Evaluation Question 6

1. Question 6 – What have
you learnt about the
technologies when
constructing your
product?
BY JOSEPH BOWMAN

2. Blogger
Blogger was the centre of this Project and is
what I have been uploading all of my
coursework to throughout the year. I used it
because it is extremely easy to use and is a
great way to display your work. It is a good
alternative to simply writing down your work
onto paper because there is no chance that
you will lose it and there is also no chance
that you will hand it in scruffy and un-neat.
However, it does have some disadvantages.
These being that Blogger is really limited in it’s
capabilities and should not be used if you
want to create anything complex.

3. Microsoft Word and Publisher
II have used Microsoft Word to write thee scripts for my videos
and audio commentaries so that I would not have to
improvise and would make my speech sound a lot more
clear so I could get my message across to the Bloggers much
easier. I used Microsoft PowerPoint to create several of my
presentations because it is very simplistic and easy to use
making my presentation very organised a clear. I used these
tools because they are easy to obtain and to use. However,
because of their simplistic design and functions this does
mean that they are limited as to what you can do with your
text or pictures. There is little virtual animation options which
means that is not the best option to create something out of
the ordinary.

4. Slide Share
I used Slide Share to transfer my PowerPoints onto
the internet and eventually onto Blogger. I used
this because it is easy to use. All you have to do is
logon to your account, choose the presentation
from your documents and wait for it to upload. It’s
that simple. It also takes a short amount of time to
upload the presentation and you can embed the
same presentation into Blogger within the next 5
minutes.

5. Prezi
I used Prezi to create my other Presentations
as an alternative to PowerPoint. I did this
because it is a lot more complex than
PowerPoint as it is a virtual Presentation
creator. This means that my presentations
will include movement and can be
interacted with. The only drawback is that it
requires a lot of power to run plus a good
internet connection. Otherwise, you will not
be able to run it because it is attempting to
create the movement animations. I was
able to use it for free as I was using it as a
student (as long as I used my College e-mail
address).

6. Windows Movie Maker
I used Windows Movie Maker as the editing software for
my videos and audio commentaries. In my opinion,
Windows Movie Maker is one of the best free editing
software around as it is easy to use and upload videos to
YouTube. However, I think that this editing Software is
extremely limited as there are no major effects and it is
difficult to create videos in a high resolution like 720p or
1080p. This was not a major disadvantage to me however
as I did not need to use complex features and only
needed to use simple footage. I was able to use this
editing software better than I originally thought due to my
previous editing on my opening sequence and should
become useful during editing in the future.

7. YouTube
I used YouTube to upload my videos to the internet
in order to upload them to Blogger. The Blogger
video options are very limited and hard to work
with. A good way to manoeuvre around this is to
upload your videos to YouTube and then embed
them onto Blogger. This is a much easier way to get
your videos onto Blogger. However, it can take up
to 15-45 minutes to upload your videos to YouTube
so takes a long time. Luckily, you can annotate
your videos to add in any thoughts or notes that
you wish to share and the comments can be
disabled to avoid gaining inappropriate
comments.

8. Sony A35 HD Camera
When it came time to film, the College offered us the
equipment that we needed. However, we had access to
better equipment. We opted to use a Sony A35 HD Camera
which was kindly lent to us by Lauren Burnham. This camera
offered better video quality and better sound quality than
the cameras that the college had offered us. This camera
came with advanced features such as the ability to adjust
contrast and brightness. However, with these advanced
features came some problems. On several occasions, we
had a problem with the camera automatically un-focusing
which delayed some of our footage being shot. Otherwise,
this was a very good camera and one of the best I have
worked with.

9. Adobe Premier Pro CS6
We used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 to edit our opening
sequence with, we used this because one of our
group members: Tristan Hale has access to this
editing software on his Laptop. We were offered by
the College to use Final Cut Pro, however we
decided to use Adobe Premier Pro due to the fact
that it has much better capabilities. For example,
Adobe Premier has advanced colour correcting,
special effects and we were able to implement a
Letterbox view to our product to make it look more
professional, this is something that Final Cut Pro can
not do. The only problem is that apart from Tristan,
none of us in the group had experience with this
editing software, so it took some time to get used to.

10. MSI Steelbook Laptop
Instead of using a collection of iMacs that the
college were able to provide for us, we were able
to use an MSI steelbook laptop that Tristan was
able to use in order for us to do our editing. We
found that this was a far superior computer in
comparison to the iMac because it was smaller
which meant that we could take it to multiple
locations whereas the other students were forced
to stay in one location for there editing. We used
this to our ability and took time to edit our video
outside of College. However, we did run the risk of
damaging the Laptop as we were carrying it
around to multiple locations.