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

I have used many different new media technologies throughout all the stages of the production of the product.

Research and Planning

The research and planning stage was the first step that had to be passed in order for us to create our final product and our ancillary texts.  We were first formed into our groups at the beginning of the research and planning stage and we had multiple tasks to undertake.  For each of these tasks we had to use different pieces of technology and software to complete them as successfully and effectively as we could.   One of the first tasks that we did was to research and analyse exiting horror trailers for many different conventions, both of the horror genre and trailer conventions.  To do this we used YouTube, a website built on the new web 2.0 technology for streaming online videos.  The next task we did involved researching and writing a traditional essay, entitled 'How horror represents gender'.  To do this I used Microsoft Word because it allowed me to format a professional looking essay that could be printed out and handed to my teacher for him to give his feedback.  Once he gave his feedback, I then used Microsoft Word again to make suitable changes and then export them to my blog.  Using the web 2.0 technology built into blogger, I was able to grab images from all over the web, for example a freeze frame image from a movie that I was talking about, to then add it inline with the text directly within the web browser.  This allowed me to create a more ascetically appealing blog, as well as offering breaks between the text.  The next task involved doing some audience research for us as a group to learn who our target audience is, what they like in horror movies and what they don't so that we could mediate the results and create a trailer that would fit to our audiences likes and dislikes.  This was a very important stage because we needed to ensure that our trailer would be successful when launched at our target market.  To conduct this research we used two pieces of software from the Microsoft Office suite; Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.  Microsoft Word was used to allow us to produce our questionnaire that could be printed out and handed to students around the college.  We then used  Microsoft Excel to visually collate the results into pie charts that helped us to see the overall consensus of our target audience.  Once we had collected these results we needed to come up with our final team idea that would be used as the plot for our trailer.  To do this we once again used Microsoft Word to type up a summary of the group idea.  Along the way we once again used YouTube so we could compare and contrast some of our ideas with trailers that had already been produced.  We then used Microsoft Word to create a 'Shot List' for us to print out and take with us filming so that we knew what shots we needed and the order to shoot them in.  Finally we used Blogger again to upload our group idea onto each of our individual blogs.  The last piece of technology that we used was Adobe Photoshop.  We used this to create our own individual mood boards based on our group idea.  Photoshop was a really great piece of software for this as it allowed me to add different effects to the images I added to my mood board, as well as allowing me to layer images to add depth to the image.  Finally we used a digital camera to take and upload pictures of our hand-drawn storyboard.

