Throughout the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages of my media product, I have used many new technologies which have helped me make this product a reality. The technologies include hardware, software and different websites. All this technology has helped me in different ways. For my research and planning, I used the internet to research about the history of the horror genre and how the horror genre is represented in exsisting horror trailers. I used the search engine Google and YouTube to do this. I used Google to find pages about the history of the horror genre and how it has changed over the years. I used the video sharing site, YouTube to search for horror trailers. To make this horror trailer come together, I had to learn how to use a few programs. These prgrams included Final Cut Pro, Garageband and Photoshop. Final Cut Pro and Garaband were completely new programs to me as I do not have any previous experience using them. I experimented with the programs to get a feel for each program so I was more confident when it came to editing the trailer. Final Cut Pro is a program which has a lot of features and effects which can be applied to videos and sound. As we had Garageband to edit the sound, we just used Final Cut Pro to edit the video. I learnt how to cut different clips, add fading effects, add text and how to make day clips look like they were shot at night time. All these skills helped me and my group create the trailer. Garageband was anopther program in none of us used. We all had less experience or even none so we had to improvise. Luckily, Garageband is a fairly easy program to use and we were able to cut tracks, distort them and make different sound effects. We also used royalty free music which we were able to put together to make our own soundtrack. Photoshop is a program which me and my group have been using last year and before that. Having these skills and experience we were able to create our posters and magazine covers with ease. Photoshop is a very diverse program where you can create something from anything. With Photoshop you can edit photos and make them look very surrealistic or beautiful. In this case, I chose to make my images look surrealistic and scary because that was the look I was going for. By adding different filters, changing the brightness and the contrast, cropping the imaage into different layers I was able to create a professional image with only a few simple steps. I also used a digital still camera and a mini DV camcorder which helped me get images for my poster and magazine and footage for our trailer. Digital cameras are good because they are easy to use and they produce good quality images. The file transfer is quick and easy too. In conjunction with SD card storage, hundreds and even thousands of images can be stored at once. A mini DV camcorders are good because they are very easy to use and record. They are also very light so they can used anywhere with no problems. The only problem with using DV tape is that getting the footage from the camera to a computer can be a long and tedious process. Once the footage is uploaded it can be edited and changed in any way. Within the process of making my media products, I have also used a variety of websites. I have used YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, SurveyMonkey and Royalty free music websites such as incompetech. YouTube is a video sharing and creating website which is easy to upload videos and embed them from there onto my Blog. There are millions of people who visit the website everyday so if they see our trailer they are able to leave feedback. However, because there are so many people who visit the website and there are thousands of videos uploaded every day, my trailer will not be viewed much. I also used YouTube to view other horror trailers and gain ideas for my horror trailer. All content which is uploaded to YouTube is analsyed for copyrighted content. If you are using a copyrighted song or if the artist and recording label is not credited, the video will be taken down and will need to be re-uploaded with an orginal soundtrack. Flickr is another helpful website which is used for photos. It can be used to create many albums which can show photographers work. I used Flickr to upload film posters and used the tag/note system where I can annotate and analyse it and then embed it onto my blog. I also did this for my own film poster and magazine. Intergration with Blogger can be quite difficult because when uploaded to Blogger, only the picture is shown, not the analysis. SurveyMonkey is a questionnaire website where you can make your own surveys to share with people and collect results/data. This is an affective way to collect data because it is easy to fill in the answers and it doesn't take too long. The answers can either be multiple choice or free answers. In conjunction with SurveyMonkey I used Facebook to share the questionnaire to my friends and family. This resulted in about 50 people answering it. With this data we were also able to used SurveyMonkey to make tables to data and embed them on our blog to show our results. Even though this is a good way of getting people to answer your questions, some people may not answer a certain question or they may give an innapropriate answer. This would affect the results if everyone did this. Blogger is a website run by Google which allows people to create a free blog to write and share anything. I have been using it to showcase all of my coursework and evaluation as it shows it neatly and effectively. There are also quick links which takes you directly to the piece of coursework you would like to see. I have used this site for a while now and I am very confident about using it however there have been times when I have forgotten how to do something for example move images or change the text. A disadvantage of using blogger is that it does not auto atically save what you have written. Sometimes I have published a post however before it posts I get a server error and then everything I just wrote is not there. When using Blogger, I have had to use different types of media to show that I have done appropriate research and planning etc. This media includes images, videos and music. Because I have the ability to use this medium, it is best to use it in appropriate ways. Compared to my other subjects like ICT and Photography, when evaluating work in them subjects it is much different to the way I have done it here. In Photography, I have to make visual comparisions to images or professional photographers and my own images. I simply only use a word processor to show these comparions. I do not use other related images or videos to show comparions. A lot of the work is in a sketchbook too where I cannot use Media such as music or video. I have also used Photoshop in Photography to edit images. In Media, I have used it to edit and create images. From using this program in both subjects, I have been able to become familiar with the program and where everything is. Using sites such as Flickr, makes analysis much easier because I can highlight certain areas of a image and add text and a tag or note. When completed, all i have to do is hover over a certain part of the images and an analysis of that part comes up. This is much easier than describing what I am analysing. I also used Royalty Free Music websites where I was able to listen to thousands of different pieces of music and download them then use them in Final Cut Pro or Garageband to make a soundtrack. These websites are good because the track can be previewed before download so you are not wasting time downloading and listening to the music, then if you don't like it, deleting it. Some of the music on these websites are very similar and the titles of each piece of music doesn't give away what the music is about. Incomeptech has a description of the song and what it contains however you still have to listen to hundreds before you get the one you like or want. If it wasn't for all of these new technologies, I don't think I would be able to create a good trailer with a professional magazine cover and film poster.
You make good comments, particularly on the processes of production itself. You need to reorganise this answer so that you begin by explaining how you used technology in the first stage, i.e. research and planning, then discuss production and finally discuss evaluation. In the evaluation section is important to consider how doing your work with web applications in this way, such as blogger, Flickr, affects how you approach evaluating your work. It's a good idea to compare working in this way to the ways you might evaluate projects in other subjects, such as with your IT or photography work. It's also a good idea to explain if you have used any of the technology you have learnt about in media studies in your other subjects. You don't just have to praise web applications etc though, you can also explore their frustrations and limitations.
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