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

3. Internet Throughout my research I have mainly used the internet to find out the information which I wanted to find out. The internet has given me the option of a various amount of search engines to use from. The internet has given me the option to search for images, videos and text information. The website which I have used mostly for the researching of posters and magazines was google.com, this has been able to show me text and information on the type of posters and magazines which I wanted to research. The internet has helped me to research a number of different things to do with the layout of my magazine and poster. The internet enabled me to look at other layouts of existing movie magazines and posters and help me to organize my own version for my film trailer. The internet has helped me research into the different conventions of my genre which I have decided to base my trailer on. This has enabled me to use the correct aspects to ensure it reaches this. The internet has been very helpful to find out the different things which my target audience like and would like to see in the trailer, poster and magazine cover. I was able to look at the different aspects from existing products and apply them in my own constructions. While research and planning I was able to use the internet to show my progress using my blog on wordpress.com. This helped me to organize and layout my work in a neat order. The websites I used when: Researching my trailer- Youtube, trailer websites Researching my Poster-Google images, specific poster websites Researching my Magazine-Google images, specific magazine websites.

4. Polls and Comments Polls I have found the use of polls on my blog very useful and helpful to find out information and feedback from my audience. The audience for my film trailer is teenagers therefore the people who were able to comment on my blog and look at my progress were other class mates who were my age and fit the age of my target audience. The responses I gained from polls helped me to decided which designs worked best with the genre of my trailer. I was able to ask questions about various different aspects and was able to see the popularity from the audience. Comments I found comments a very useful technology on my blog as this has helped me to receive feedback from teachers and other pupils my age who go onto my blog. Although not many people my age have commented on my blog I have been able to receive a lot of comments from my teachers who have given me constructive criticism. After receiving this constructive criticism I was able to change my product and tweak it taking the comments I have just received into consideration. The comments helped to make sure I was on the right task and up to date with my blog. If I wasn’t working as fast as the rest of the class my teacher was able to comment and tell me. The teachers comments also helped to tell me what aspects I had missed out on my blog and which areas I have done well in. Over all the comments helped me a lot with the research and planning and construction of my final products.

5. How did your camera/editing skills develop as your trailer progressed? What specific skills did you need to master? Camera Skills: Throughout the progress of creating my trailer I was able to develop my skills when using a camcorder. I managed to learn from my mistakes. My first attempt at filming I used the camera hand held. This resulted in my footage becoming very shaky with a lot of movement. My second attempt I have used a tripod to help hold the camera still and this has enabled me to receive still clear shots. Another one of the problems I have come across was the way some of my shots were out of focus. I did not realise my shots were out of focus when I was filming as I didn’t take much notice of the shots on the screen of the camcorder. After adding the footage onto the computer to edit in Premier Elements i realised some of the shots were indeed out of focus. To solve this problem next time filming I have made sure the camera was on auto focus. I have realised that when I was filming before hand the camera was on manual focus therefore not picking up the images as clear as I could have. By adjusting the camcorder to auto focus I was able to capture the shot in the best quality of focus possible. When filming for my trailer I have gradually learned the effect a range of different shots has on a trailer. For example if my trailer used the same type of shots throughout the whole trailer people would get slightly bored of seeing the same angle of shot. I have learnt to use close ups and distance shots to create a more interesting feel to the trailer. Lighting while recording became an issue when I wanted to capture a certain mood. I have learnt that you have to use the correct lighting for fulfill the right atmosphere. I have also come across the difficulty of lighting when trying to film a name on the front of a envelope. I have had to re-shoot this part of the trailer as it was too dark to start off with. After realizing it was because I had filmed it inside under a low lighting I have re-shoot this cut in a brighter light to capture the writing clearer.

