How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction and

Research, Planning and Evaluation Stages?

Charlie Smith
 Uses Of The Blog
One of the main advantages of a blog is that it allows you to harness many
forms of media in one place. During the research + planning stage and the
construction stages of my coursework I used many forms of media.

An embedded YouTube Video Publisher File Photos

By using different forms of media it not only allows to you access many types of
resources but it is aesthetically interesting. On the whole, I would define my blog
as a coming together of my research, planning, construction and evaluation
stages of my teaser trailer.
 Uses Of The Blog Continued
The Blogging platform that I used was Wordpress. Overall I was extremely happy with Wordpress, it’s
chronological posting feature allowed me to easily keep track of posts and generally make my
coursework more organised compared to doing my coursework on paper for example.

The ‘blogging culture’ meant that whenever I felt like it I could add my thoughts and findings to my
blog. Instead of becoming a formal document, sometimes I added random thoughts which made
my coursework more personal and individual.

Because my blog was online, it meant that I could seek feedback fairly easily through methods such
as polls and message boards. However the main problem with polls is that people in general
(including me) made appropriate polls yet failed to act on the findings of these polls. In terms of
research data, seeking information from target audiences of specific genres etc was important in
finding out what people REALLY want and are interested in.
 My Use Of The Internet
One of the best internet resources that I used was IMDB.COM or ‘the internet movie database’. This tool was extremely
useful in researching films from specific genres, and other important information such as setting locations and access
to current trailers, posters and magazine covers. In the early stages of my coursework when I was researching genre,
I used the psychological thriller page in order to find links to past films from this genre.

I also used the popular video-sharing website YouTube in order to showcase my trailer going through all of the stages of
construction. I chose YouTube because the website supports many video formats and the upload times are relatively
quick. The website is also compatible with Wordpress in that embedding my trailer into my Blog was quick and easy.

I used SoundCloud in order to upload audio to my blog. Again I used this tool because it is easily compatible with
wordpress. I used SoundCloud to showcase the soundtrack that I hope to use on my trailer.

In order to add powerpoint documents to my blog I used a service called ‘Scribd’.

 Specific Skills
• Video Editing
The program that I used in order to construct my trailer was Adobe Premiere Elements 2. overall I would say that
adobe elements had many features which helped a relative ‘newcomer’ to video editing yet it did take some time
to get used to. In terms of evaluating the software, I would say that it held me back in places such as titles and
transitions, where the options were limited. Perhaps if I had used a newer video editing software package it may
have improved my trailer as these options and features could have been available to me, as elements 2 is around
5 years old.

• Desktop Publishing
I used Microsoft publisher to create analytical documents for research, planning and evaluation stages of my
coursework. I have used publisher before and so it was relatively easy to use, allowing me to create spider
diagrams and other ways to layout my ideas.

• Photo Editing Software

I used Photoshop in order to create my magazine and poster. Photoshop is a complicated bit of kit that is to a
professional standard, however I have experience from AS level in this software. In my opinion, Photoshop was
extremely good at creating professional looking media products, with a huge variety of fonts, colours etc that I
used in both my magazine front cover and poster.
 My Use Of Photography and Video
• I used photography in order to document my progress in the planning stages of my coursework. Character shots
and location shots gave an outline of where I was going with my trailer.

• I also used photography in my magazine front cover and poster, editing these pictures in order to create the
atmosphere I was after, and taking shots which I thought were ‘conventional’ to both my genre and the media
type e.g. magazine front cover.

• Video was used in the production of my trailer. I used a relatively old camcorder, however it was simple and quick
to use. If I had used a more sophisticated camera then the video quality of my trailer may have been slightly
better. Some features of the camera were inadequate for my trailer, for example I wanted to perform a focus pull
yet the camera was simply to tricky to set up. Uploading my footage to my video editing software was also quick
and easy.

• Video was also used in my evaluation stages, whereby I had people sat in front of the camera and recorded there
thoughts of my trailer.