it to our website. This meant that we had a back up copy of all our work in case there was any problem with our website. In addition to this being able to put things on different slides meant that we could set our work out productively. When we were ready to upload our work to the website we either saved each slide as a separate JPEG and uploaded it to the website as a picture format or uploaded the PowerPoint to slideshare and embedded it into our website.

After PowerPoint the second programme we used to write up information was Microsoft Word. We would often use it to type up plans or things we needed to do. As well as this we wrote the essays for our research in with this programme and then simply copied and pasted it into our website.

As a lot of our work was written in PowerPoint we always used Slideshare to upload it to the internet and then embed the links into our website so as it could be viewed in the same format. As well as this we used Slideshare when conducting our research as many previous students and companies have uploaded their own ideas and work to the website. This gave us inspiration and further ideas and tips to use within our own work.

The fonts provided on the editing software's we used were very limited and unprofessional/unsuitable for the horror genre. Therefore we used the online website Dafont that provided us with a huge number of different font choices. We were able to do specific searches depending on what we were looking for. For example, for the poster title we searched ‘horror’ and ‘typewriter’ to portray the horror genre. Whereas for our magazine masthead we searched for ‘sans serif’ so as the fonts would look simple and professional therefore fitting into the conventions of a magazine masthead. The fonts were copy right free and easily downloadable.

On a film poster it is a typical convention to have the company logos at the bottom of the billing block. We included the references to other institutions such as Twisted Pictures as well as making our own one. Which was named BRAD ZOE PRODUCTIONS For this we used paint as it was quick and easy to use. It provided us with simple tools that god the job done as all we needed to use was text.

The online YouTube converter proved to be very beneficial to our trailer as we used it to download clips of the Twisted Pictures opening and green restrictions page as an MP4 file. Therefore we could import the clips with both audio and visual in it to our trailer.

We downloaded it by copying the URL the YouTube video and then click on "past URL", it automatically places the video in the programme

to be converted.