Evaluation task 4 media technologies
- 1. { How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Evaluation task 4
- 2. The group and I used Final Cut Pro in order to edit our teaser trailer once we had got all of the film that we needed to make our sequence. We also used this to create our Animatic beforehand which helped us to become familiar with the software and revise on our basic skills that we had learnt in our AS year. These included inserting and uploading clips and altering durations. We also practiced inserting sound to exaggerate our ideas. Using Final cut pro for our trailer enabled us to learn new skills like key framing for movement in our company idents and colour grading for effect in order to achieve the conventions of our genre. It also made the product look more professional and identifiable as a crime/thriller film. Final Cut Pro- Software Final Cut Pro allowed us to overcome problems like some shaky camera shots as we were able to stabilise these.
- 3. Garageband was used in order to create audio and soundtracks through use of overlapping the preset loops and sound created by us. We used this software in order to create our animatic presentation and for our final teaser trailer in order to help determine the genre of the film and help build the suspense to link to the film being thriller related. We added in some loops and sound effects provided whilst also using some from online websites such as freesound.com in order to come up with a sequence that was well suited to our genre and narrative. We used many skills in Garageband and this enabled us to be creative with our ideas. We learnt how to alter the volume of each sound and this enabled us to achieve a comfortable volume throughout our teaser trailer and helped the dialogue to be clear too. Skills included fading in and out different sounds and we learnt how to adjust this as shown below. We also learnt how to insert sounds from different websites and sources. Using the trim tool, we were able to crop certain sounds in order to adapt it to our genre and our teaser trailer sequence. We were able to use the Apple mac and play the video next to the sound in order to perfect the timing of the soundtrack so it sounded well matched when we inserted it into Final Cut Pro. Garageband- Software Garageband allowed us to overcome problems like loud sound which may overpower the scenes of dialogue and also control the pace of our teaser trailer to control how and when we built suspense and tension to follow conventions.
- 4. I really enjoyed using Photoshop because there was a wide range of tools that we were able to use in order to make our products look more professional. Despite the fact I hadn’t used this software before, I felt that it was easy to pick up on. Skills included using the eraser, magic eraser, paint tool, text tool, cropping tool, bucket tool and colour picking tool. When editing our magazine, the photo we had originally shot was becoming challenging because the eraser was removing the hair with the background. I was able to adjust certain settings in order to reduce the amount of content that the eraser would remove. This included adjusting the opacity and choosing the theme colour to keep by using the colour picking tool. I made this the hair colour so the eraser would become more tolerant to it. Having this technology enabled us to learn how any image can be adapted despite how time consuming it can be. The wide range of different tools on Photoshop enabled us to create an image which was perfect for our magazine and poster. The variety of tools also made this process more efficient for us to do this. We also used the Steel Tong tool in order to create our billing block which was a further skill that helped us to make our poster look more professional. Adobe Photoshop- Software Adobe Photoshop helped us to overcome issues with unwanted parts of the image and also allowed us to create our own billing blocks to achieve a professional looking magazine and poster.
- 5. I felt like this was probably one of the most challenging pieces of software to use seeing as we hadn’t used anything like it before, and we were unable to edit images thoroughly when we had inserted them in. Having practice posters and magazine posters enabled me to get used to the software. I learnt basic skills like inserting the various images and creating layers in order the photos in layers to my preference. I also learnt how to insert text and change the size and font in order to adapt it to the genre conventions and the conventions of our poster and magazine research. I was also able to develop my skills through learning how to adjust the images and hiding certain layers in order to do this. This also made it easier and made me more efficient when editing the products. Despite the fact that we didn’t use any advanced skills in illustrator, I feel like I have developed my basic skills thoroughly and demonstrated that I am able to use this software confidently. I feel like this software and technology enabled us to be more creative when editing for our products and enabled us to make our work look more professional and realistic. Adobe Illustrator- Software Adobe Illustrator allowed us to overlap the images in order to achieve our original idea which we were unable to achieve in Photoshop. We were also able to maximise the quality of the image through this software which overcame any issues with quality.
