A2 media – Evaluation Question 4

A2 MEDIA – Evaluation Question 4HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

by George Lawry

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

YouTube was one of the websites that I used the most throughout all of the stages during this project.

It allowed me to research other Social Realism films and short films for inspiration and to analyse.

It was also good way for documenting and publishing our ancillary tasks and our short so that we had could get feedback and generally a larger audience.

We also used YouTube to watch masterclass videos on different types of shots as well as Photoshop tutorials


I used Prezi frequently as it is a great way of presenting information in an interesting and eye-catching format that appeals to everyone.

It is an easy website to use where templates are already available and all you have to do is add in text and images yourself.

Most Prezi templates are animated and transitions from slide to slide look really smooth and much more aesthetically pleasing than just reading text.

I used this throughout my research and planning.


Slideshare was used as a way of uploading PowerPoint presentations onto Wix.

This was a simple way of showing work done in Microsoft programs as you cant put them straight onto Wix from Word or PowerPoint.

I did not use Slideshare a lot as the majority of the time I worked on an Apple Mac, which do not have Word or Powerpoint. Due to this I used other software such as Pages or Prezi.


We shot our short film using the Canon 550D camera.

We were fairly familiar with this camera as we had used it at AS and produced our ancillary tasks and masterclasses with the 550D.

It has HD video recording, various light (and custom) settings and was compatible with our Rode Video Shotgun Mic. This made it more professional and ideal for what we needed.

We also used a tripod in some scenes, but decided to use handheld footage in tense scenes and also to keep the social realism to the film


We used Photoshop for the construction of our ancillary tasks.

The sheer amount of different features and complexity that Photoshop has to offer makes it the best way to construct a professional looking media products.

We found that Photoshop was by far the best way to make any image format for presenting work.

In spite of this, it took a very long time to properly get the hang of the intricacy of the software; we had to use YouTube for Photoshop tutorials in order to understand how to use the harder tools.


Final Cut Pro was the software we felt was best to edit our short film.

Final Cut Pro is an Apple Software, filled with numerous techniques and tools to organise and flow our shots, eventually making what were originally just videos into a professional looking film.

The mixture of tools meant that we could cut, trim, add text, play sounds, extend or shorten scenes.

Unlike Photoshop, I felt that this software was a lot simpler and easier to grasp despite still having the complexity in tools like Photoshop

Final Cut Pro is finest editing software available to our level of work.


Above all Wix was the prime piece of software technology that I used for this A2 project.

Wix is a webpage builder that allows me to assemble all the planning, research, media products and evaluations in a proficient and aesthetically pleasing format.

Similar to Prezi, Wix offers countless designs, colour schemes, free images and practically anything else required to make an interesting and professional looking website.

My favourite part about Wix is you don’t need to be a website-making professional. Anyone can get the hang of it quickly.

It was a great way to blog compared to other websites and I find it the easiest and creative way to show what I have learnt.

A2 media – Evaluation Question 4

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