Production

Apple iMac with Final Cut Pro

The next stage in the project was to produce the final products; the trailer and the ancillary texts.  This stage involved using lots of different media technologies in a combination that would help us to make the most effective trailer possible.  To start we had to go out and film the footage that we would use to manipulate and create the final finished product.  We used mobile phones and the social networking website 'Facebook' to keep us as a group in contact and with the other students that we used for filming.  This allowed us to have group conversations, making it much easier to organise a time that everybody was able to make because we filmed our footage away from college and in our own time.  We shot our footage using a Sony DV camcorder that stored its footage to a Mini DV tape.  We then captured the footage to our group Apple iMac computer using a Firewire 400 cable.  We captured the footage directly into Final Cut Pro, a professional video editing piece of software produced by Apple.  Arguably, Final Cut Pro was the most important piece of software that we used because we spent the most time working with it and because it was the software that produced the final main product.  It was a very steep learning curve for myself and the two other people in my group to adjust to because none of us had ever used it, except for a trial horror trailer that we made at the end of our AS Media Studies course.  Final Cut Pro was such a steep learning curve due to the amount of features and complicated layout that such a professional piece of software brings as opposed to more consumer focussed software such as Windows Movie Maker of iMovie.  We learnt how to use a number of functions in Final Cut.  The first thing that we needed to do was to create a folder that we could use as our 'scratch disc', the place where the computer could hold all the files related to our project.  In this folder all our imported footage, edited footage, timeline and soundtrack files were stored.  We learnt the basics of how to set 'in' and 'out' points and how to add and rearrange clips on the time line.  We also learnt about how to add audio files, either dialogue, sound effects or music to the timeline and how to control the volume of the video tracks in relation to the audio tracks.  We learnt how to use the pen tool to add virtual lines on top of clips to control the visibility of a clip to allow it to fade on and off screen.  We also learnt about how to add basic text to the storyboard and the ways of positioning it on screen.  Then once we had got more used to using the software we started to use some of the more advanced features.  One of the first advanced features used is the use of layering video tracks, which allowed us to keep certain elements of  a frame on screen whilst having others fading out, different sizes, different colours etc.  This feature was really useful for creating the 'A PSG Production' intertile as it allowed us to change the appearance of the PSG logo without effecting the rest of the intertitle.  It also allowed us to have words appear in an order instead of all at once, making it easier for the audience to read the on screen information.  Another advanced feature that we used involved using a variety of different filters.  We used two kinds of filters during production, filters that added effects to the text and filters that changed the appearance of the video clips.  On the text we added numerous filters, such as a gaussian blur and an 'Earthquake' filter that made the text blurry and shake.  We adjusted the mix to customize the effects and changed other settings, such as the opacity of the effect and the timing of the effect in relation to the timing of the clip on the timeline.  The filters we added to the text were really useful and in my opinion worked really well as they allowed us to combat the issue brought up in our audience feedback that our text was too "boring" and that it wasn't "scary" enough.  We also managed to find a 'Light Tunnel' filter that we applied to the party scene text which helped to give the text more of a party feel.  For video filters, we used a combination of filters that allowed us to manipulate our clips shot in the day to make them appear that they were shot at night.  This is a huge benefit of the new media technologies for the producers because it allows night shots to be shot in day when they would have been much more challenging to take, for example ours would not have been easy to shoot at night because we were in a woods foreign to us trying to pull of challenging clips such as dragging a character underneath a bridge.   The two main filters that we have used for this were 'Brightness and Contrast' and the '3 Way Colour Mixer'.  These filters allowed us to make the image darker, whilst keeping enough light to still see the picture.  They also allowed us to add a blue wash to the image to help give the feel of nighttime.  Finally one other advanced feature that we learnt to use was the razor blade tool that allowed us to finely 'chop up' our clips.  This was useful in the scene where peter is 'deranged' because it allowed us to randomise the order that the shot was taken and to splice in different clips to create one short but very dramatic and expressive clip.  I found that as myself and my group developed more ability with Final cut, we were able to use more complicated features to help create a more effective trailer.  In my opinion, Final Cut Pro is a really good program that is capable of turning fairly amateur footage into good footage.  It comes with lots of different features and options that allow you to edit even some of the finer details of the clip and it allows for media to be combined from lots of different places, e.g. some dialogue clips that we recorded on an Apple iPhone, loops from GarageBand and music downloaded from the Internet.  However in my opinion its one shortcoming is that it is fairly basic for sound editing.

Apple iMac with GarageBand

To combat this, another piece of software that we used was GarageBand, a piece of software written by Apple under their iLife suite of applications.  This program was vital to the creation of our soundtrack for our trailer.  We used this program for manipulating all of the audio files that we needed to add into the trailer and to record our own sound effects and dialogue straight into the iMac by using the built in microphone.  We also used the program to allow us to manipulate the backing music that we downloaded from 'Freeplay Music', a copyright free music source where we downloaded the music from that plays behind the party scene and the horror scenes set in the woods.  We also made use of the various loops that come preinstalled with GarageBand to create our own sound effects and music, namely the music playing over the introductory intertitles at the beginning of the trailer along with the thunder claps.  GarageBand was a hugely important part for the production stage of the product because it ensured that we could have sound clips at the correct volume, tempo, pitch and length so that the sound files fitted in perfectly with the trailer video clips.  We exported the files from GarageBand back into Final Cut Pro as .AIFF audio files.

