4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?

• I could not have done my projects without the advantages that we have today of technology. It has changed a lot over the years and maybe just 10 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to do half of what I was capable of doing today. During all stages of my production: research, filming, taking pictures and editing, I had a wide variety of technology to choose from.

• Convergence is the technology driven unification of different media channels. For many years different media was clearly separated: broadcast TV, broadcast radio, newspapers, books, video and film, recorded music etc. The internet and other digital methods of distribution have changed this over the years. A digital connection or physical medium can carry any type of content; video can be used on a mobile phone network or music over the internet.

Then... and now

Media convergence

• When researching and planning for my media products, I was able to do it all from the computer using the internet. After I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I could use the internet to look at many different examples, trailers, posters, etc, to give me some influences for my media products. Some of the sites I used were: youtube, traileraddict, imdb, wikipedia and littlewhitelies/themagazine; each one of these was a great source and helped me a lot with the introduction to my media products. This enabled me to do all my research and planning in one place, which made it less time consuming which was good so I could move on to the next stage.

• Youtube let me browse through various different trailers and teaser trailers to create an idea for my own project.

• Traileraddict allowed me to look at different teaser trailers to help me with influences for my film. It was very useful and quick and helped me find my main influences.

• Imdb gave me the opportunity to research information about each one my influences.

• Wikipedia was also a great source for research. Right at the beginning of my research stage it helped me define what an actual teaser trailer is and how it is different from a full length trailer.

• The Little White Lies magazine website showed me all the different issues of the magazine and helped me understand their style and then create my own magazine cover by staying true to their fashion.

• When filming for my teaser trailer, I used my schools video camera. This was good because I had a lot of recording time on the tape, which meant that I could record each scene more than once so I had choice and backup when I came to editing. I also used a tripod with the camera, which allowed me to have each shot positioned correctly and steady.

• When taking pictures for my poster and magazine cover, I used my own digital camera. Which was also good because it allowed me to take a variety of pictures and then chose the one that I felt was most effective. After working with the lighting and doing lots of editing on Photoshop, I managed to create the poster and magazine cover that I wanted.

• When editing my media products, I was very grateful for technology these days, because I was able to do almost everything from our Mac computers that we used. I used many different programmes and websites such as iMovie, LiveType, Photoshop, iTunes, Reason, youtube, google images, blogger, etc. iMovie was the main program that I used for my teaser trailer, it was very good because it help me put my entire project and each shot in to place using a variety of interesting transitions and effects.

• However, I came across a few problems with the sound on the video camera; it wasn’t great; it wasn’t very loud and didn’t capture the full sound of what I was filming. Therefore when I started editing, I had a few problems with hearing the voice of the characters, but I solved it my best by turning the volume up on the computer as much as I could. I also had a few problems with the lighting. I wanted my picture to be in the dark but the lighting for this was tough, if I used the flash on the camera then it came up too light and didn’t look effective enough, so I had to turn the flash off which gave it a slightly strange lighting, but I worked with this as much as I could and used Photoshop to make it look how I wanted it to. The only issue that I had with iMovie was that there weren’t a wide range of titles to chose from, so I used another program called LiveType to enable me to create the titles that I wanted to and then I imported it to iMovie.

• There wasn’t a wide variety for music choices on these computers, I tried to create a sound for my trailer in Garageband but I couldn’t find what I wanted. So I had to go home and use a different program called Reason, it’s a software that allows you to create lots of different sounds using piano, drums, etc and has a lot more possibilities than other programs. Then I put this on to my USB and transferred it into iTunes on the Mac computers and then on to iMovie to fit with my teaser trailer.