Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the contruction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the various stages of creating our trailer both myself and my group used a whole host of technolgies to help us. This is an overview of what we used, how, where and why we used it!

YouTube-

YouTube was definitely invaluable technology that has proved useful on more occasions than one.

During my research stage I used YouTube's library of videos to gain access to various horror movie trailers that I analysed to get a feel for not only the conventions of a trailer but those of horror.

The fact that YouTube is so accessible is another matter of its own, providing I had internet access I could look up a trailer at any point allowing my to do my research not only at college but on the go and at home whereas if I was perhaps limited to the colleges resources the work  I could do outside would be severely limited.

During the planning and construction stages my group and I were able to use YouTube to access more trailers and organise what conventions and styles we would follow and use in our own trailer.

After completion we were able to access our own trailers since they were uploaded to YouTube which is helping with evaluation I am currently writing.

Feedback is another point, YouTube uses a comments system so I was able to share my video with friends and they could share feedback via the comments system that I could use in my evaluation.

Blogger-

Blogger is a very popular and easy to use blogging website. Everything I do is saved on to blogger and that includes my research and planning. Similar to YouTube I was able to use blogger to access various pieces of information mainly relating to planning and research at home and even finish up and edit pieces of work that.

Because of the digital medium I was able to use various techniques to make my blog look pleasing to the eye. I was able to edit background to make it interesting and slightly more fitting (I used a picture of Freddy Krueger and a slightly more "horrific" title font!) as well as change colours and font sizes of the texts to make certain important points stand out more as well as making it look generally nice and not boring like your typical black and white piece of text would be.

Like YouTube as well Blogger features a comment system, my teacher was able to review and share feedback on my work over term holidays and weekends. I was able to access Blogger and take note of these points and make amendments to my work without even being in class which was very useful if I wished to do work outside college.

Photoshop-

With some prior experience I found Photoshop to be a brilliant piece of technology that helped a lot when designing my ancillary task pieces.

Both my Trailer poster and Magazine cover were created in Photoshop and all make full use of its built in tools such as the Liquefy tool, the ability to create layers and change contrast/brightness.

Final Cut Pro-

When editing out trailer we used Final Cut Pro, industry standard software that certainly lives up to its reputation. Final Cut features not only what you'd expect with a customizable layout, an in-depth timeline that allows for precise and complex editing but It also features many amazing effects including various transitions, the ability to alter brightness, colour and contrast and add specific effects to text.

Like with Photoshop I had some previous editing experience but with a program called Sony Vegas, one that is very different and nowhere near as complex and as in-depth as Final Cut Pro so naturally there were difficulties adapting to and learning the new software and working out how to make the most out of it but once myself and my group were over the hurdles Final Cut Prop allowed us to make a very professional looking trailer that we're happy with.

Garageband-

This is a piece of software I've never used before, mainly because I personally dislike using Mac operating systems.

Garageband provided the majority of sound effects used including various booms and musical cues. I do feel however the program was rather simple and lacked the customisation within the sound that being a music technology student I'm used to when creating sound effects or soundtracks.

Cameras-

During the production of my trailer we utilised HD video camera that recorded at a very high quality 1080p.

With the tripod I felt that whilst taking the helm and recording some of our shots I had adequate control over angle, camera height and positioning ect.

Again I had some experience, albeit not much, with video recording so some things came naturally and other things were down to trial and error such as filming a piece of the trailer in a specific angle to see if it would work and then obviously go back and re-do it if it didn't look good.

By the end of our series of shooting sessions I felt I knew a lot more and could comfortably film this all over again with just myself operating the camera.

Flickr-

Flickr is a website that allows people to upload, annotate and share images through other mediums including Blogger and that's exactly what I used Flickr for.

Livetype-

Another program I haven't used before, Live type was what we used to make the titles as well as our main film title. We used a pre-set font called "Cracked" and edited it by warping and stretching parts of the letters to make it look "scarier". The freedom to do whatever we liked was great and allowed us to make some fantastic looking titles and surprisingly, unlike Final Cut Pro, the software was very user friendly.

Freesound.org-

Freesound is a website that hosts royalty-free sound clips. After a fair while spent browsing through its various sounds we were able to find some that we were able to use in our horror trailer, like the squelch at the end when our killer plunges the pitchfork  into a rather unlucky victim.

Freesound has a very good and vast library of sound, and whilst we only found a few we wanted to use there were hundreds of others that were worth using if we needed them.