Apple iMac with Adobe Photoshop

One other media technology that we used during production was Adobe Photoshop, a piece of software that we each previously used individually during the Research and Planning stage to create our mood boards.  We once again used this software individually to create our ancillary texts.  I used Photoshop on two different documents, the poster and the magazine front cover.  For the poster, I used Photoshop to manipulate multiple frames of Peter's 'deranged' face close to the end of the actual trailer.  I used a combination of the magic wand, quick selection tool and the eraser to cut around Peters head to remove the background image.  I then added various lighting effects to change the brightness and contrast of the picture in certain areas.  Finally I changed the opacity of the photo to make the image slightly transparent and therefore giving it a more ghostly feel.  I did this from a number of frames to create a montage of Peters different faces that were placed all over the poster, edge to edge.  Finally I flattened all the layers of the faces in the background and desaturated them to make them black and white.  I then duplicated the central face on the poster and desaturated the layer at the back.  I used the magic wand tool to select only the blood on the face and deleted the rest of the face.  I did this so I could keep only the red colour from the blood and to leave the rest of the image greyscale to keep red as the feature colour, something that is typically done in horror movies due to its connotations of blood and pain.  I then created the billing block by using the text tool and used shapes to create the logos for the production company and studio that are beneath the billing block on the poster.  For the magazine cover, I initially used Photoshop to import a copy of an existing 'Empire' magazine front cover.  I then used the magic want tool to select the outline of the 'Empire' writing and filled the selection with the shade I wanted to.  I then moved this onto a blank layer and added the pylons background behind the text.  Next I took a photo I had taken of Peter with blood on his face post production and used photoshop to adjust the brightness, contrast, levels and to remove some of the glare on the image from the sun.  Finally I used a combination of the quick selection tool, magnetic lasso and eraser to select just Peter from the image.  I added this as a layer beneath the 'Empire' writing so that the masthead bleed over the top of the main image.  Finally I used the text tools to add the cover lines and used the shape tools to draw a film strip at the bottom of the page that I could add frames from the movie into.  I think Photoshop has many advantages in that it allows you to completely change the appearance of a picture to make it fit for purpose, for example my photo on my magazine cover was taken against a concrete background with lots of glare from the sun on Peters face.  With Photoshop I was able to remove these things from the image to improve the quality of the picture and its usefulness to allow it to not look out of place on the magazine cover.   Finally I used Blogger to once again upload and publish my final product and ancillary texts.  I uploaded to ancillary texts to both Blogger and Flickr (Flickr for analysis) and the trailer to YouTube.  I then took the HTML embed code and added that to a blog post so the trailer could be played from YouTube but without leaving Blogger.

Evaluation:

For my evaluative work, the two main technologies that I have used have been Blogger and Flickr, blogging and photo sharing web 2.0 websites.  I have found Blogger to be a really good way of organising my work for a few different reasons.  One is that it is very easy to keep all work in a consistent house style because you set a style for the blog and then all posts must follow it.  Another reason is because it is very easy to keep work organised and easy to find because you assign a label to each post which therefore adds it to its own category.  I have also found Flickr to be really useful because it has a very intuitive user interface that has been incredibly useful for analysis because it allows you to simply drag boxes over elements of uploaded images to then create your own notes with analysis notes in them that pop up when you 'roll over' that section of the image.  I have also found myself using Photoshop a lot in my evaluation to edit and create images for my blog, for example the pictures of iMac's on this post where I have used Photoshop to add my own screenshots onto the computer screen and the audience feedback question where I have created speech bubbles with my audience feedback against a black background so that it blends in with the blog.  Using these methods of evaluation does bring advantages and disadvantages but in my opinion the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.  One advantage of using Blogger and Flickr for evaluation is that all of your work is in one place and can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection, for example I can edit my coursework on my mobile phone and my computer at home as opposed to being restricted to only college where I may have my notes and books etc.  Another advantage I think is the speed of accessing the work that you have completed on Blogger.  This is because everything is indexed on the blog by the labels assigned to the posts so all content regarding a certain area of the project is all available in one place.  A final advantage is the security of your blog posts.  This is because Blogger is owned by Google, a huge multinational company that will regularly backup their systems which should therefore protect your work should anything go wrong as opposed to having a paper copy of an essay that could easily get misplaced and lost.  The only disadvantage that I can think of for using Blogger is speed, namely because you have to wait to create new posts, make sure you assign the correct labels, have the correct sized images to import etc.  However, I much prefer using Blogger to writing handwritten or typed essays as I have to do in my other subjects.