Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
Weebly
Weebly was a vital source of constructing our media portfolio, using new media technologies. All the contents of our media coursework is uploaded on to the website, ensuring organisation and a simple way of keeping our work together. We have used the site to install all of our research, planning and evaluation. The website itself was very manageable, as you can use two buttons at the top called 'Build' and 'Pages' to create the whole website. The 'Build' buttons allows the users to built an actual website page. For example you can add titles, text, image and even youtube videos onto your website.It is used to decorate our page, to make it more appealing. The 'Pages' button mainly allows you to sort your pages in the order you would want, as well as creating main pages also known as 'standard pages' or creating the contents that go under these standard web pages. There are also a range of themes you could choose from bright colours or dark colour depending on the genre and theme of your trailer. Subsequently, Weebly was also a useful way for us to link our together that is on other websites, such as Prezi, slideshare and mainly YouTube. We found this easy and useful, because all our work for research, planning and evaluation was on one website,that would allow you to link to other sites that would be useful and imperative to creating a finished portfolio.Weebly is a great new media technology that we were fully dependant on for the construction of our coursework.
Photoshop
Photoshop is a software we used to edit and finalize images, to create our professional looking poster and magazine. It is a crucial part of new media technology, as this softwares allowed us to add and edit photos, texts and more. This is in fact the most difficult software we've encountered, due to the complications of adding different features of our poster/magazine one by one. We mostly used Photoshop for our Planning, such as looking for a suitable colour scheme. However, we didn't use this software for research. The software also allowed us to edit photos such as removing blemishes, and smoothing skin, in the process of creating a high quality magazine and poster.
Final Cut Pro
One form of media technology that we used that was intensely imperative in the creation of our trailer 'Lara is Final Cut Pro. The advantage that we had in using this software to create our trailer, is that our group are all familiar in using it to create media. For example we used this software in the creation of our Opening Title Sequence, so therefore we had learnt techniques and shortcuts through the year to help create our final project. In the creation of our trailer, we had to create a New Project on final cut, to start piecing our video clips, sound effects and text together. In addition, as we wanted a professional looking trailer, it was important to add effects, sound and being able to change fonts and font sizes.
YouTube
YouTube was a key factor in the construction, research and planning of our trailer. We used YouTube to upload our research of our targeted audience and what they liked, what they wanted to see and favourite genre. This then helped us create out final trailer 'Lara'. We uploaded our trailer onto YouTube, so it was easy to access on our weebly website. YouTube also helped us research 'Enfield Haunting' so we could mirror some of the scenes that occur in the trailer, for our own project. YouTube is one of the best websites we used to research videos that would help help the creation of our trailer 'Lara'.
Prezi
Prezi was important in the research, planning and construction of our projection, because it helped us create a presentation to show our journey and the information and research we collected for our trailer 'Lara'. Prezi is an online website that helps you create a mindmap. This helped us as we were able to put all our ideas and research into one mind map, which helped us keep all ideas in one place, without having to worry about losing it, as well as the fact it is nice, easy and clear to use. Using prezi also helped us focus on certain aspects of research that is important in creating our trailer.
Apple Mac
The Apple Mac was a vital part in constructing our project, as we were able to access the software Final Cut Pro, as we wouldn't have been able to access it on any normal PC. The Apple Mac is used by many film industries to create their films, so therefore this was important in the creation of our professional looking trailer. In addition, we had to adapt and learn certain features or short cuts on the mac to make the construction of our trailer easier for us. Moreover, as a group we felt that it was a very easy hardware to use, and did not have any difficulties with the hardware.
Camera (Sony A7)
The camera was a very crucial piece of technology in the construction of our trailer, because we used this particular camera to capture all the videos for our trailers, alongside the use of apple mac which helped with the production of our trailer. This camera was very professional when filming all of our clips. For example, we were able to adjust the camera to suit the type of lighting that we were filming in, whether it was light or dark. Moreover, we were also able to zoom in to things without the camera losing it's quality and definition. Furthermore, we also used this camera to capture photos for the production and construction of our magazine and poster, and we also felt it was very professional.