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

2. Google was used for planning our documentary and ancillary texts as it
allowed us to research things such as conventions of documentaries,
newspaper adverts, and radio adverts. It allowed us to get an idea of what
channel 4 posters are like and there own brand conventions. Google also
helped us find images to put on our documentary for our montage as we
found pictures of celebrities with tattoos. We also were able to research
people with shocking tattoos, such as Rich Genest, and without Google we
wouldn't’t have found this and been able to have interesting images on our
documentary. On Google we found statistics on tattoos which we then put in
our documentary, and we also found out what was the oldest tattoo ever
recorded in history.

3. Blogger
• Blogger has allowed us to upload all of our planning for our
documentary project and keep everything organised such as
drafts of posters, storyboards for the documentary,
questionnaires. It has also been good for the evaluation stages
as we have uploaded all of our finished products so they can
be easily viewed and accessed.

4. YouTube
• YouTube was essential in researching archive for our
documentary as we found a lot of archive videos that made
our documentary come together. Such as we got footage of
Rich Genest, the man with full body tattoos which was really
effective in the documentary as that is the extreme you can go
with tattoos. Also we got all of our music off YouTube which
was also essential for our documentary as it would have been
very basic and bland for the audience to watch.

5. Firefox
• Firefox was very important towards the construction of our
documentary as without it we would have struggled
converting YouTube videos to quicktime files. Firefox helped
me upload my audience feedback to blogger which is also
important for my evaluation process as I needed video
evidence of audience feedback.

6. Premiere
• Premiere was the most essential part of constructing our media documentary as it allowed us to edit all of our footage together. It
allowed us to use transitions such as cross fade, dip to white, dip to black, etc which made the documentary flow. Audio transitions were
important during the construction of the documentary and the radio add as it allowed the audio tracks to flow more as we could use
audio fades. Without the audio fades the documentary and radio add would have sounded very robotic and wouldn’t have sounded
smoother. Premiere allowed us to speed up and slow down footage which was very effective as it can show things in more detail, and If a
piece of footage is too short you can always elongate it to look right. Premiere also allows to adjust image levels which we used on the
opening scene where we changed the levels to black and white which emphasised the image to make it look more like a tattoo.
The razor tool was the tool we used most
as it allowed us to cut multiple parts of
footage we didn’t want in a quick and easy
way.
We had to use chromo key
which removed the blue
screen from the footage and
it allowed us to put in a image
in the background.
The audio track allowed us to
edit audio footage and play
around with the levels of audio
and the levels of music that was
used in the documentary

7. Photoshop Photoshop was important on the construction of our poster as it
allowed us to edit the images we had taken. To create the look as if
the image has a spotlight on it we created a new layer that was black
and used the brush tool to take away some of the black layer.
A great thing about photoshop is the blemish tool which we
On the image that we took the ‘Eye of the used on the image as on the back there was a mark that didn’t
needle’ written on the back of the girl look right so we used the blemish tool to perfect the skin on the
didn’t stand out enough. But on left hand side on the girls back.
photoshop you can change the levels to
emphasise certain things which we did on
this too make the eye of the needle
writing stand out as it was our
documentary title.
Photoshop has a text tool which we used
to type the tag line ‘To ink or not to ink?’
which was important in the construction
of our poster as it had to use the channel
4 conventions.
Also there is a shape tool which I used a
square shape and filled it white then put
the layer behind the text to make the text
stand out

8. Equipment used
• Sony HXR –MC2000E Camera
This was the main essential technology for our documentary as it shoots at 1080p it allowed us to film quality footage.
As it has a built in 7.5 megapixels stills camera it helped capture our image for the newspaper advertisement.
• Clip microphone
This was very important during the filming process of our documentary as it was mainly interview based and a clip mic
is a uni-directional microphone which didn’t pick up other sounds like footsteps. Whereas a boom microphone would
have picked up quiet noises and wouldn’t have been suitable for the interviews.
• USB device cable
Essential for transferring the video footage we had filmed on the cameras to the computers we were working on.
• Dell computers XPS
Essential for use of all the different programmes (premiere, photoshop, internet explorer, etc.)
• Tripod
This was very useful as it had a built in spirit level which helped us get the
right angle and shot for the interview. It also had the plus side of height
which was good as we had the choice of high and low angle shots.