HOW DID I USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES TO HELP WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF MY PORTFOLIO?

PLANNING AND RESEARCH www.blogger.com is the website I used to document and record all of my A2

media work on, from the beginning of the year until now. By using this website, it has enabled me to build my knowledge and skills in

the important technique in blogging that is becoming increasingly more popular and is a fundamental skill in the today’s society because technology is progressing and improving so frequently and at great speed.

Amongst others, I have developed my skills in word processing, writing, planning, keeping to deadlines, keeping track of all my work and providing evidence for all I have done over the course. I have also developed my interactive skills by using things I have never used before and incorporating this into my blog to make it more interesting and appealing to the reader.

I did create a blog for AS media last year, but I feel I have learnt so much more about blogger and blogging this time around because I have used it a lot more and expanded on my knowledge of the website because I have been updating my blog near enough every day and so I have become more used to and it has allowed me to not only develop my skills, but also to see how I have progressed over the year due to documenting all of my work.

The internet has also be a focal point and a substantial and vitally important resource that I have used in my planning and research.

By using a variety of websites such as YouTube and VEVO I have been able to watch current trailers and analyse them in great depth. Also, the use of google and bing has been extremely helpful in the research of film posters and magazine front covers as without these search engines I wouldn’t have been able to see what they look like and the codes and conventions I should follow when creating my own ancillary tasks.

I have then been able to analyse the data I found through the internet to expand on my theoretical knowledge of the film industry and the codes and conventions media products such as film posters and magazine front covers use, develop and even challenge.

YouTube was also extremely important again in allowing me to upload all of my videos. I spent hours uploading every scene I had filmed so I could document it onto my blog and I also uploaded my final trailer on there for everyone to see. I found YouTube really useful for this because then I could just put videos onto my blog with the click of one button and I also could get feedback and comments on my trailer through YouTube.

CONTRUCTION OF TRAILER Before we could even start editing any of our footage, we had to insert all of our

videos into the programme we were using to put our trailer together. The programme we used was Adobe Premiere Elements. This was a brand new software that was brought into the school especially for our year and so the knowledge of the software was minimal, which as media students, I know I found it quite hard in the beginning to find my way around the software. Me and Andrea often found ourselves looking in the manual book for help, especially with adding text and making clips longer or shorter. However, even though this was time consuming, I do believe it helped us in our depth and knowledge of the software and at the end of the course and when our trailer was completely finished, I felt I knew my way around the software really well and I could pretty much do everything without any help from the teachers and the technicians or any help from the manual book.

In the end, I am glad we had this software and that we didn’t use Windows Movie Maker to create our trailer because I think Adobe Premiere Elements is a more professional and established movie making software that has a wider range of effects and tools you can use to create a successful and a well put together trailer. Whereas I feel Windows Movie Maker is a lot more basic and even though you can still create a good trailer through this software, you are much more restricted to what you can do on this software so overall, even though I found Adobe Premiere Elements very difficult to begin with, I believe it has helped us to create a good, professional trailer and it has enabled me to develop my skills and use a programme that I had never used before, which I think I am now quite good at using and would love to use again.

Another use of technology came from the use of Adobe After Effects. This was extremely useful in the making of our production company and ident. In lessons, we planned how we wanted to our ident to look and we wanted to create an animation with a shooting star shooting across the sky. We attempted to do this in lesson using Windows Movie Maker, but because our knowledge of the software wasn’t great and we didn’t think we would be able to achieve what we wanted using this software, one of our friends, Joe, suggested that we could use his software which was Adobe After Effects that is really good at creating animations. We accepted his offer and so we went round to his house and he showed us around the software and how to use it. In the end, I was over the moon about how our ident turned out. It was exactly how I wanted it to look and I think it looks really professional and like an established ident.

I think my school should research this programme and look into getting it put onto the school system because it was really useful in creating my ident and I believe other students next year and years to come will really benefit from this programme.

This programme has once again expanded my knowledge of new media software that I had not yet used before. It was really easy to use and the end product is fantastic, I will definitely use it again.

When actually filming our scenes, there were a lot of new products and technologies we used. We used brand new HD cameras and brand new tripods to aid us with our filming so that we could achieve smooth, professional footage. I had never really used a proper HD camcorder and I had never used a tripod yet I found them both really easy to use and they really enabled us to create the scenes and the shots we had visualised. I am really greatful we had these excellent technologies because without them we wouldn’t have been able to film such professional-looking footage and by the end of the filming process, my knowledge of the technologies had improved greatly and my knowledge of creating a variety of different camera shots and angles.

SKILLS GAINED FROM OUR CONSTRUCTION

Filming skills Editing skills Computer skills Other

I had never really filmed anything at all before so this was a completely new process for me to get to grips with. Using the video camera gave me great practice in filming and capturing a variety of camera shots and angles which was vital for our trailer. I also concentrated on the lighting, framing and focussing and zooming in and out. The video camera has helped me to develop my skills so much further that I could have imagined.

When editing, we had pretty much no input or help from the teachers unless we asked for it. This allowed us to develop our independence with our trailers and we made decisions pretty much between the two of us which vastly improved my independent skills and my use of management and decision making.

I developed my computer skills by having to upload the filming footage from the camera to the computer through USB. I also had to get the footage from the computer onto the editing software.

Teamwork was a big skill that I developed in this process as Andrea and I had to work together and she was someone that I had never really spoken to before, but now I have really gotten to know her through this process and are great friends now. We had to decide together on the plotline, camera shots and angles, characters, music, editing, name of the film and many more. Luckily, me and Andrea got on really well and had the same vision so there was no conflicts.

I also learnt how to use a completely new editing software that I had never used before in the form of Adobe Premiere Elements which helped me to discover and develop editing skills that I never knew I had.

Uploading videos to YouTube and then embedding them onto m blog and powerpoint which can developed my computing skills as I have never uploaded videos to YouTube before so this was a new skill I developed

Patience is definitely a skill I have developed hugely through this construction. The editing software would often crash and randomly shut down and so I had to wait a long time for the software to reboot and the work I had done had sometimes gone so it was time consuming waiting for the software to reload and then to redo the work I had lost.

FURTHER CONSTRUCTION Here are images of other technologies I have

used in the construction of my media products.

I am currently using powerpoint now for my evaluation which I am very familiar with and so know how to use it very well.

I used paint to crop some images that I had print screened from my editing programme and YouTube to embed onto my blogger. I was also very used to paint as I have used it many times before so I could easily developed my skills there.

I used the camera to take the pictures for two ancillary products: film poster and film magazine.

I then used photoshop to edit my photos to make them look more professional. Photoshop was a new programme for me that I had only really used once or twice before so I did find it quite difficult to begin with but after some help from other media students that had used it before, I managed to get the hang of it and I feel I have really developed my skills with this technology.

After this, I used microsoft publisher to create my two ancillary products. I was very familiar with publisher because I have used it many times in my other school work such as my music magazine in AS media so I was able to develop my skills quickly.

Overall, this unit has really expanded my skills and as a whole, I am quite pleased with my package. I hope I have shown to you all the work I have put into it over the past few months and have given a good reflection of the work I have done and the effort I have put into making my final