Evaluation Question 4
- 1. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Bill Clark
- 3. Organisation I used my blog, on the website: http://www.wordpress. com I put on a selection of trailers/magazine covers/ film posters – from a variety of different genres. I embedded these texts onto my blog and then discussed the effectiveness of each. I also managed to imbed my inspiration for my trailer onto my blog as well.
- 4. My Blog I found using the blogs to ‘record’ my work a flexible way of working. The blogs have the ability to enable me to post – Trailers, Audio/Music Clips, Working Progresses, Magazine Covers, Film Posters, Powerpoints, Photos etc. onto my blog with ease. This gave me a wide choice of different media technologies that I could have at my disposal. It’s also a great place to get feedback from teachers on the work that I’ve done or are planning to do. Also another good point about the Blog is the ability to edit al;ready created work whereas say with pen and paper - once it’s written it’s written. ‘Wordpress’ gives one the freedom to edit, to chop and change.
- 5. Use of the Internet To research different trailers I went onto ‘YouTube’ and watched trailers from my favourite movies. This was my starting point. I chose ‘YouTube’ instead of similar websites such as ‘TrailerSpy’ as I believe that there is more choice - nearly anything can be found on ‘YouTube’ if you persevere enough. I then used ‘Wikipedia’ to research different types of thriller/horror films. Again like ‘YouTube’ it has everything on it. The only problem some people say that ‘Wikipedia’ has things that aren't true on them. However I already knew a lot about the chosen genre and ‘Wikipedia’ just reiterated what I already knew. I then went back to ‘YouTube’ to view suitable trailers for what I was intending to do.
- 6. Audience Response To plan my Trailer I had help from the audience, I interviewed a member of my target audience and got a feel for what they enjoyed about thriller/horror films. To plan my magazine cover I also got an audience’s opinion. I placed a poll on my blog – asking which cover, (out of a selection), was the most effective for a thriller. I created my texts based on the feedback I received from the audience.
- 7. Use of Photography To plan my Trailer I took a variety of shots. Including, different shots of my actress, (different viewpoints) and I also took lots of shots of possible settings. I then chose which settings I believed would be the most effective. These pre-shoot shots also helped me as they gave me an idea of what I could do for my cover and poster. I had my actress wear everyday clothing instead of a costume. This way people could distinguish between the two and assess her suitability. This setting proved popular with the people that I showed it to. They thought it was suitably ‘creepy’.
- 8. Construction
- 9. Organisation I posted on my blog filming that I had done as well and then commented on how this shot could work or another similar one that I could possible take. I used my blog to post working progresses of trailers. Whenever I had done a sizeable chunk of editing I would then export the clip – upload it to ‘YouTube’ and then imbed it into my blog. This is where I find the blogs become really useful as my teachers could then view my progress and my audience could then engage with my constructs and working progresses.
- 10. Audience Response I’ve reacted to comments that people have placed on my constructions that are on my blog. I take what they say into consideration – it is doubly helpful as the people that are commenting are my target audience. I have also done more polls to see the reaction to a variety of different posters and magazine covers. Now because of the poll tool on ‘Wordpress’ I have been able to determine my final poster and what I need to do to improve it - as seen in the comments section of the blog. The only issue that I encountered when gathering audience feedback was getting people to view my blog - it got boring having to go around different members of my target audience and ask them to look at my blog.
- 11. Editing Skills Progression For my editing and constructing of the trailer, magazine and poster – I used, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. The use of Premiere Elements was completely new to me as I had never used it before so it required some practice – this can be seen on the following slides. The practice was time well spent as I became very familiar with the program. I had previous experience with Adobe Photoshop, so all I needed was to refresh my memory of that particular programme. To do this I looked back at some previous work form the AS course and refreshed my memory on how I created those particular constructs.
- 12. This was practicing with different titles and how I could perhaps do a credit sequence. This was part of the practice that went into using the whole program as well not just the title tool. This particularly helped with the effectiveness of how I went about getting ‘clips’ and placing them in the ‘Clip’ and ‘Timeline’ screen.
- 13. I then proceeded to practice with actual clips that I filmed and sound that I recorded.I also then practiced using different effects. This practice really helped me as when I came to do the final editing it sped the process up – I could get working as soon as my filming was completed instead of messing around at the beginning of the year. There are a few user problems when it comes to Adobe Premiere Elements certain aspects are hard to use and take a lot of getting used to. So there was a lot of wasted time practicing and ‘learning the ropes’.
- 14. To begin the poster I used a ‘default’ one that I created. I then added different backgrounds, (photos) and then proceeded to change the text – this can be seen in the next slide. This helped as I wrote this out before I took my photos – this ‘default’ led to the type of photos I took – I knew the type of look I wanted to go for and incorporate. I also finds Adobe PhotoShop very user friendly, it allows me to work quickly and efficiently.
- 15. The evidence that I ‘played’ with the text and how they suited different photos. Using different photos helped me to experiment with different texts, (sizes, colour etc.), I discovered that certain texts worked with different photos – I could then use that colour, size etc for my different constructs. I kept the poster minimalistic so as to save time however I think they are by no means less effective. As I chose to keep them simple I only used the ‘Text’ tool and the ‘Transform’ I did place some effects on the texts - such as the credits at the bottom. I did this by using the layer tool at the side.
- 16. Evaluation
- 17. Audience Feedback For my audience response I - during the construction/planning stages - used polls to engage with my target audience and to see what appealed to them most. The polls were interesting at finding out the basic ideas however failed in a way as the information I could get back wasn’t qualitative - I couldn’t gage how my audience was truly feeling. Then at the final stages of construction I filmed a male and female from within my target audience to get the best point of view - the filming helped this, I was able to engage with them and to get true responses whilst they could look and see the texts in front of them. However, a down side to filming them is their answers had to be on the spot and they had no thinking time. This meant that some of the answers seemed rushed.
- 19. The Questions I filmed one of the questions as this helped me visualise what I was speaking as I could have the texts in front of me and the audience of my evaluation could see the aspects I was evaluating. This also makes more interesting viewing than reading reams of text. I also incorporated PowerPoint into my evaluation as this is an easy and professional way to evaluate my work - it also makes it easier for me to annotate my work and to show what I’ve accomplished.