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

By Salma Begum 13A2

During the planning, research, construction and evaluation stages of our media product, I have used wide range of different technologies varying from different programs/software’s and platforms.

Planning Stage;

• We used Windows Movie-Maker to create our animatic using our story boards we have created.

Flash• Using the software Flash, I had practiced creating animations for our main title. This software allowed me to use my creativity skills by allowing me to play around with different tools to create an eye-catching animation.

Microsoft Word; was really useful for us as it offered a lot of ways to help us prepare for our film. We used Microsoft Word to help us create our script.

• We used Mobile phones to communicate with each other; where to meet up and plan our work. We also used social networking sites such as Hotmail and Facebook. This allowed us to send our drafts of our script to each other and to contribute each of our ideas about.

Research

• I have looked at the British board of film classification and analysed drama films. This was particularly helpful as it allowed me to look at the conventions of drama films; whether drama films challenged any conventions and what were the typical conventions used in these type of films.

Research; Research;

• I have done some research about Film institutions to find out about the various types of film companies that have produced dramas; and leant skills about how to make a successful film. I looked at the films made my the Warner Brothers. I have also done some research on IMDB (movie database) to look at reviews people wrote after watching a drama film.

• Web 2.0; we used Survey Monkey in order to help with publishing our audience surveys. It is crucial to collect feed back from our audience because the interests of our target audience is important to us in order to make our film successful.

• Web 2.0; YouTube was really useful as it helped us to research about the usefulness of storyboards and film techniques etc, and we also used Google to help us with anything we needed help on/ information about.

Construction;

• We used Imovie to upload our film clips from the camcorder. We then used Quick Time to convert our film clips/animations and import them on to Final cut. Final Cut was useful in helping us construct our film clips together in order to make a rough cut before we progressed on making a final copy of our film.

• We used Flash 3.0 to create our animations for our opening title and also to put all our animations together.

• We used Adobe Photoshop to construct our poster. This software helped us to manipulate the most interesting features of our poster. For example, we were able to crop and edit the image of our main character onto or poster.

• We used Microsoft PowerPoint/ Excel to construct our surveys. We used Logic Studio to successfully create our radio trailer. It was really useful because we were able to import different layers of sounds for our radio trailer. Also, it allowed us to use various tools, which allowed us to play around with our radio trailer to make it interesting.

• BBC film Network allowed me evaluate dramas’ in order to look at the conventions of dramas’ and to look at things we should improve on for our film to make it successful. There were also some reviews people made. Based upon the reviews, we were able to look the comments people made and make sure we included the things they preferred.

Evaluation stage;

• Using an MP3 Recorder, we recorded feedback for our film. The student responses helped us find out about things we needed to improve to make our film unbeaten.

• After receiving the valuable comments made about our film, we then used Final cut to improve our rough cut after the critical analysis.