- 6. I have previously used Prezi for presentations and therefore I was confident using this site in order to present some of my work for my research and planning towards our products. I feel like the website is fairly easy to use, and I was frequently able to use skills such as inserting text, inserting images, using shapes and a variety of styles, inserting new slides, changing the order of presentation, changing the font and sizing of text and inserting other types of media using embedding codes. I feel like using this made an impact on my products seeing as it was another piece of software and further understanding on basic skills that I also used on other types of software like Photoshop. Prezi- Internet Software Prezi allowed us to learn basic skills in order to avoid struggling to work with the software during our post-production. Presenting our research on here enabled us to use this and refer back to it with a clear understanding through basic and visual presentation.
- 7. We used Youtube in order to look for tutorials which would help us use new skills and develop our understanding of the software we used in our post production. We also used this in order to present our rough cut and final cut of our teaser trailer. Using Youtube required basic understanding on how to use their search engine and what sort of things to type into it in order to find a video which was helpful for our learning. I used Youtube to search for tutorials to demonstrate advanced skills like the one where you can get the figure on the screen to walk behind text on Final Cut Pro. I also looked at one to develop skills through Garage band and how to achieve a muffled effect over our sounds. We used this skill at the beginning of our teaser trailer when our character has her earphones in. Other tutorials we looked at as a group was colour grading, which we had demonstrated in our final cut. YouTube- Internet Software This software has enabled us to pick up new skills in order to be more creative with our decision making and also use skills which suits to our genre and follows conventions. It also overcomes any issues with realism seeing as learning new skills like the muffled sound makes the teaser more realistic. Presenting our work on Youtube also gives us an easy and efficient way of presenting our work where it is easy to access for anyone. However, I do feel like Youtube had ruined the quality of our video and this therefore is a disadvantage to us when using this software.
- 8. The Canon 80D camera that we were given to use to do our filming was more advanced than the camera we had last year. We used the camera to film our teaser trailer as well as take the photos for our magazine and poster. I feel like I learnt new skills this year like the auto and manual focus in order to achieve different, more focused and detailed shots. I also learnt how to preview the film and pictures which enabled us to make decisions on re-do’s or not. The camera had a screen which we could adjust and therefore I was able to film at different angles using different equipment in order to achieve good quality shots from a range of different heights and angles. Having a camera with this technology made our filming day more efficient and also improved the quality of our shots. Camera- Canon 80D- Digital Software I feel like the Camera enabled us to overcome issues with blurred shots and unfocused shots seeing as I was able to correct these things on the camera. The quality of the Canon 80D also enabled us to have good quality images to work with for our poster and magazine. This made the editing process easier seeing as the image was more detailed and therefore easier to edit.
- 9. I feel like the most easy software to use was Photoshop because the tools were easy to access and were straight forward when learning how to use them. The variety of tools made it easy for me to edit the poster and magazine and we could therefore achieve our ideas with such a wide range of tools and skills to help us. I also was focusing more on the magazine and poster more than the teaser trailer in our post production, which meant that I had more time to get used to the software and work with it. However, I did feel like some of the tools weren’t as effective as we wanted them to be- the magic eraser did not erase everything we wanted it to, and so using the manual eraser proved to be more time consuming and made it harder for us to achieve the look we wanted for our images on the software. Most difficult/easy to use? The 2 most trickiest pieces of software I found to work with was GarageBand and Final Cut Pro because it was tricky to develop the sound we wanted from scratch despite the loops we had, and also to match up the timings of the sound with the teaser on final cut proved to be tricky as it didn’t offer an option to play both at the same time on the software. Learning the skills that we needed to follow our intentions also proved to be more long-winded and technical which therefore meant it was time-consuming and threatened how much time we spent on the rest of our products. I also feel like some of the tools on Final Cut were also not as effective as we wanted them to be- like the stabilizer for the shaky shots in our teaser trailer. This was also a very time consuming tool. The shot we used the stabilizing tool on. Erasing the background away from the hair with the magic eraser proved to be difficult.