How did you use new media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
Kathryn Peers
Using many forms of media technology was a vital part of my
coursework. From researching to evaluating, I was constantly
using different technology to help create a multimedia project.
Without technology, this assignment would not have
been possible; it enabled me to watch trailers, edit
images, record our experience and more.
Planning
We used Blogger to record our thoughts and ideas. It was a
great place to document ideas because our group could all view
and access the blog. Not only did we use it to show our planning
and development process, but it was also a great way to contact
each other in the group. We could write down ideas as they
came to us, then because we all regularly checked the
blog, others in the group could respond and expand each others
notes.
Soulless Productions
Research
YouTube
• YouTube was imperative to my media project and was used
throughout it, from researching to evaluating.
• Technology enabled me to research existing trailers using the
website phenomenon YouTube. It also allowed me to easily
embed videos onto the blog to show where we got inspiration
and stages our teaser trailer has gone through.
Research
YouTube
• YouTube also helped with getting feedback for our trailer as
other YouTube users can comment on videos. However we
didn’t get much feedback because there are so many videos
on YouTube it’s difficult to get ours noticed. To convey the
enormity of YouTube videos, I found an article that stated a
year ago ‘24 hours of video is uploaded every minute’, and it’s
ever increasing!
• Even though we didn’t get much feedback from YouTube, we
thought it was the best place to upload our video to as it
targets our audience because the main users of YouTube are
teens- young adults; known as the YouTube generation.
YouTube - Mediabdks's Channel
Research
iTunes
• It took us a long time and a lot of research to find music for
our trailer, but with the aid of the top online music store that
holds over 13,000,000 songs, iTunes allowed us a huge range
of music to browse. You can search, and it will suggest related
recommendations, so it’s easy to search through many songs.
Search box
Research
Google
• I used the search engine Google for any queries and research.
It was especially useful when researching horror film posters
on Google images because it was so quick and easy to find a
range of posters.
Magazine Websites
• When beginning my magazine, I first wanted to research
existing film magazines to see what conventions made them
successful. I used Google images for this but also the websites
for the magazines. For example Empire magazine had a cover
archive, allowing me to look at their magazines, past and
present, and see the conventions and themes running
throughout them all.
Construction
Video Camera
• We used a digital video camera to film all of our footage for
our teaser trailer. It was new to all of us so before we began
filming for our trailer, we had a test to get familiar with using it
and the tripod.
• We also used the video camera on an iPod to film the male
character held hostage for the shot of the female character
watching the iPod.
Construction
Flickr
• Flickr was a great website we could upload all our
photographs to. We created an account for our group Soulless
Productions and put on all the images we took at our poster
and magazine photo shoot.
• The website made it easy for us to share our images in our
group and it even makes them public and open to comments.
However, like YouTube, it is such a huge library of photos, that
it’s unlikely people would stumble across and comment on
them.
Construction
Adobe Photoshop
• I used Photoshop for editing my images for my magazine and
poster. It was simple and easy to use, and I had some previous
experience, so I knew some more complicated techniques for
manipulating and modifying my photographs.
• It is a professional program
used in the media industry,
therefore great for creating
realistic, professional looking
texts.
Construction
In Design
• In Design was essential to creating my ancillary texts. It is a
simple program that allows the user to add and edit text and
images. I used it to create both my magazine front cover and
poster.
• Like Photoshop, In Design
is used to create
professional media
products, therefore my
ancillary texts will look like
a real media text.
Construction
Although there is a wide variety of fonts on In Design, I wanted
some more graphic and unusual fonts to make my ancillary texts
unique and visually exciting. I used a website called Dafont to
download interesting fonts.
Comunicacion Digital Tosca Zero
Construction
iMovie
• This program was essential to the editing stages of our teaser
trailer.
• As no one in our group had ever edited video footage
before, this was a brilliant program that was simple and clear
to use. We all had a practise of cutting clips, adding sound and
other editing techniques before we began editing our teaser
trailer to get acquainted with it.
• iMovie allowed us to do a range
of interesting things such as
adding filters to specific shots
and cutting out or overlaying
sound.
Evaluation
Slideshare and Scribd
• Slideshare is a hosting site that allows you to upload your
PowerPoint’s to. It allowed me to easily add PowerPoint’s to
my blog.
• Scribd is also a hosting site, but for word documents. This
allowed me to create word documents and easily upload them
to my blog.
• They were both really useful when creating a multimedia
evaluation.
Evaluation
Social networking and YouTube
• Both Facebook and YouTube were a great, modern way to get
feedback for ideas and our trailer. In an age where social
networking is part of many people’s everyday lives, it was a great
and efficient way to gain feedback. It also reached out to our target
age group for our trailer because the majority of regular social
network users are 16-24, the same age range as horror film viewers.
• We used Facebook to ask friends their opinions because you can
receive instant replies, to get speedy feedback. Also It’s possible to
post videos from YouTube onto Facebook, therefore it gets our
trailer seen by a wide audience.