In the 21st century there has been a huge influx of new technology of which I was able to explore in great depth whilst creating my media products. The availability to effective software and online material made the process very interesting and allowed me to develop certain skills in terms of design and production.
Due to my age and upbringing during my teenage years I have been a frequent user of social media sites. They continue to develop and become more efficient in accessing information.
-YouTube: This video sharing site was created in 2005 and quickly became to most used video website in the world. It is an extremely efficient form of research as the vastness of content seems unlimited. When starting the very beginning of research (trying the decipher an idea) I took to YouTube to find successful film trailers by both professional film makers and previous A-Level students...
It also enables the viewer to screen-shot the video so lasting images can be kept- for example my team members and I captured various trailer examples in order for us to gain some inspiration. This technique was also used in my evaluation as I analysed each shot of my final teaser trailer.
YouTube itself makes an appearance in our actual trailer content as each character films a video blog of which is very common in todays young society. These blogs are the link between the characters and their plea for help to their internet world and is a personal link to the target audience and their interests in the real world. In the first cut of our teaser trailer we used actual images of YouTube rather than just video blog content...
Using YouTube was very easy and effective in broadcasting each trailer and idea; receiving feedback from people all over the world. Our target audience would relate to the use of YouTube and therefore it appeals in many ways to our ideal audience. It was the overall site of which was the most effective in researching trailers and posting our own...
The editing software used to edit the actual footage was predominantly iMovie on the Apple Macbook. It allowed the process of cutting footage, creating the order, editing the effects of sound and images.
During the evaluation of my products both draft and final cuts, the use of FaceBook was important in finding audience feedback to ensure a successful outcome of products. I took to FaceBook to ask for opinions and advice in order to perhaps change/ develop areas of my products...
It was also useful that my age is in middle of my target audience, meaning my friends are also around that age- the feedback I received was from my intended audience of 15-19 year olds and therefore more useful information.
Photoshop...
During the construction of my film poster and magazine cover I heavily used this software from Adobe 'PhotoShop'. It is a highly technical editing software and was fairly challenging when trying to design each product.
Initial ideas came to a screeching halt when I reached certain skill-limitations as I have not used the software before this project. This example above was a design I abandoned as the colouring options refused to change to what I wanted... this was certainly a demanding task.
As I began to become accustomed to the controls of colouring, layout and fonts the task become more successful...
The layering setting was hard to work out in the beginning but I eventually understood what a great input it has when structuring my film poster as it allowed me to efficiently move text around the page...
The design of my magazine cover was that of a white background in order for the main image to be the focus (of Nina's character). Therefore as the original had a brick background and therefore needed editing...
(original)
By using these two 'wizard' icons I drew around the image of her body and created a completely white background.
Whilst planning photo ideas I came across 'Portrait Professional' which helped inspire ideas for my film poster and magazine cover...
iPhoto...
Apple products are considered the best digital devices of the 21st century and using a Apple Macbook Pro though out this process has been successful!
A great application that comes ready and installed on the laptop is iPhoto which as a photo editing software which is very easy to use.
I subtly changed the brightness/ colour saturation of my final film poster here...
Prezi...
Prezi is an online presentation software which allows free usage with limited memory, or a cost- membership to receive unlimited amounts of presentations. I found it particularly useful when projecting my evaluation- shown in previous posts. It was the first time I had ever used the programme and I picked it up rather swiftly.
The software allows the user to type text, add images and use various forms of transitions to travel around the points you've made. It makes presenting ideas much more clear and professional, it merges other media sites such as YouTube and the uploading of images from your laptop or straight from the internet.
Blogger...
Using Blogger to present my whole media project has been a great example of modern blogging software. Ever since I began to use it during AS my skills have developed greatly, for example now I can successfully post data which needs a HTML code (prezi). It also helped during our planning and research stages as my other group members and myself could link each other to posts on our blogs showing ideas and inspirations for our media product. It is a accessible site which allows the users to reflect all the work done across the course in an attractive manner. The labels allow structure and format to the blog, making it easy to find certain posts quickly.
Filming:
During the filming process we used a HD camcorder...
It was chosen as it was easily portable and very effective in capturing unique shots as it was so light. It was fast when downloading onto a MacBook and the HD standard gave a very clear cut picture quality. We purposely used a handheld camera to give a certain edgy feel to the shots and create a feel of reality and realism- the audience were able at points to feel as if they were there experiencing the body-swap with the characters. Also the video blogging scenes were recorded on a MacBook Pro as that is generally how teenagers would choose to film a blog entry for YouTube.
For planning and research posts I used an iPhone 4s to capture certain elements of the making of my teaser trailer- these showed the locations, characters etc...
Like all forms of technology I faced various issues, such as memory limitations of photoshop, copyright infringement on YouTube and lack of skills on certain programmes. However I can certainly see a huge development of skills were created whilst exploring these software programmes during the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages.
Overall with technology continuously developing it has been a great experience in uncovering different skills to create my media products. By many professional software programmes being accessible through my MacBook Pro it was interesting in using a wide variety in my project.
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