EVALUATION QUESTION 4:
How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
EVALUATION By Elif Cengizler
During our post production/evaluation stage, we made use of a range of different technologies, some examples are: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Youtube, Weebly and Survey Monkey. Using different types of technology was extremely useful as we were not limited to using one piece of technology which meant our final products outcome would be a creative piece of work, this is because of all the different real media texts we used for inspiration. For example, we used Google to research different types of Slasher films which were similar to our initial film/trailer idea, this led us to exploring YouTube for its many different types of horror slasher trailers it contains.
During our post production/evaluation stage, we made use of a range of different technologies, some examples are: Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Youtube, Weebly and Survey Monkey. Using different types of technology was extremely useful as we were not limited to using one piece of technology which meant our final products outcome would be a creative piece of work, this is because of all the different real media texts we used for inspiration. For example, we used Google to research different types of Slasher films which were similar to our initial film/trailer idea, this led us to exploring YouTube for its many different types of horror slasher trailers it contains.
Final Cut Pro By Elif Cengizler
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Throughout our editing stage for our horror trailer, we used Final Cut Pro on the Apple iMacs which allowed us to use professional tools and editing features for our trailer. Using a professional standard software like Final Cut Pro benefited our whole journey of creating this trailer as other soft wares for editing footage like Adobe Premier Pro were not as high functioning and didn't have as many features and tools like Final Cut Pro has. Furthermore, the accessibility of this software was attainable as we were able to use the Mac computers (which contained the software) throughout college hours and half terms.
We used final cut to apply transitions in between shots which allowed the trailer to flow better. Final Cut Pro made it very simple to achieve our desired title slates we wanted in between the footage, the software allowed us to choose the duration of the text on the screen and gave us the option of adding effects and layers onto it. Using Photoshop in our AS year made the process of using Final Cut Pro easier as we created the title slates on Photoshop and imported it to Final Cut Pro. In conclusion, Final Cut Pro itself was a very manageable and an easy piece of editing software to use which made our process of producing the trailer far easier. |
PhotoShop By Elif Cengizler
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Photoshop was one of the most used softwares in our journey of making this trailer, magazine and poster which made it one of the most useful.
We used PhotoShop as it allows you to add layers, helping you place or move around certain objects. This program benefitted our team as it helped with the process of making and editing the poster; it gave us the option to use editing techniques that other editing programmes may not have provided. For example the images (like examples of our real media texts) that we wanted to upload onto Weebly for our evaluations or research and planning were cropped and altered to size was done by using PhotoShop. As a group, we all had experience with using Adobe PhotoShop as this software was used religiously in our AS year creating our magazine cover. One tool that I was not very familiar with at AS was the Magic Wand Tool which I grew to learn how to use it. In our A2 year, I used it during the research and planning period where I created moodboards for each character. By using the magic wand tool, it made the images look more sleek and tidy, giving a professional aesthetic to it. |
Weebly By Elif Cengizler
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We used of Weebly in our evaluation to clearly display our content on the website. Weebly was also used to organise our content on the page.
During the production process in A2, Weebly has been great and an effective tool which displays our content clearly. Furthermore, we also uploaded different media's to Weebly such as videos from YouTube and Images from our documents, as well as embed different HTML codes from our presentation websites like Prezi and ThingLink, giving our website more variety and creativeness. Finally, it allowed us to change the template/theme of our webpage which made it look like more true to us as we were able to personalise it through the use of GIF's, different typography and colour schemes. Weebly allowed us, as a team, to improve our team work skills and work flow as it let us to co-operate and collaborate on the website from different locations. |
RESEARCH AND PLANNING By Olivia Middleton
Blogger
Blogger is an online website that allows you to create free blogs, this is the platform we all used as a group to make our individual blogs where we published our own work within the group. As the website dated all the work we posted, we were able to keep up to date with each others work and when everyone had completed it. It was also a publicly accessed website therefore, we were able to receive feedback from an outside source. This of course benefited us as it helped us improve our work and develop it quickly and easily.
Blogger is an online website that allows you to create free blogs, this is the platform we all used as a group to make our individual blogs where we published our own work within the group. As the website dated all the work we posted, we were able to keep up to date with each others work and when everyone had completed it. It was also a publicly accessed website therefore, we were able to receive feedback from an outside source. This of course benefited us as it helped us improve our work and develop it quickly and easily.
