Thursday 2 May 2013

How did you use technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

When researching I used a relatively small amount of technological programs in order to develop my research. I used Prezi which is an online program where you can develop a PowerPoint to a whole new level. For instance you can imbed You Tube videos having moving images, add sound effectives etc. Through this program my research becomes more media proactive. I also used Microsoft office packages to enhance my research as I was able to develop pie charts on Edexcel and create a questionnaire on word. Also a program called grabber which is seen on the mac allowed me to grab images to upload to my blog so I could show the audience what I was trying to describe.
In terms of constructing my media project I had to use a wide range of technologies in order to increase the potential of my movie trailer. I used a HD Sony camera to film my video. However this was LO-FI technology, not close to the High-Tec cameras used within the film industry. This did cause many problems. As the quality was poor, focus could not occur and the sound was low quality. Although I did meet these problems I tried my best to use it to my advantage. Once all the filming was completed I was furthermore able to edit the video on the program I-movie. I used this a great deal as through this I was able to shorten sections of my recordings, and chose the best footage I had filmed. Also I could include my non-diegetic sound over my video, first half being dingy music and the second half being a country and western song. I could edit the way the music was portrayed for instance when to start and finish playing. Besides this I could also lower the non-diegetic sound so there would be a heavier emphasis on the diegetic sound i.e. the character talking. I was to a certain degree limited with this program when it came to editing the music so I then uploaded the song to garage band, where I could further develop it to match my video.
I-movie also allowed me to edit my work in more depth. As my first major scene consisted of what the experiment was about. I was able to detach the audio of the teacher speaking then this would overlap to a slow motion shot of the audience. This leads me to my next point I-movie allowed me to put certain sections of my media trailer in slow-motion to add emphasis, my best example was when I was running down the street. The voice overs were also edited on I-movie as I made them louder than the non-diegetic sound, which would then stop once the voice over was completed. Through the program I could also include titles and transitions to give a stronger feel to what a real movie trailer is all about.
When trying to do my title sequence for the main heading (a life’s experiment) so I therefore used the program Flash. Which is a multimedia and software platform used for authoring of vector graphics, animation, games. On this I was able to make each letter appear one by one, which was not possible on I-movie. But as I wanted a sort-of type writer effect, I had to use flash to do this.
I started to use the program fireworks to produce my poster and magazine front cover however I found great difficulty in using the program, so I opted to use Photoshop instead. I fist used Photoshop to develop my production credits at the end of my movie trailer. I then created my movie poster. First I had a photo shoot with the camera Nikon D300 which was very good quality, and gave the best results as a photo.  Once I had my photo I uploaded them to Photoshop where the editing could begin.  Photoshop was a great tool in helping me achieve the best quality, in terms of realism. I understand that movie companies would use much more highly technilogical programs, but this still gave me great results. As real posters/magazine front covers are built up in stages i.e. the background, main image, font etc. This program allowed me to do this with ease, encountering no problems. The program also provided tools, for instance the magic wand; which allowed me to delete the background completely then place the image on a different background. I was also able to use the fonts provided to create my production credits for my poster and also the end of my movie trailer, this proved very effective.
In terms of my evaluation I used a small amount of technologies to complete the task. I used the Prezi to enhance the presentation, and word to complete the document. What I did use however was screen casting which is where I was able to film what is being shown on the screen, and my voice over. I did this to give the impression of a director’s commentary. This will be seen next going into a greater depth and presenting images highlighting the information I have provided.

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