EVALU

ATIO

N QUES

TION 4

:

HOW D

ID YO

U USE

MEDIA

TECHNOLO

GIES IN

THE

CONSTRUCTI

ON AND R

ESEARCH,

PLANNIN

G AND E

VALU

ATIO

N

STAGES

?

BY

AH

ME

D K

HA

N

APPLE MAC PRO AND MACBOOK

The MacBook and the Mac Pro computer played a huge role in the video editing and both ancillary tasks which consisted of making a film poster and film review. The Mac’s are renowned for there fast speed and great screen display having higher resolution than any other normal computer or laptop screen. Another positive of using a Mac is the long battery life span which was needed while we created our poster and film review. I often find it disturbing changing laptops as battery life dies, it also ruins the follow of my work. Mac’s helped me work continuously without the need to interrupt the follow I'm working at.

YOUTUBE

YouTube is a important website which I used during my coursework. I used YouTube in order to analysis a short film like ‘The Date’. I also used YouTube to upload my short films onto, not just once but a couple of times making different drafts seeing where there's any room for improvement in my final film. YouTube also became handy in the evaluation stage, where I uploaded the feedback we got from the focus group. YouTube enables the viewers of your product to comment, rate and also subscribe to your channel. We can also use the share tab to show our video on our networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. We also embedded the final film from YouTube onto our blog using the share tab.

BLOGGER.COM

We used the website blogger to upload all our documents of work on to. Blogger enables you to create your own collection of work uploaded online with its functions to let its users share videos, upload images, and texts. As we have more than one person’s work on the group blog we labelled the work to the person who had created the post making it much more organised for the viewer to see who created which post. The positives of blogger go far it enabled all members of the group to few the work no matter where there are, all that was needed was an internet connection. For me I found this effect when looking upon the work I had to complete as the production schedule was uploaded onto the blog. I also found it easier to work online as I was comfortable with doing my work electronically instead of handwriting. Blogger is a media technology which helps you create your own portfolio of work, it has help me store my work safely and made it easier for me to view my work.

SCRIBD AND MICROSOFT WORD

As I created the majority of my work on Microsoft word such as storyboard and editors journals I found myself confiding into website called Scribd. The website Scribd allowed me to upload any word documents onto the blog. The positives of using Scribd are that the fonts or the layout of your word document wont change. It will always look presentable behind white piece of paper unlike using blogger . If your theme design of the blog is complex it could interfere with the words written on it however to counter fit this problem Scribd will enable its users to upload the word document as it was. This means It will appear on your blog as its original form being a word document. Web 2.0 enable me to ultimately transfer work from one online website to another.

POWERPOINT AND SLIDESHARE

SlideShare is a website which I found myself using quite often. SlideShare enable me to directly upload all my PowerPoint presentations which I do onto my blog. It also has a feature of forward and back button which allows the viewer to view the different PowerPoint slides back and forth. I used PowerPoint for my evaluation questions and also work on my group blog. PowerPoint made my work look that little bit more attractive with a design them and different fonts.

FINAL CUT PRO + SONY VEGAS PRO 11

I had previous experience from AS using the program Final Cut but I still had to learn how to use it again because I only used it for one project. However my experience from using Sony Vegas Pro 9, 10 and 11 helped me during the process of using Final Cut Pro. As I played around with final cut pro I became comfortable with using Final Cut Pro as Sony Vegas is far more simple than Final Cut. As I log and captured all my footage from the tape i was able to organise each clip one by one and also naming it which made it easier for me to remember which clip is which. As I dropped my clips onto the track I also added sounds which I carefully synced with the visuals on the screen. Final Cut help me create a good flowing film as I zoomed into each clip and cut it at a point where the clip would match the following clip. I also increased/decreased the speed on my the clips and also on one occasion reversed a clip. I was also able to add credits and text onto the tracks. As we wanted our film to have a natural look I decided upon not adding any form of colour correction or contrast.

PHOTOSHOP CS3 + CS5 + CS6

I found myself using Photoshop for designing my poster and film review. At first I wasn’t able to use Photoshop as I didn’t touch the program for a while. However after playing about with it and different versions such as CS3, CS5 and CS6 I comfortable designed a poster which I made in a short period of time. I also created my film review when I did find myself lost and wasn’t able to use the program I would find myself looking at tutorials in order to complete my vision for the poster I wanted.

USB AND HARD DRIVE

Both my usb and my hard drive helped making me do my work both at school and at home conveniently. I was able to leave work unfinished and work back into it with the freedom of time and space. When I was unable to fit all my work onto my small usb then I would use my hard drive which had over 500 gigabytes of free space to use. This also helped me save my work in high quality without worrying about my disk space, for example I could save my final poster in the quality thanks to the free space on my hard drive when I couldn’t save it on my usb.

SOUNDTRACK PRO

I used the program Soundtrack Pro to find essential sound effects for the film. I was able to find good clear sounds without any sort of background noise or disturbance in the sound effect. I also found it easy to import the sound effects I wanted onto final cut pro and ready to add to my track. However the sound effects on soundtrack pro where limited and I found myself constantly going to online free sound effect website and find the sound effects required.

PREZZI

Prezzi is a website which enables you to make presentations similar to PowerPoint. However Prezzi is far more interactive than the simple PowerPoint presentation. I could also use the work I create on Prezzi and embed the file onto the group blog or personal blog.

Prezzi interactive additions consist of the ability to add images, videos, design themes, text and links to make it far more interactive than any other slideshow program. Its simple to use and not complicated I used Prezzi for work on my group blog.

MICROSOFT EXCEL

I used Microsoft excel to create my budget on the blog. It neatly helps you organise your our calculations and results with its different cells. It also helps you high light key cells and it will also calculate equations for you. It was also used for pre production and post production where it was used to create accurate visual graphs in all making our work far more presentable.

APPLE IDVD

I used apple iDVD when I had to create a dvd. This was done simply by using the program iDVD which enabled me to burn the video which had just rendered from final cut pro and burn the file onto a dvd disk.

NIKON D6100

This is the camera I used to take images of the main actors. These images where then used for my poster and my film review. The reason for me to use the Nikon d6100 is that it had great quality something I desired for my poster images and film review. This camera gave me professional looking images and was really easy to use.

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK

Like Facebook Twitter Is another social networking website we used to help us keep in contact with our audience who are following us. We can communicate we them using ‘tweets’ in other words messaging via twitter. We could also use YouTube’s url of our first draft and show it on our twitter page, where we received both negative and positive feedback, this feedback on twitter was effective as we could later implement all the negative feedback and improve our final video. Facebook was also good for getting feedback from and gain fans when they like our FaceBook group.

BUBBLE.US

Bubble.US is a website which enabled us to create clear and neat brainstorms. The website also helped us come up with better ideas as it was layout our well ordered in front of us on a computer screen. The bright colourful brainstorm made our blog appear more interest as well.

SUMMARY

Overall the use of new media technology was imperative for our work and has helped as be media producers. If it wasn’t for the media technology we used we wouldn’t be able to reach the levels of planning and research work we was able to do. Blogger has become more than a website where we upload stuff onto and has become our final portfolio of work. During the process of using different media technologies I learnt how to use, different Photoshop's and further my knowledge into using Final Cut Pro other than Sony Vegas.