By creating a Whatsapp group chat among our media production teams, we were able to plan when and where we were to meet for filming and production purposes. This made the filming of our footage much easier, our work was done rapidly and smoothly without any complications. Also, as Whatsapp allows you to send voicenotes and images to one another we did not waste any time in the organization and understanding of our work, making a much more sufficient response system enabled us all to understand what each person in the group had to do concerning the research and planning. By being able to send pictures to each other, we could quickly decide what we needed in terms of props for example, masks and makeup as well as, good locations to film in and around our local areas. The use of Whatsapp made the communication within our group proficient and without this type of social media/technology our time spent working, filming and planning together would have been limited. Furthermore, Whatsapp was also used in order to collect research for surveys concerning our magazine and what other people thought it would look best as, for example, the colour scheme and the detailing of the front cover of our magazine.
Presentation softwares that we made use of in our research and planning
Once we had completed our research and planning we needed interesting ways to format it, therefore we found a variety of different ways to present our work that had been carried out.
EMAZE:
THINGLINK:
By using Thinglink we were able to create moodboards where we could add captions to the images we chose, this gave you an insight into the analysis of the colour schemes, clothing and props choices and influences for our trailer, magazine front cover and poster. We also used Thinglink to make iconic horror representations, by adding captions to these as well you are able to see our thoughts and understandings of what horror is about. By characterizing our work this way, it allowed for a clear layout of what we have researched and gained knowledge on regarding our horror film trailer, magazine and poster.
WEEBLY:
Weebly is an easy access platform that allows anyone to create free, quality websites and blogs. We used Weebly to present all of our work in a structured, organised way so that people are able to access the blog without any complications. By including drop down options, people on our blog can choose what they would like to look at easily as it states very clearly what each section contains. We used Weebly as it allows us to include a large amount of work in professional looking ways and also lets you upload videos and images as well as, embedding gifs and other types of presentations for example, Prezi's or Emaze's. This means we can have a variety of different displays of work, making our blog much more interesting and exciting to look at.
CONSTRUCTION by Thajjay Thompson
PHOTOSHOP
During the construction stage of our production, the main software which we used was photoshop. Photoshop is a digital software that enables the user to edit/or alter images or text.
Our group was very efficient when using photoshop because we had previous experience which came from production of the music magazine at AS. This meant that we had minimal problems when editing photos due to prior knowledge on how to use editing tools such as the magic lasso or magic rubber tool. The magic rubber tool allows the user to remove parts of an image that are of the same contrast/colour within a outline, for example, the background of an image may be removed so that the model or object of interest is left on the canvas. The use of technology enabled us to develop our own creativity in software such as photoshop. Photoshop allowed us to edit in layers which meant that we could experiment and make mistakes without completely ruining the overall editing of an image. The ability to experiment also meant that we could make multiple copies of what we were creating with different alterations to see which one was best. Evidence of this is when creating the poster, we made 4 copies which all had different images and then compared them in order to find out which one was the most effective and realistic. |
FINAL CUT PRO
Final cut pro is a professional non-linear editing software which is used to edit video and/or audio formats. We hadn't previously used final cut pro before as throughout AS, we were not editing videos so the software was not needed. This meant that we were not familiar with how to use each of the tools in order to edit the trailer. In order to overcome this problem, we took time to experiment with tools and editing by attempting to recreate the teaser trailer for the Conjuring 2, this was done by using found footage from shutterstock. The aim was to copy the exact same length of each scene and use the same transitions throughout. This experimentation period allowed us to further our skills with the software so that we were confident enough to edit our own trailer. Using final cut pro to compose our trailer was very effective because it allowed us to do things such as speed up clips, cut and add transitions to them. Final cut pro also allowed us to synchronise our soundtrack with the recorded footage. The luna tool is one of the which we used and it allowed us to visually see all levels of brightness and exposure in each clip. This tool was very helpful as it meant that there wasn't a huge difference in the colour grading when transitioning to different scenes.
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LOGIC PRO
Logic Pro is a digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer software application. We used Logic Pro to edit our soundtrack for our final trailer as it allowed us to mix multiple sounds together at the same time and listen to it. The sounds which we used were all found in existing horror films and was acquired from youtube via a converter.
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CAMERA
The camera is a form of digital technology that allows the user to take photos or videos. A camera that powerful enough to record our clips and take photos would usually cost around £400 but for the purposes of our production, we were able to borrow cameras from the college which we then used to take the photos for our poster, magazine front cover and also to record clips for the trailer.
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