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

• These are technologies I used to construct my research, planning and evaluation:

• The blog• iMovie• Abobe After Effects• Photoshop and Photoshop Elements• The internet, Slideshare,YouTube, Wikipedia,

bubble.us, etc. • Canon 500d and JVC HD Everio camera• Mac computers • Scanner

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I chronologically went through the all the film and selected the most important parts to get a documentary base structure.

iMovie served as my base and structure editor for my main production. After shooting my footage, I created a rough structure of my documentary to continue working on.

As iMovie is known for being quite a simple and basic editing software, for more complex editing techniques, I used Adobe After Effects.

I had almost two hours of footage over two created events in iMovie to cut down to five minutes.

I also made an introduction sequence through iMovie containing a montage of archive news clips to do with social media (inspired from the opening of a film called ‘The Bay’) to create a build up to the opening title of my documentary. However I struggled to get the right build up and was limited with the time anyway (short extract at of the scrapped introduction at: http://youtu.be/Nbbu7cbWvmI).

iMovie

I used iMovie’s ‘fade to black’ transition through certain parts of the production. Although not that noticeable, the subtle technique makes the sequence look better as a whole.I applied sound and music through this software. To avoid a cut-up approach to my editing of my interviews, I downloaded sound effects of a school corridor where I created a sound bridge throughout all the clips to achieve a fluid nature to the documentary.

I was aware iMovie offered a range of footage manipulation so I filmed a very long shot of two students walking through sixth form, once imported to iMovie, I selected the speed up option to get some form of time-lapse effect

Adobe After Effects

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After Effects is a software I’m unfamiliar with, using it only once previously for my AS coursework. Luckily I knew what a wanted from this software and so easily found tutorials on YouTube which taught me how to achieve the aims I wanted from my production. First, I worked on my opening title (can be seen at: http://youtu.be/QzVi6PfjTlU) and the questions given to the interviewees. The aim I wanted was for it to be typed out to set the theme of the documentary to the viewer. From following the steps (various coding as what I wanted to do wasn’t a preset in After Effects) on the tutorial I achieved the type writing effect to my own title.Secondly I planned on working on After Effects for the credits of my interviewees. From using a speech bubble (connotes communication and social media) image I individually photoshopped all their names, occupation and age within the bubble.

I put the image in after effects and added a transition to it, so when appropriate the credit appeared and disappeared off screen. However, once I achieved this I rendered the edited film, and found the audio was removed and the video had slowed down. Therefore, as I couldn’t resolve the issue this footage was deemed unusable and I had to find alternative credit techniques.Once I got what I needed from After Effects, I went back to iMovie to finish the whole production.

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The Internet• During the process of my production, I found appropriate sound

effects, music and archive news clip on the video sharing site, YouTube. I then, using various YouTube download sites, downloaded them to import them into iMovie.

• In the early research stages of my production, where I was unclear of the documentary topic and content, as a way for clarity in my planning I created a mind map on bubble.us as a way to brainstorm ideas.

• I used Wikipedia.org for various information. If I needed quick information for something as simple as a shot composition type there was almost always a page on it containing plenty of knowledge which helped my understanding to construct my research, planning and construction of my tasks.

• Slideshare, a presentation and other professional content sharing website, is dedicated to sharing knowledge online. I decided to put up my research on documentary modes and a Tracking Down Maggie presentation on there as a way to share on a different platform and was hopeful to receive feedback from viewers. My documentary modes presentation has received over 400 views and 9 downloads.

Photoshop and Photoshop Elements

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To create my magazine and newspaper advertisement I used Adobe’s Photoshop (at school) and Photoshop Elements (at home). I found it hugely useful in the construction of my ancillary tasks as the software contains everything required to create a realistic approach to creating a double page spread and ad.For example: in my double page spread, I used the lasso tool to trace an image without the background so the magazine text could fit sufficiently around the photo. I did this to emulate what I’ve previously seen in magazine articles.

Although Photoshop is can be rather time consuming, if I had to use other forms of technology, the creation of my tasks would have taken much longer and overall wouldn’t look as authentic as my aim was to mirror that of Radio Times and Channel 4.

Problems which kept arising during the creation of both projects was the transition from Photoshop to Photoshop Elements. Switching between the two softwares caused multiple formatting issues ranging from the text font changing (due to the specific fonts I downloaded on my home laptop not being available at school), their positioning on the page and image colour issues which made the process much more difficult.

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Canon 500d and JVC HD Everio camera

• As I planned editing all my production work at home in my own time, I thought it would be more useful to use my own camera to avoid conflict of taking the school camera’s SD card home when other groups required the camera. Using a Canon 500d allowed me to manual focus on film subjects (as seen on TV), better image quality and use a mix of lenses. The one thing that concerned me with my camera was the sound quality, I’m aware that as it’s more of a photography camera, the microphone isn’t as great. And, unfortunately I couldn’t connect the school’s sound boom to it. I filmed in quite public places (as planned) and was worried the background noise would cover the subject’s speech.

• At one point due to a spontaneous interview, I used the school’s Everio camera to film. I was concerned whether there would be a drastic image quality difference between using the Canon and the Everio that would be noticeable to the audience:Canon: JVC HD Everio:

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Mac Computers

ScannerA scanner was used (at home and school) during the research and planning stage, especially on my ancillary tasks. Newspaper ads, articles and my own sketches were scanned and placed into the presentation in order to contribute to my research.

Every software used in creating my tasks were used through Apple Mac computers and a Macbook. Apple products are known to be better when it comes to art and design, so if PC computers were used, I wouldn’t have been able to use majority of the software as efficiently. Uploading, saving, editing, rendering and exporting footage is made much easier on a Mac.