6. Editing On of the main areas which I have developed skills in is the editing using the technology of Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. At the start of this school year I didn’t know how to use Premiere Elements and had never looked at it before. The main programme which I have used to edit my filming is Premiere Elements. I have learnt how to import and export files. I have learnt a variety of different editing tools. Premier elements has enabled me to crop out parts of the shots which I am not happy with making it easy to just select the parts which have worked best. This has saved me time with re-shooting shots as this was unnecessary because I was able to crop out sections which didn’t work. When shooting my shots I did however have to make sure the shots were in focus and all of the shot which I wanted to include was visible. Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 made it possible for me to fade in and out different clips to create different effects. I found this very useful within creating my trailer as my genre is a romantic film. I wanted my trailer to flow from shot to shot so fading out on shot and fading in the next shot made it possible to create a flowing trailer. If I was creating a horror trailer I would have possibly not used the fade in and out tool as this would have created a more sharp cut between each shot making it more scary and tense. When creating my film I have previously decided that I wanted to add in non-diagetic music and have none of my characters talking or voiceovers. Adobe Premiere Elements helped me to subtract the sound from each shot and delete it making it possible for me to later add in the sound track which I wanted to use. Although I haven’t used any special effect I did play around with the different effects you could have created such as turning the picture into a sketched or sepia mode. After discovering the different effects I have decided not to use any of the effects as once again they didn’t fit in with the genre of my film, this would have been alright to use in my trailer if I was creating a horror trailer or sci-fi. The main skills I had to master when using Adobe Premiere Elements was the way to link the clips together and help them to flow from one shot to another to help create a romantic feel to my trailer.

7. How did you use photography, Photoshop, Publisher etc to create your posters and magazine covers. Which specific skills did you need to master? Photography: When creating my magazine and poster I had to think carefully about the photographs I wanted to take and use. The way I decided on what kind of photographs and positions I wanted the characters to be in by looking at the magazine and posters which previous trailers and films have. I analysed some of the positions which the other trailers have used and found out the typical conventions of these. When looking at previous posters for romantic films I came across the posters for ‘Love Happens’, ‘The notebook’, ‘Dear John’, ‘Remember me’ and ‘The time travellers wife’. The fist thing that I noticed they all had in common was the use of characters. I found the best way to portray the film as being a romantic film was to use the two main characters which fall in love in the film, this tends to be the boy and the girl. After realising the best way to create my poster would be to use a boy and a girl in my poster and magazine I then went on to plan the position which they would be in. in all of the previous posters and magazine I have commented on the two characters, boy and girl, both have some kind of connection visible. They are always positioned close together to show they are more then friends. I have taken the photographs for the poster and magazines in an area which would also reflect on a romantic film. I have decided to take the photographs up on the hill where I have filmed some of the scenes. From the very beginning I have discovered the open plan fields and forest areas can be seen as a romantic environment therefore I have used this in my poster. I have had to plan this photo shoot as I wanted the weather to me nice to show a nice atmosphere to the film. If I had taken the photographs on a moody day the atmosphere wouldn’t have been as bad and the shots wouldn’t have had the same effect.

8. PhotoShop I have used the Programme Photo Shop to create both my magazine front cover and poster. Due to taking photography and experimenting with the different functions last year I already felt I had a wide knowledge of the different effects I could create on it. I wanted to create my magazine and poster on photo shop so that I could add in different layers and work around different areas of each product. How I have created my magazine front cover: Looking at existing magazine front covers from ‘Empire’ and ‘Total’ magazine I have found that the main image is one of an actor/character facing towards the audience. This typical convention has been used well on action and horror films, however I wanted to draw the attention to the inside of the film making the audience look into the magazine front cover and see into the image/film. I have looked at the different costumes which other magazines have used to fit in with the films genre and used this in taking the photograph for my magazine cover. I have used Photoshop to dull out the background leaving the characters slightly more saturated then the background. Photo shop enabled me to do this by creating two layers. I have easily been able to add in different text into different sections of my magazine front cover. The use of photo shop helped me to adjust colours, fonts, opacity and the positioning of the text within the magazine cover. I was able to add in different shapes to advertise different aspects of the magazine front cover more boldly. The only problems that occurred was keeping track of the different layers and saving different types of files such as photo shop files and JPEGS in order to create the perfect magazine front cover. How I have created my poster: Creating my poster was similar to creating my magazine front cover. Photoshop enabled me to add in a photograph and create a boarder around the outside. I have been able to desaturate the image in order to achieve a more romantic feel to the picture. I wanted to add in smaller sub titles to the bottom of my poster as I have seen in existing posters where I want to advertise the producer, costume, lighting and other information like this. The use of photo shop helped me to create a new layer and reduce the size of the font dramatically in order to make this area stand out less as this is the least important piece of information and I didn’t want this to stand out more than the rest of the poster. I have had to learn how to compose a poster in a similar way to the way I have composed a magazine front cover. I have once again had to learn how to keep track of the number of files from photo shop files to JPEGS.

