1. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?
2. Planning For the planning stages we used various websites for research. We went on Google to find images to be used in our documentary. For our secondary research we went on websites such as www.tea.co.uk/facts and www.hupages.com
3. Select this to add one more photo I also had to upload images. I uploaded many of our graphs of our results from our audience research that we created on Microsoft Excel. These results were useful in deciding what and what not to do for our documentary. It was made easier that I could upload up to five images at a time. Click ‘Browse…’ to upload a saved photo Select ‘Upload Photo’
4. As well as images, I also uploaded some videos onto Blogger.com. The concept was similar. One video I uploaded was my summer production. This was my group’s short documentary that was useful when it came to getting used to the conventions of documentaries such as framing and cutaways. The other was our target audience research. This was done to see what our target audience would like in a documentary about tea. It was very helpful in deciding what and what not to do in our documentary. Then select ‘Browse…’ to search for the video you want Select ‘Add video’
5. Filming We used many media technologies in our filming stages. For our interviews and voxpops, we used a camera and a tripod. Since the sound was being recorded for this, we used a microphone that could clip on to the interviewees’ clothes. This was used to cut out the background noise, making the sound of better quality. The microphone was not needed for the cutaways since we were not using any of the sound from it.
6. For one of our interviews we used a bluescreen as a background so we could edit in an image later on in the editing process to create mise-en-scene. We used lights to make the picture quality more professional, but we had to be careful not to make too many shadows as it makes it difficult to cut it out when it comes to the editing. Here you can see the shadow as we interviewed James. We adjusted it so the shadow was less visible, but evidently it can still be seen. In hindsight we would have had no shadow, but we managed to edit it out with the shadow in the editing stages
7. Editing Once we had finished filming we had to edit our footage on ‘Adobe Premiere’. Selected clip Captured footage Video progress Effects controls Timeline
8. For our opening title we used stop motion animation of a jar of teabags falling and spelling out ‘Milk and 2 Sugars’. We made each ‘clip’ one second long so that they were at equal length. We wanted it to be faster though, so we right-clicked each ‘clip’ and selected ‘duration’, speeding it up to 300% of its original length.
9. We added in the teacup in the background for mise-en-scene. We did this by going on ‘Video effects’, and clicking part of the background. The colours that matched with the part we clicked could then be cut out.
10. For the interview with Annette the background didn’t quite cover the whole screen. In response we selected ‘Video effects’ and changed the positioning of the screen by dragging one of the two ‘position’ numbers . This moved it to the left so that the end of the background sheet could not be seen.
11. We had to adjust the sound so that the voiceover could be heard. It was simple to adjust by simply dragging the yellow volume line up and down.
12. We used Adobe Photoshop to produce our print advert. Since the codes and conventions of print adverts are quite simple, we did not have to use many technologies. We took some photos of a teapot and then chose one to put in our advert. We changed it from a background to a layer, and then cut out the background of the image by using the magnetic lasso tool, and dragged the teapot into a white background. All that was left to do was add the text and copy and paste the ‘ITV1’ logo from the Google images onto Photoshop.
13. Evaluation I used a variety of new media technologies to complete my evaluation. For the first question I recorded myself alone in a room with a camera, talking about the codes and conventions we used. I also audio recorded myself for question two.
14. We took many screengrabs of us filming and editing. I uploaded these images using the same techniques as I did in the planning.
15. We then uploaded our video onto Facebook in order to receive some audience feedback. Uploading the video was simple as we only had to browse for the video and post it on Sam’s wall.