Question 4How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

By Josh Baugh

Throughout my media studies course, digital technology played an important role when creating a magazine package at AS level; containing a music magazine front cover, contents page and article. It also helped me create a film package; including a film trailer, magazine cover and poster.

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign was a main source of digital technology that we used to create my magazine and poster.

I worked with the software to produce the whole layout for my magazine cover, and poster; experimenting with sizes of fonts and images using the re-size tool. And using the grid lock feature to ensure that the text, main splash and mast head were all cantered – making the whole thing look professional. This allowed me to visualise my poster and insert any features into the correct place.

Question 4

By Josh Baugh

Photoshop CS6Photoshop was also another piece of digital technology that was used throughout my A2 production.

I used Photoshop to edit my main image of my film magazine cover. I added various contrast corrections and sharpness enhancements to bring out the details within the image. I also cropped around the image to create a studio look to the image, following conventional features of film magazines. These techniques allowed me to achieve a more professional look to my magazine, showing great development from the preliminary task.

I am very confident when using the software and like to experiment with new ideas. For example: on my magazine cover, I decided to take two photos of the main character in our movie trailer; one of her as the character, showing the menacing make-up and battle scars. And the other one showed her as an actor.

These photos were then manipulated to make it look as if my model was wearing half of her make-up. The design itself was challenging to get the pictures to match up neatly. But when done well, it looked really effective.

Question 4

By Josh Baugh

A third piece of software used throughout my A level media course was Adobe Premiere Elements 12. This is a video-editing piece of software which was used thoroughly throughout A2.

It was used to create the animatic, where we inserted individual images into the timeline to make the storyline to our trailer. It also included elements of sound, including a soundtrack and various diegetic sound effects such as gun shots and thunder claps.

When creating the movie trailer we added in a number of similar diegetic and non-diegetic sounds that enhanced the experience when viewing the trailer. The trailer was more challenging to create but, with a group effort, we managed to overcome the problems and adapt quickly to the new software. And learn to meet deadlines as a team. From taking part in creating the animatic beforehand, I had a lot better understanding of how to create a professional looking movie trailer.

Adobe Premiere Elements 12

Question 4

By Josh Baugh

Blogger is an online blogging system that was used to track our progress throughout the course of the year. At A2, we used Blogger to show our progression and development of ideas when producing our magazine and poster. Posts consisted of research into real media text, primary research such as questionnaires and even rough drafts of the pages themselves. I found that blogger helped to keep track of my development of ideas. I utilised it as a diary, so I knew what to do and when to do it. Blogger was also used to get an insight of my other classmates’ work to see the kind of ideas they were using. This benefitted me, as I got an idea of what I should be producing.

Blogger also played an important role when we had to work in groups, and Blogger was used to keep track of, not only my work, but my classmates’ work to ensure that we were all up-to-date on deadlines and group work. This year, I have used Blogger to keep track of my work by posting what I did in production lessons: for example we posted behind the scene shots of our production to show my audience how things were done and to remind myself for future preferences. I have been visiting my group’s pages to keep up to date with our group work and share various ideas that is apparent throughout our whole groups’ productions, such as the title of the film and billing block.

BloggerQuestion 4

By Josh Baugh

Question 4Digital cameraThe digital camera was the main source of technology needed to create the products we did this year. It was used to create the animatic, the trailer, and the photos for the magazine and poster.

We used one of our group members’ camera as she was confident that it was a high performance piece of equipment and therefor gave us great quality images and video quality.

We took the camera out with us on every individual shoot and used the tri-pod which I had from home to keep the shots still and prevent any unprofessional looking shots and videos.

When the clips were recorded and the photos were taken, we then removed the SD card and inserted it into the computer in the media suite to transfer the files and use them to create the trailer, poster and magazine.

By Josh Baugh