Evaluation 4

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

I used Adobe Photoshop when making the intertitles, magazine cover and poster. I could have used another programme but I decided to use this one as I have more experience of using it and it's easier to make the final product look professional. Photoshop allowed me to put all the elements of my task onto different layers, letting me easily rearrange them and add filters to certain parts of the poster/magazine cover for a better effect. One of the tools I used was the blend tool, which allowed me to create the smoky effect around the edges of my poster without it looking unprofessional - as I could ensure that the colours fit and that there 'smoke' had no sharp edges. The only problem with using this programme is that I didn't know how to make circles and stars easily, so I made the shapes needed in PowerPoint and then put them onto my ancillary tasks.

To edit the footage, my group used Adobe Premier Pro as it was the only video editing software the school offered. In our previous school, we learnt how to use Final Cut Pro and were planning to use it again for this task but we were unable to. Even with a lesson on how to use this software, it still took us a while to get used to it and I feel as though we weren't able to use it to the best of our abilities due to our inexperience. This programme allowed us to reorganise the video clips and cut them down to the size we needed - which was very helpful when we were editing the fast-paced section of our trailer to the music. There was only a limited amount of video effects available and I found that quite annoying as the only way to make the lighting darker was to decrease the opacity and make the shot harder to see. It was also hard to add in text and I decided to just make the intertitles on Photoshop to save time and because then I could add on effects to make the text look better.

Blogger was used to record all of my work and progress easily. The teachers had a blog which they put work we needed to do on our own blogs on, which made it easier to catch up on work if one of us was absent and also ensured that everybody had the same quality of work. We used this site as it was easy to use (due to the fact that we had blogs last year) and we can access these at home.

I learnt from the making of my film last year that there should be a group chat from the moment the group is created, so we made a group on Facebook as it is easy to access due to all of us having the Messenger app on our phones. We could also access the group chat at home and this allowed us to organise filming times easier and find out who was available. This also allowed us to send photos easily amongst all of the group - which was very helpful when we needed pictures of Shauna for our ancillary tasks and didn't have time to email them to each other. I also used Messenger to send my work to friends and family who hadn't seen any of it before for feedback.

Google was my main search engine used as I'm more experienced with using it and it allowed me to quickly and easily find what I needed. I used Google for all of my research into theorists, poster and magazine covers. I found this very helpful when looking for my own examples of thriller magazines as it allowed me to narrow the search results down into ones I wanted and I could look at many posters to get inspiration and see what common themes are among them all.

I used YouTube in school and at home to research trailers in the thriller genre and get ideas for my own trailer. I learnt from last year that it's easier to put all my videos on there as it's easier to link it onto our blogs and share with people - which also allowed all of us to access the footage at home if we needed to. I found YouTube very useful for getting screenshots of previous work for my magazine cover as it saved time trying to find all of my work from last year on the school system.

Lucy used Direct Messaging on Twitter to contact Charlotte Campbell for permission to use her song in our trailer. She used Twitter to contact Charlotte as she didn't have any other contact details and needed a quick reply to ensure the trailer was finished in time.

We used Freeplay Music to find our music as it was important that we had a track without copyright. This site made it easier to find what we were looking for as it allowed us to filter the music available by tempo, feeling and mood it created. The music also gave our film a professional aspect as the tracks on this site are used for many professional projects, which made us pick this site over others. It was very easy to find what we wanted due to being able to easily preview every track we wanted and once we found the music we liked, it was very easy to download and came with other versions of the song. The music was also free, which helped the fact that we had no production budget.