9. Publisher Although I have not used publisher to create my magazine or poster I did however find it very useful when researching into existing magazine front covers and posters. I was able to add in an image of an existing magazine front covers and posters in order then analyze around the outside. Publisher made it very easy to add in arrows pointing at the areas of which I wanted to talk about, the arrows could be as big or as small as I wanted them to be which depended on the section I was talking about in the magazine or poster. I was able to add in word boxes, like on word, however these boxes were easier to move around and easier edit in publisher. I wanted to add in text about the area which the arrows were talking about and publisher enabled me to do so. I wanted to create a text box which would fill the necessary space available therefore resizing and adjusting helped me do so. I could have used a highlighter tool to highlight different sections of my text, however I felt this was un-necessary as I wanted the reader to read all of my analysis. Publisher helped me to add in lots of small boxes to break down the text rather then having one long paragraph which would have been too long to read. By adding in small boxes it has made it easier to read and made the document look more organized. I have had to convert all my publisher files into JPEGS in order to upload everything onto my blog. I have had to organize my work in order not to get to muddled up and messy.

10. How did you use video/sound recording to get audience feedback? I have used video camcorder to receive audience feedback about my trailer, magazine front cover and poster. Video has helped me to capture not only the sound but their reactions to the different products when talking about them. I have used Video in my evaluation when I have asked one of my peers about my three products. I was able to ask them questions and receive their response on camera. I wanted to have my product on view while they were talking about them, therefore I have filmed one of my peers talking about my work in front of a computer screen with my product on the screen. This made it easier for the person who is giving me feedback on me products to keep looking at them and reminding themselves about what they look like. The reason for not using just sound was because I wanted to see the reactions. The sound from the camcorder wasn’t as good as I had hoped therefore by keeping the video in as well you area able to understand it more as you can lip read some of the areas which are more muffled then others. I also wanted to use video camera when receiving my audience feedback because I found it overall more interesting. Personally I would much rather watch someone talking then just hear their voice therefore because of this reason I have decided to use video camcorder instead of just sound.

11. How did you use Powerpoint to help evaluate and present your work? I have used PowerPoint to help evaluate my work as I felt it was a very organized Programme which I could layout the way in which I wanted to. I have used PowerPoint to create separate individual slides on certain topics. I wanted to answer my evaluation on PowerPoint as I was able to answer the separate questions within a question easily and layout the PowerPoint section by section. PowerPoint enabled me to add in pictures, hyperlinks and add a small amount of different effects on to the photographs. I was able to add a ‘washout’ effect onto the pictures making it easy for me to add on text over the top and still make it readable. PowerPoint makes it easier for someone to read rather then if it was in a word document. A word document would make it seem like a struggle to read paragraph after paragraph whereas colourful slides seem a lot easier to read. By using PowerPoint to evaluate my work it makes it easier to flick backwards and forwards through the different slides and compare section to section. Once again if this was in a word document this would have been harder to find in among paragraphs of writing.