1. How Did You Use New Media Technologies In
The Construction & Research, Planning and
Evaluation Stages?
2. Throughout the different stages in the
coursework such as Research and
Planning, Production and Post Production and
Evaluation, we have made use of different
technologies.
Some technologies were new and some were
familiar as we had developed skills from our AS
coursework.
The technologies has really helped us to meet the
genre and has allowed us to create a trailer that
we intended to create by following conventions.
3. Apple Desktop Macs was the main
technology that had been used
through the project. The advantage of
doing the editing and other work on
the MAC compared to the laptop was
that the MACs had more memory and
RAM which was good for other
technologies like Final Cut Pro and
After Effects when it came to the
rendering as it was a lot quicker. We
had experienced the use of MAC’s in
AS so it was an advantage.
4. The After Effects editing had mostly been
done on the editors own laptop. This is
because the Apple Mac’s had an older version
of After Effects that had been installed which
did not allow some of the plugins and presets
to work.
Therefore, own laptop was used as it was
compatible with the latest version of After
Effects.
5. There were several different technologies that
we had used throughout the Research and
Planning as this was the stage that got us
prepared to make our products like the
trailer, poster and website.
Some of the technologies used were:
Wordpress, Slideshare, Scribd, YouTube, Digit
al DSLR Cameras, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, After
Effects, Google and Facebook.
6. WordPress is an online
tool that we used to blog
our coursework and post
news and update for our
target audience to see.
WordPress was useful to
us because it allowed us
to post information on
our research, ancillary
tasks, production and
feedback. It was easy to
use as we had
experienced using this in
our AS Coursework so it
was straightforward for
us to use
7. Slideshare is another tool
that we had used last year
so we knew how to use it.
It was really helpful for us
as it allowed us to post our
documents like Word Docs
and
PowerPoints, however, we
used it mainly to post our
PowerPoints on it.
It was very quick and easy
to use and made us
manage the blog efficient
instead of having the text
into posts with images as
the blog would go on and
on. Therefore, we decided
to use Slideshare and
embed the PowerPoints in.
8. Scribd allow us to upload documents onto it and get an
embedded code fro WordPress. Again this was easy and
quick to use and we had used it before and knew what we
had to do. It was easy because instead of us creating a
post on our blog, we were able to show the whole
document.
We uploaded things like script, shot lists, feedback and
so on
These are all the
documents that we have
uploaded on Scribd and
to the blog.
9. We used SurveyMonkey for
our work to get feedback
from the audience.
SurveyMonkey allowed us to
create and conduct an online
survey. Firstly, it was hard to
get around when creating the
questions but there was help
provided so didn’t cause
much problems.
SurveyMonkey also allowed us
to analyze the results and see
individual responses with
graphs. This was beneficial as
it gave us a visual into the
answers.
10. YouTube was really helpful to use in
the coursework. We used YouTube to
do our research into similar texts
because the trailers were found there.
This was beneficial as it allowed us to
make note of common codes and
conventions of the genre.
From our target audience
research, we found out that they were
more Web 2.0 based and for them
YouTube was the best method to
update them with our post-
production and how we were doing.
We had no trouble using YouTube as
we had previous knowledge on how
to use it and we ourselves are Web
2.0 based so we can relate to the
target audience and know what they
wanted.
11. iMovie was used by the editor Krishan Patel
last year, however Jayesh Mohane decided to
take on the editing role this year. We started
of the editing in iMovie but we were facing
problems with iMovie as the work did not
auto-save on the MAC and we had to redo
everything. We were going to use iMovie to
edit the trailer and the feedback we get. It
wasn’t a struggle but then we decided to
move onto something new and try using it. So
we moved onto Final Cut Pro.
12. Final Cut Pro X was something that we came
across for the first time. Getting to learn FCPX
was not hard as it was similar to After Effects
and iMovie but there were some areas where
the editor needed help and so we used
Google to find out the answers.
Final Cut Pro X was used to edit the trailer
and put the footage together as well as to
edit the feedback and other things we had to
edit.
13. Google was something that
everyone was familiar with. It is a
well known search engine that we
used to research into similar texts
trailers, posters and websites. We
were able to get secondary pictures
from Google as well.
Google was also used to research
into things we needed help with for
example, the use of some features
in FCPX; we used Google to get the
answers for our questions.
Google provided us an easy route
to the websites we needed to
research into.
14. Facebook was social
networking site that we
had used to build our
relationship with our
audience. We used this
to communicate to the
audience and keep them
updated on our progress
by updating statuses
with texts, images and
videos.
Because of our research
and knowing our target
audience is Web 2.0
based, Facebook is a site
they used everyday, so it
was convenient for us.
