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

Evaluation Question 4

authorSTREAM

• I used AuthorStream for my quantitative analysis and my target audience profile.

• I decided to use AuthorStream for my quantitative analysis of teaser trailers upon realisation that SlideShare did not play audio. I needed my presentation to play my voiceover which would explain my results and analysis of the teaser trailers. I had at first used SlideShare, but had to change this and re-upload it to my blog with AuthorStream which fortunately played audio.

• My target audience profile didn’t have any audio, so it wasn’t hugely necessary to use AuthorStream. It did however have different slide transition animations which worked better on AuthorStream, as it appeared other slideshow websites couldn’t process the simple but memory-consuming animations.

iPod Voice Memos

• I used my iPod’s voice memos to record my voiceover for my quantitative analysis, Winston’s narration in my trailer, and my movie-announcer impression for the title screen and release date at the end of my trailer.

• I wasn’t really sure of another way to record my voice, as I don’t have any voice-recording software on my computer, and the iPod voice memos were a useful, easy-to-use way of recording Ben’s voice (for Winston) and my voice for the quantitative analysis and the movie-announcer voice. It was also fairly simple to send them from my iPod to the computer, as the files weren’t too large, so I could send multiple voice memos via email.

• The only downside was that the recordings weren’t the best quality, which wasn’t a problem for the quantitative analysis, but for my trailer, I was hoping for crystal-clear recordings of voices. The end result wasn’t too bad for the trailer however, as even if the recordings were slightly muffled or crackly, I managed to tweak the audio settings in editing to reduce the muffling and crackles.

SlideShare

• I used SlideShare for my paper plans, storyboard, and for my evaluation questions.

• SlideShare was a simple and easy way of presenting my PowerPoint work on my blog, as it gives a professional and simple way of reading through the slides with the arrow buttons. The site is fairly easy to use, as you simply click upload and when it’s finished uploading and you’ve sorted out all the details, the embed code is easy to find.

• The only problem with SlideShare is that the website sometimes doesn’t load, and sometimes you have to re-upload a file if it didn’t process properly.

Prezi

• I used Prezi for my detailed analysis of 3 teaser trailers, and my analysis of movie posters and magazine covers.

• Prezi was an interesting and creative way of presenting my work, with many options of presentation and transitions.

• It was however very time-consuming, as you often found you spent longer on deciding how to make each Prezi presentation different than actually writing your work. Prezi also had a tendency to play-up, which could have been partly due to the school system, but also due to the website. Often the website wouldn’t load all-together, which is likely to be down to the school system, but sometimes Prezi failed to save my work, and I lost a great chunk of writing I may have spent a good amount of time doing. I also found that embed codes sometimes failed to update – for example, with my analysis of 3 teaser trailers; for a long time, it showed an old unfinished version on my blog, which was very frustrating when lots of writing refused to show up. I believe the embed code was finally updated recently however, so hopefully my presentation appears in its full form now.

Adobe Photoshop CS5

• I used Photoshop for my film poster and magazine cover. I also used it for the ‘fake posters’ involved in my mise-en-scene of the ‘lazing around’ scene in my teaser trailer.

• Photoshop was a very useful programme to use due to my experience using it in the AS Media coursework and also AS Photography. With this previous knowledge of the programme, I was able to find the correct tools for certain things, such as cutting the background out from behind my characters and lightening and darkening certain areas of the photographs with the ‘dodge’ and ‘burn’ tools.

• The wide variety of tools and ways of editing images meant an endless possibility of ways to create my poster and magazine cover, and it gave me the ability to make each of these look professional. It did mean however that you could spend ages trying to decide how you were going to go about editing with the endless tools. Photoshop is also very fiddly and time-consuming, as a large portion of the time I spent editing both the poster and magazine cover, was spent on cutting out the background efficiently from behind the characters in the photograph.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

• I used Premiere Pro to edit my film teaser trailer.• Once I had managed to remember how to use it from my knowledge all the way

back in GCSEs, Premiere Pro was a very helpful and useful programme. It enabled me to professionally edit my teaser trailer, with colour correction, quite clear sound and a realistic looking title screen.

• The transitions however were quite limited and simplistic, as I was hoping for a professional looking title screen transition, but instead had to use my own skills to create my own by blurring a shot I took of some fields and overlaying ‘The Quest for Beer’ along with my movie-announcer voice.

• Again, this programme was also time-consuming, as I spent a large portion of my time fiddling with colour correction and editing sound. Still, I was proud of the way I managed to make the music sound as if it was playing on a radio during the ‘lazing around’ scene; and also the way I edited my news-reader voice to create the illusion that it was coming from the TV.