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

2. iMovie was crucial in creating my film as it was
the main editing software that I used. It was easy
to learn how to use properly which was useful as
I hadn’t used the software much previously.
Even though it was quite simple it still had a high
quality of what you could do to make the film
which was good too, although, sometimes I had
trouble getting clips uploaded into iMovie and
had to get some help though this improved the
more I used it.

3. Photoshop was the most useful tool in
creating my two ancillary texts, the film
poster and magazine review.
As I have previous experience in using
photoshop from both AS media studies and
photography I had no problems in using it as
my skills in this area were already quite
proficient, therefore I did not have to learn
anything new.

4. Blogger was important in my planning
and research stages as it was used to
write my blog to write about what I was
intending to do and useful research that
could help me with my film.
As it was so easy to access it meant my
target audience could see it to help give
me feedback on ideas. It also meant I
was able to get on the blog from
wherever I was at any time if ever I
thought of something that I could update
or add.

5. I used an SLR Camera to film as it meant I could film in a much higher
quality as opposed to an older video recorder.
The camera I used was a Nikon D5100 which was good as I could use it for
taking the images for my poster and review as well as just filming.
Another positive to using this SLR was the fact I could adjust all the different
settings to get different results depending on the light and other conditions.
The film came out at a much higher HD quality as a result of using this
camera.
The only negative thing about it was I was not used to that specific camera
and it took me a while to get an understanding of how to set it up and use all
the features.

6. Vimeo and Youtube were both very important
for both the research stages and filming
stage.
I used them both to find short films that I
could use as inspiration and to find out more
about what you might expect to see in a short
film.
Youtube was also very useful for distributing
my film. Being possibly the biggest website in
the world for watching videos, I thought it was
the best place to share my film. I could use it
to show people in my target audience my film
and get it out so anyone could find it if they
wanted.
Youtube also has a comments section on
videos where people gave me feedback on
the film.

7. Dafont.com was a very helpful website
in creating the fonts for the logo of my
film, poster and review.
It had a huge selection of different,
unique fonts to choose from that would
fit in with the genre of my film and look
like the sort of thing you would expect
from a horror movie.
The fonts looked very professional and
were easier to find than if I were to
simply look through the preset fonts on
photoshop, hence why I used it for my
logo and title.

8. Facebook was used to send
my video to people so I could
get their feedback on what
they thought of it.
It also was useful to
communicate with the actors
to plan when everyone was
available to film as well as
talking to some other students
to discuss ideas.

9. I used slideshare to present some of my work on my
blog. It looked far neater and more professional, making
work easier to find and check through.
The only downside was if I needed to change anything I
had to go back to the presentation on powerpoint and
then upload it again once it had been amended.

10. Wordle was another website which had a different way for
me to present my work.
It creates a collection of words that I chose to add into a
brainstorm type thing showing things that could be
associated with the genre of my work.

11. To conclude, I used a large array of digital technology products
throughout the duration of my A2 course, some far more important
than others, for example, using a Mac computer for the whole
thing was much more important than using wordle.
Some of the technology I used could have been changed such as
the use of an SLR, which was not too important and I could have
used a standard video camera instead however I thought this was
best.
Overall, most of the technology I used had its own use in different
ways to help me improve in every aspect of the course.