15. The production of the trailer, poster and
website was done as a group as we all put in
ideas. There were different technologies that
had been used to produce the different
products.
These include things like Final Cut Pro
X, Adobe After Effects, Adobe
Photoshop, DSLR Cameras, WIX, and
YouTube.
16. Last year we had used normal hand held
cameras and we faced difficulties with the
quality of the footage. Therefore, this year we
decided that to make the trailer stand out and
appealing, we would use a HD DSLR camera
because of the quality of the footage was high
definition and our cameraman, Mark, had
experience using it even though we suffered
minor problems.
We used the camera throughout the course to
record the footage we need an to get audience
feedback on our work at different stages as we
needed to know what they thought and how
we can improve it to meet their needs.
The camera was also portable which allowed
us to carry it around as we shot few scenes in
the park.
17. Final Cut Pro X has been used throughout the production
stage. It was used to edit the trailer and put the footage we
had together. We used different transitions that were provided
by FCP in the trailer to make it match the convention of the
genre we had chosen.
FCP was a good choice as it worked well with After Effects
because After Effects allowed us to edit the footage with the
CGI effects that we needed. The clips from After Effects once
edited were put on FCP where they were colour graded and
changed to match the storyline.
18. After Effects was used on
the own laptop of the
editor where all the
computer generated
interfaces (CGI FX) were
made.
Because of prior
knowledge on how to use
After Effects, it was not a
problem, however the
things he needed help
with, were found online
through websites like
VideoCopilot and
AeTuts+.
19. Since we knew what genre we were
doing, we knew that the genre can
only be defined as the genre if it had
some CGI effects and we knew After
Effects allowed us to create and edit
the CGI effects.
It was an accessible software as it was
installed on the school MAC and the
editor, Jayesh had bought it for his
laptop. Most editing for this was done
on his laptop during school as the
school MAC had an older version
which was not compatible some
effects like Trapcode Particular and
Optical Lens flare.
The text on screen that we had was
also edited on After Effects.
These are the CGI FX
Folders.
20. AETuts plus was an online website that
was free to use that had tutorials on
different motion and visual effects that
we had used.
It helped us to edit some of the things
like the texts we have in the trailer and
the teleport jumper effect.
Additionally, through the research we
came across Video Copilot which also
provided tutorials for After Effects which
we used in our production to see the
tutorials and improvise it and adapt it in
our own coursework. Video Copilot was
hard to use and get around as it was the
first time we were using it but we
managed to find our way around and
watched tutorials of effects like Sub
Surface Skin etc.
21. We used Adobe Photoshop to design one of our ancillary tasks
which was a poster. Because from last years experience and IT
experience we did not have much difficulties using the software.
We used Photoshop to design the poster for our trailer.
22. WIX was an online tool that was free to use. It allowed us to create our
second ancillary task which was a website. Through research from Google we
found WIX and we found it was easy to use despites that face we used it for
the first time, and had few problems, but we managed to overcome them
and solve it. We were planning to design the website on Adobe Dreamweaver
but we thought that would be not a good idea as the layout would look
messy whereas WIX has templates we can design and work on from scratch.
23. YouTube was used in the
production stage to post our
final cut and the drafts that
we had made. We had used
this as it is popular and we
know that our target
audience is YouTube based
because of Web 2.0. We
uploaded the trailer onto
our blog through YouTube
by using an embedded code
and we all had knowledge
on how to use YouTube so
we had no difficulties.
24. For the evaluation, we used
different technologies to put
our evaluation across.
We used a Samsung Mini S4
voice note recorder to record
our voice for the podcast.
Since it was a smart phone it
was able to pick up the voice
quickly and clearly and we
had knowledge on how to
use it.
25. Final Cut Pro was
used to edit the
podcasts we had
recorded and also
edit the footage for
the other question.
We had to edit the
podcasts to make
sure there was no
pauses in the
recording and we
added in clips from
our trailer to back
up what we were
saying.
YouTube was used to
post our evaluation
videos and podcasts
so that we can
embed it into the
website we had
created. It was a
great tool for
distributing the
questions we
answered. Again, we
had no difficulty in
doing this because
we were very familiar
with YouTube.
26. Prezi was a software that our editor was
familiar with as he had used it at GCSE.
Therefore, there was no problems in using it.
Prezi works like a PowerPoint however, Prezi
allows the presentation to be interactive with
videos, sounds and images. It had a transition
effect from one text box to another which
was really interesting and Prezi was a good
choice to show our wide range of technology
use.
27. To put all our answers to the evaluation questions, we
decided that we will use a template from WIX and add in
the answers to the questions we have along with out
trailer, logo and link to our Facebook Page, WordPress
blog, YouTube channel and the group members.
