Throughout their project, the student and their group used various media technologies and web 2.0 tools to collaborate, conduct research, and create their final horror film products. They used Blogger to document their progress, shared ideas over email, researched on Google and IMDB, learned conventions from YouTube, downloaded music from YouTube using a URL to MP3 converter, found fonts on Dafont, communicated on WhatsApp, edited photos in Photoshop, filmed with a camera and camcorder, edited videos in iMovie and Premiere, added effects in After Effects, and recorded audio in Audacity. These tools helped the group divide tasks, stay organized, and produce high quality trailers, posters, and magazines
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4) How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?
1. Throughout the creation of
our final products me and my
group used media
technologies in order to edit,
research, discuss and share
ideas as well as learn new
things.
3. Blogger
I consistently used Blogger to showcase what
new things I learnt in terms of theorists,
poster, trailers, magazines, the Horror industry
and more. This was useful in terms of storing
all our ideas and any progress we made on our
blogs, so that if we needed to refer back to it
in a future post we could easily go back to
past posts. Blogger was also useful in terms of
seeing if we met our aims as directors or not.
4. Hotmail/Outlook
Me, Priscilla and Afreen would often email
each other in order to inform each other of
any ideas we had come up with or to
complete aspects of planning, e.g. storyboards
and shot lists. This was particularly useful in
the week we started filming in terms of
reminding each other to bring props, clothes
and make up. It enabled us to be more
organised as well as maintain a sense of
cohesion within our group.
5. GOOGLE & IMDB
Google and IMDB both provided information
on directors, dates, how successful it was and
actors/actresses which surrounded specific
Horror films we researched. This was perfect
at the pre-production stage of our course,
when we were learning about
representations, aspects of genre, narrative,
sound and media language which surround
the Horror film industry.
7. YouTube
Me and my fellow teammates consistently used YouTube before
and after the filming process. This was in order to gain a sense of
the conventions within Horror trailers, through sound, characters,
location, iconography and narrative and structure of trailers (e.g.
what duration did the build up and climax occur within the trailer).
We also used YouTube to upload videos in terms of updates on our
progress which we uploaded to our blogs and our final trailer.
I also used YouTube in order to learn how to create animations and
effects on text using After Effects. YouTube is perfect when you are
trying to learn how do create specific effects which can strengthen
your piece, this was evident when I discovered a tutorial on the
blind effect which we featured at the end of our final trailer.
8. URL TO MP3
In order to download creepy and tension
building music for our trailer, as an editor I
often had to go on YouTube and copy the url
and convert it to an mp3. This was extremely
useful as it was quick and it enabled us to use
music to evoke different reactions from our
audience.
In terms of converters we also used a video
converter website called keep vid.com
9. Other forms of Web 2.0
Vocaroo This is a voice recording software which enables you to embed recordings
into websites and blogs. I often used this in order to express decisions and progress
made on my blog in a creative.
Dafont.com Through Dafont me and my group were able to find a font called
Skratch Punk. It was distorted and cracked which was perfect for our brand
name/film title Insanity, as we wanted a font which reinforced Floras personality. At
first it was difficult to find a clear distorted font on Dafont however once we found
Skratch Punk we had the readability and distortedness we wanted and featured it
within all 3 of our media products.
Whatsapp As not all of the members within my group often check their emails, using
the mobile messenger service of Whatsapp was perfect in terms of getting ahold of
each other. It also allows you to record your voice and send it along with messages
which was particularly useful when sharing ideas of what we could include in our
narrative.
Tumblr Tumblr is a social networking site which involves gifs, graphics and edited
images. I often copied the url of these images and credited the creators in the bottom
of my posts under references. Gifs are often creative and exciting and enable a post
on Blogger to become more exciting, especially if the post is quite wordy and
detailed.
12. Photoshop
Photoshop was a very important part of our course. It enabled us to edit and
change the colour of text to feature on our trailer, poster and magazine in terms of
cropping from Dafont, enabled us to successfully align credits, use readable fonts
to feature on our magazine and poster to maintain coherence accord SF
(Magazine) and Gill Sans MT (Slogan on poster) which was previously
Egyptian710BT and the Tw Cen MT font for the empire quote on poster.
We also used Photoshop to manipulate images and use brushes, e.g. the crack
effect (which was downloaded from visionwidet.com I trailed other distorted
crack brushes from brusheezy.com) which was vital in terms of conveying to the
audience that Flora has two sides to her.
Even though we decided not to shift Floras body to the side on our final poster
due to it looking odd, originally Priscilla used two layers on Photoshop which both
contained the same image of Flora in order to create the illusion that Flora had
been cut in half. This shows how useful Photoshop has been to us as a group, even
when effects and manipulation didnt go as planned.
13. - Here is evidence of text which
Priscilla edited text on Photoshop
which we included in our trailer,
poster and magazine
14. CAMERA
Cameras enabled us to gain images of Flora for both the poster,
magazine as well as document our props, items, locations and
clothes which contributed to the creation of our ancillary
products on to our blogs. It was particularly useful through the
pre production stages, this was specifically with our final image of
Flora for our final magazine as we used lighting in order to
reinforce her good and bad qualities (one side with shadow the
other bright).
It also enabled us to follow the conventions represented within
both posters and empire magazines, making our products easy for
our audiences to engage with due to elements of familiarity e.g.
the use of a mid shot.
15. CAM-CORDER
Using a cam-corder allowed us to film for our trailer, but also do
vlogs on progress we made throughout our course. For example
after our final premiere me and Priscilla did a vlog on the audience
feedback sheets (questionnaires) we had received and summarised
what went well and what we think we could do better.
When filming for our final trailer we switched from using the tripod
which was better for more slow and still shots and handheld which
was perfect for creating a sense of urgency. We also used a variety
of shots and angles including long shots, wide shots, extreme close
ups and more.
Using a Cam-corder enabled us to be creative throughout the
construction and planning part of our course.
16. I-Movie & Adobe After Effects
I- Movie is a editing software which included text
templates which reinforced the Horror genre far more in
comparison to the text within premiere and After effects.
Originally we used after effects for text inbetween our
trailer, however it was unsuccessful due to the amateur
vibe it gave off due to the chunky and grainy font despite
the interesting crack effect. This then meant we ended up
using I-Movie as it was easier to use, but also appeared
more intriguing and mysterious which was the sense of
enigma we wanted to create to make our audience want
to find out more.
We did however use After Effects for the ending credits for
our trailer, as the blind effect and readable font was
exactly what we as a group wanted.
(This is shown above)
17. Adobe Premiere
Premiere was particularly useful in terms of binding all
our different shots together, as well as adding music,
transitions and text we created in After effects and IMovie to make our final trailer.
One of the main skills I learnt this year from editing
using Adobe Premiere was how useful different levels
of sound are, as I constantly used the sound nodules in
order to increase and decrease sound at certain times,
e.g. I made sure to make the airy and jarring music
fade in, in order to build tension slowly thus making it
more uncomfortable for the audience.
18. Audacity
Audacity is a sound recording programme
which allowed us to record voice overs which
we included in our trailer, e.g. when Flora says
my doll is the only reminder of my father.
Not only did this allow us to portray
conventional elements of sound used in
trailers, but it also allowed us to communicate
our narrative to our audience without
revealing too much.