Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction & research, planning

Throughout the year, to produce our short film ‘Catalyst’, I have used a number of different technologies in order to plan, make edit and write up our whole production. Firstly, the main piece of software I used was Blogger. I have used this both AS and A2 to present my work. It is very simply to use and is easy to read online as I have labeled all my posts in order. Some of the strengths about Blogger are ones such as it is easy to upload anything onto a post; whether it’s a picture, a video or even a whole presentation. However, I did come across some weaknesses when trying to use Blogger, such as it is not always accessible in my school as some of the computers will not allow me to write anything on my blog. Also, I found it sometimes unreliable as on some occasions it would delete some of my posts which I would have to redo, this was not only annoying and frustrating, but also time wasting.
The second piece of technology I used was Microsoft Word. This was the most popular piece of software I used throughout A2 as I used it for nearly every post which required wording. I would then copy and paste the text onto my blog. I decided to use this method as I am very familiar with the programme as I have been using it all through my school life. I found that there were no difficulties with this as it was easy to use and easy to convert everything I needed onto my blog, also, I used it for making tables for the Location Recce and the Risk Assessment and then all I had to do was to screenshot them onto my blog.
Thirdly, I used was Prezi; something very similar to Microsoft PowerPoint, but instead of slide after slide, it is more animated. I used this on some of my post such as my second evaluation question. I found it strange at the beginning as I had never used this before and had only started using in media last year for my AS course, but over time, I have found it much easier to use and can use it to its fullest capacity by adding in photos and videos from my film. It helped that it was also very straightforward in uploading them onto my posts as all I had to do was copy the URL link onto my blog. I prefer this to PowerPoint as it offers so much more and it looks a lot more technical than PowerPoint which is why I mainly used it as I gave my blog a more professional look.
I also used a programme called Linoit. This allowed me to add sticky notes to a board and could write on them. It is very simply to use which is why I went that extra mile in my evaluation question o add pictures and videos referring to what I was saying. Another reason why I used it was to show off variety and to show that I have a wide range of technical skills and can show off my work in different ways. The only reason why I didn’t like using sticky notes was because there was no way of embedding the whole thing like I could do with Prezi. This meant that I had to copy the link onto my blog for people to click on in order to see it.
To make my poster for the film I had to use a programme called Photoshop. I am familiar with photoshop as I had used it in the past, again in AS so I knew roughly what to do. It allowed to me to add images and crop things out of a standard photo we took during production. It also allowed me to add things such as text and make it seem like a real film poster. I was very fond of Photoshop as it allowed me to add different effects to an image and it gave me the chance to be rally creative with it.
Of course, to find out information about media and short films I used Google. For me, this was the easiest and quickest way to get information as it is the most popular search engine around. It allowed me to find exactly what I was looking for.
Another technology I used in A2 is YouTube. This was for finding and retrieving videos and putting them onto my blog within minutes. I do not an account personally but a member of my group did and we were able to put our final drafted film on there for our teacher to watch. This also made it easier for us to put it on our blog as blogger and YouTube operate with Google accounts we could just click the video icon on our post page, search for the video and it would appear right on the blog.
My group and I also used Skype during our pre-production stage. This was to contact a professional script writer who could tell us how to improve our logline. This was very successful as my entire group had a Skype account and it was organized properly so we would all ready at a specific time.
Once we had done all of the filming, we then used a piece of editing software called Premiere Pro CS6. This was the software downloaded on the schools computers so we had very little choice in what we could chose, but as everyone in the group has had experience with in the past for GCSE and AS media we were all fond of the programme. It allowed us to piece together different parts of the film and delete scenes that were not needed to eventually make a final film. Once this was done, one of my group members made opening credits and then we had to add layers of sound; both non diagetic and diagetic in order for it to be a high grade film.

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Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction & research, planning

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	Created by charlie.holden12 over 10 years ago