How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

In the process of creating my products I used many different types of technologies, without this technology I wouldn’t have been able to create our teaser trailer and my website and poster.

In my research and development stage the internet played a large part in how I collected my research I used a range of search engines such as Google and Ask to collect my primary research about films and websites as this enabled me to look through a range of websites and then to evaluate them and find out the typical conventions of romance films.

I used YouTube to watch romance teaser trailers to find out about the normal conventions and the differences between teaser trailers. Also you can see the audience feedback on YouTube as people can comment on the videos so you can see what parts people like and what they don’t like I took this feedback and then put them into consideration when creating our teaser trailer.

While constructing our teaser trailer we used a JVC camera as we felt that this was the technology that would record the greatest results, it is also easy to use and we had access to it. We also used a tripod to hold all of our shots steady this enabled us to get the best shots possible. This helped to give our trailer a professional finish. 

When we got to the editing process we decided to try use Imovie but due to not being able to save things we couldn’t use the Mac. Also because none of us had any experience on the Mac it could have made editing more difficult.  This meant that we had to use Windows Movie Maker which wasn’t our first choice because the editing software is limiting and only has a few edits that look suitable for our film. We used Windows Movie Maker to shorten all of clips to the correct length which was you can do by dragging the clips shorter so Movie Maker makes it easy to complete this task as the clips are laid out on a timeline. The timeline also allowed us to put the clips in order and rearrange them which was useful after we had taken our udience feedback as we had to make changes to our teaser trailer. When we were adding our music for our teaser trailer we had to mute the music that was already on the clips so that it didn’t interfere with the music fortunately Movie Maker already had a mute tool that you can mute the clips with, when we first added on our soundtrack it didn’t fade in or out so it ended abruptly, on Movie Maker there is a sound editor which meant that we could fade in and out the sound which gave our teaser trailer a more professional finish. After the creation of our first draft of our teaser trailer our audience said that it wasn’t clear what parts were the flash backs so using the editing programme we changed the flash backs to black and white so that there is a clear difference between the normal scenes and the flash backs. Due to not being able to use the Mac I feel that the editing quality is not as good as I would have liked as with the limited use of tools on the Movie Maker where as the Mac would have given us more tools to edit our teaser trailer as you can change the contrast and such thing on the Mac.

We used Photoshop to create our production logo as this enabled us to bend the roses round and to give the effect that we wanted. We had to manipulate the rose to get them to bend to the shape that we wanted this took longer than anticipated as we couldn’t at first get the roses to bend to the shape we wanted but after using a different tool we overcame this problem. We then had to manipulate the font as the font has to be curved on the logo so that it looked more professional. We chose to use this because we all had prior knowledge of the technology so it made it easier to use we made a few mock ups until we finally decided on our final design.

For the final shot in our teaser trailer we used paint to create the last shot of the production name and our website we chose paint because we had to copy so many components onto one page and with so many components it would have got very complicated using another programme and because you can print screen picture into paint it also meant that we could arrange the picture how we wanted to look like a professional credit sequence. We had to create a picture as we couldn’t  get all of the information onto a video slide so we thought creating a picture would be the best way to get on the information that we needed. We chose Paint because it was the best programme to put the final picture together as we had to add in a lot of different texts so it was easier to create a picture and upload it to our teaser trailer as you can change the format of the picture.

To record all of my work from the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages I used a blog site called Blogger where you can record all of the work I have completed. http://supplen.blogspot.com/ This is my blog address where all my work can be found.  I chose blogging because it is an interesting way for people to follow the work that I am doing, I feel that I can also reflect my personality through my blog and people will be able to feel as if they know me as a person. It also gives me the chance to be creative with all the different ways that you can display information. By using blogger I could  go on at anytime and post a blog entry which allowed me to put my work on at anytime which meant that as soon as I completed work I could upload it. I already had knowledge of blogger from my As coursework which meant that it was easy to use and I knew all of the tools.

To create my website I used a programme called Wix which allows you to create a website for free they have layouts that you can chose from background or you can chose to create the website own your own. It also allowed me to upload pictures which made my website link with my teaser trailer, all of the feature on the website let me create pages that looked realistic and professional finish. The site was useful because it had a tutorial to show how to create everything. You can then add personal touches to the website which then helps to make the audience remember the teaser trailer. I wanted to display my picture on my website and there is a tool on Wix that I used which allowed me to pick a photo stacker that allowed my audience to look through the photos. I also used one of the tools to change the background from the skin that I had chosen because I wanted to link the background into the teaser trailer, I also used the behaviours on Wix to make some of my icons move which I personally think it gave my website a more professional finish. I also Wix allows you upload videos from YouTube and since I created a YouTube account which I then uploaded our teaser trailer to and then through Wix I  uploaded our teaser trailer so that people can watch it. I think through using Wix saved me a lot of time as it is not complicated to use as websites such as Dreamweaver. As Wix let you chosen a skin that had been created it then allows you to change the skin to make the website relate to my movie. I am really happy with how my website came out with never using any technical programmes before I think my website is easy to navigate around my website and all of the page look professional.

I also used fireworks to edit my pictures for my posters and my websites I had to get rid of the background of the picture so I could have a white background, Using fireworks you can use the rubber tool and get in close to the edge of the main picture that you want which was really useful as it allowed me to create my poster. I used fireworks to change the contrast on some of my pictures because the lighting needed correcting. I used fireworks last year so I already had a good understanding of the programme which made it easier for me to use fireworks and to edit my images.