QUESTION 4 – HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN

THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH, PLANNING AND

EVALUATION STAGES?

Blogger

I used blogger to organise my coursework, I found blogger easy to use as I could neatly organise my work in to sections. I organised my blog into 4 pages, research, planning, construction and evaluation. This helped me organise my coursework as it allowed me to be able to easily find pieces of work which I needed to refer back to such as my mock up ancillary tasks when creating the final ancillary tasks. Using blogger has also made it easier for me to show others my blog to be able to receive audience feedback from peers and teachers to be able to improve my film trailer, poster and magazine front cover.

Research

When doing the research part of our coursework I researched many contemporary film trailers, such as frankenweenie and Abraham Lincoln: vampire hunter. I done this by using http://www.filmeducation.org/teachingtrailers/secondary/

I was able to do detailed textual analysis of a range of different trailers from different genres and analysed them. I looked at the different theories of narrative for three different genres of film trailer. I done this by researching the 5 theories of narrative and looking to see which theory fits with the film trailers we had selected. I was particularly interested in finding out if the trailers I studied conformed to any of the narrative theories I have studied on the course . I then went on to look at 3 more film trailers using the same website. I then went on to look in further detail by analysing the trailers and looking at genre, narrative, unique selling points, target audience, music, dialogue, credits and intertitles, shot types, camera angles, pace and special effects. This helped us when producing our trailer as it gave us an idea about conventions of film trailers and what was good to include. Other websites that we used were IMBD and YouTube to embed the film trailers in to our blogs and to find out more information about the plots of the film which allowed me to be able to write about the narrative theory in more detail.

When researching film noir I created a survey to find out what people of our target audience want to see within a film trailer/film. I created the survey based on film noir conventions that I already knew about from previous research. I created this survey using the website survey monkey and the posted it on the social networking site Facebook. I decided to do this as it allowed me to get a broader range of people to answer the survey which would allow me to get a better idea of what people would want to see within a film noir trailer.

Feedback

I used a blog which is an internet page in which I can record information. The type of blog I used was a personal blog. I was able to present my work under 5 headings of home, research, planning, construction and evaluation. This allowed me to be able to organise my coursework in a tidy way that is easy to read. As I used blogger to present our coursework this allowed us to be able to receive comments at the bottom of each page from teachers or anyone who would like to comment on the blog. We received feedback on our blog from our teacher about things such as to create a progress diary which outlines what we have done in each week. Being able to get feedback directly on to our blogs has helped us be able to make changes to improve our coursework and our blog.

Practise trailer

In the research section of our work, I created a practise trailer. I done this using windows movie making using still images. This helped me to be able to get an idea about the conventions of film trailers and what timings I would need for my real trailer. Using this programme has helped me to be able to get an idea of how it worked which made it easier when creating my real trailer. I then received feedback from my class about the trailer in the form of a video on YouTube. As the evaluation was filmed on the day this meant I got a true reflection of the feedback the class had given and none of the information was forgotten. I asked our class to write down any feedback whilst watching the practise film trailer. I then asked them to talk about the feedback so we could film it. Using this form of evaluation has helped me to be able to see which conventions we had used effectively and which we hadn't. This has helped us with our real trailer as we could directly refer back to feedback video to make sure we did not repeat mistakes. We could also refer back to the video to see what we had done correctly/well and try to repeat that it our real trailer.

Programmes used Throughout our coursework me and Gabi have used a range of programmes and internet

programmes to help to present our work in the research, planning and evaluation stages of our work. PowerPoint – I used Microsoft PowerPoint to create power point's such as the analysis of the

audience feedback. This was a useful programme for me to use as I could organise our research so it could be easily read and locate by any viewers on my blog, our teachers and our peers.

Scribd - I used Scribd as a way of presenting our power point presentations on my blog. I done this as I felt it was a good way of embedding the power points on to my blog as you could not do this with just the power point. This also helped me to be able to organise the blog in to a way that I could easily refer back to when I needed it and for others to be able to see and read it easily.

Prezi – I also used Prezi as a was of presenting my work. I decided to use Prezi as it is a unique way of presenting work in a presentation form. I was also able to embed this into my blog making it easy to find and read.

Flickr – I used Flickr in the research stage of my coursework. I decided to use Flickr as I thought it was a good way to evaluate film posters and magazine front covers to look at the conventions. Flickr is also a good form of presenting my work to enable us to be able to refer back to it when we were making our film poster and magazine front cover. This helped me to be able to make sure I had included the typical conventions of both film posters and magazine front covers in my own work.

YouTube – me and Gabi also used YouTube as a way of presenting our work. We produced a practise trailer in order to get an idea of the conventions of film trailers. We also presented our final film trailer on YouTube.

Construction

When constructing my coursework me and Gabi used mini DV camera to record the footage for our trailer. When then used windows movie maker to cut up the footage and put in transitions and credits. We chose to have a mixture of sharp cuts and fade in and out transitions. We done this as we felt it added affect to our trailer as we felt a sharp cut added tension. We also used a sound recording soft wear to record the voice over for our film trailer. We then put the recording in to windows movie maker and cut it up using the cut tool on movie maker.

When creating our film poster and magazine front cover we used Photoshop. We created the text and shapes on both the film poster and magazine front cover on Photoshop. We also added drop shadows to the text on both the magazine front cover and the poster as I felt it gave the text a more professional look and gave a good finish to our work.