1. HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH,PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?

2. Introduction Our group used a variety of different media technologies throughout all stages of our production. Not only in the filming of our production but also in the applications we used in Apple. These were especially important during the end of our project during the editing and burning periods, but also during the composing and recording of our music.

3. Construction and Research During the stages of Construction and Research the main 8 media technologies we used are shown on the right These tools were our main Media technologies through- Out our entire production Not only our Construction and Research.

4. iMovie 11 We found iMovie 11 extremely useful and we used it to edit both our final production and our audience research. It was difficult to adapt to at first, however by the end of our production we picked up some key shortcuts and skills such as adding voiceovers, effective transitions and cropping clips. One of the key advantages of using iMovie was that editing was made easier by the incorporation of devices making it easier to import both audio and visual files into the project.

5. Safari The use of Safari was vital during our research phase. The use of YouTube was a great asset as we were able to watch existing documentaries on gambling and addictions as well at looking at commercial makeover shows, this enabled to find out the forms and conventions for these genres of documentary and try and morph them together. Safari was also useful as we learnt so some statistics on gambling In the UK along with finding out which celebrities had addictions so we could attempt to put them in to our project at some stage.It also helped us learn more about gambling addiction especially websites such as Gamblers anonymous.

6. Camera, Tape and Microphone The Camera along with the tape and microphone were necessary media technologies during both our final product and audience research. Unfortunately our Camera was not as technologically advanced as our iMovie making our production not quite as high quality as we thought it could be, and the use of a camcorder tape highlights this. Never the less they were effective in doing a job and the microphone in particular was a useful utility for enhancing our sound throughout the production and audience research.

7. iDVD and Garage Band These two pieces of software weren’t part our major tools however they were useful at certain points during our production. Garage band music was vital in composing and producing our original music for the piece. The music complemented the makeover approach of the documentary and the music does extremely well in illustrating are creative and innovative sides. iDVD was an essential program for transferring video files to disc. Not only does this software allow you to burn to disc, it enables the user to create menus, scene selections and much more to give your project a professional finish.

8. Planning During the planning stage of our production we used the least and most traditional media technologies, a pen and paper. We gathered our thoughts together and came up with the idea of an addiction/makeover documentary that we later named, ‘What’s Your Addiction ? ‘ Despite the simplicity of the media technologies we used they were extremely useful in conveying our ideas and pinpointing our plans of what to do and what direction to take our documentary.

9. Evaluation- Power Point, Excel PowerPoint enabled us to present our evaluation in a more visual, creative way, rather than in an essay format. This current evaluation question was made on PowerPoint. Excel was a useful media technology as it enabled us to make data more visually interesting during our audience research question in the form of graphs or pie charts.

10. Blogger and iMovie Blogger and iMovie were essential media technologies in two distinctly different ways. With Blogger we were able to document our evaluation questions and make them more visually interesting rather than the questions being answered in essay format. We were also able to use a new and different media technology in the blog which has been a learning curve for us. iMovie was an important media technology during the final stages of our production, especially for our audience research and feedback. The use of this software enabled us to cut and edit footage which we had uploaded, turning the large collection of clips into a professional looking production. iMovie also gave us an opportunity to make our evaluation more visually interesting, even more so than Blogger.

11. Throughout all of the stages in our production we’ve used a considerable amount of media technologies. Stretching from Blogger to Tripods and Garage Band to Cameras. Despite using a large variety of media technologies we mainly used them during the construction stage of our production as our evaluation and especially our planning stages included a lot less of them due to the fact that the same level of technology wasn’t necessary.