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

Throughout the project I had a variety of different forms of media technologies , used in every stage of my coursework , creating my poster , magazine front cover and the trailer , this ranged from questionpro to Microsoft package  , Adobe Photoshop , movie making programmes and so on. I have used many media technologies in every phase research , planning , construction and evaluation to enable me to proceed in each stages.

When I started the project,I collected qualitative research of the codes and conventions used within horror/slasher genre trailers. I researched this information by our close textual analysis of slasher trailers, magazines and posters. I used the internet to help with our research search. I used the google search engine to complete this task, which was very easy to use as you can search codes and conventions of horror films and access many websites that show the information you want, this helped me understand the common codes and conventions used in slasher films. Furthermore I used Google to search for existing institutional images and logos to help me create my own independent company logo.  I then created MicrosoftPowerPoint slideshow to present the information I collected, the slideshow explains different types of characters used in slasher films and the consistent forms shown in slasher trailers. I also researched horror film history,  and looked at different  horror/slasher. Influences, such as  German expressionism and Film Noir.

I used the internet also to analyse existing magazine front covers , posters and horror trailers , this was to know the codes and conventions , popular websites such as YouTube were used to search for horror/slasher , this was to get familiar with the how horror trailers are constructed.

During the research stage I used ‘QuestionPro’where we were able to able to create an online questionnaire and distribute the questionnaire to social networking sites such as ‘Twitter’and ‘Facebook’. I received quantitative data from the questionnaires I shared on social media. From the responses I was able to understand how to adapt to my audience’s expectations. This website was very efficient to use and kept me updated with new data being received from my surveys it gave me a percentage how many people had completed my questionnaire and a score for each question. From the data i  collected I transferred the information into Microsoft PowerPoint to display the visual data in the form of graphs and explaining how what I have discovered will benefit me when creating our slasher trailer. I displayed the data creating Microsoft excel to create and style the presentation the way I would like. This was an efficient way of collecting information because it allowed me to collect large sample group very quickly by taking advantage of social media.

I used Microsoft word throughout the coursework. , it has helped me in many ways with creating the call sheets, the organization for the filming and shooting script. We had to record the phone number of everyone who participated in the construction and planning of our trailer just in case any problem came up so we can contact them within reach. To make sure everyone had a copy of the call sheet we sent a hard copy email to everyone who took part. Due to growing developments of technology it is easier to communicate with people using smart phones they can easily access their emails that our group sent about our trailer.

Taking advantage of social networking media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, we used this to create private group pages with both crew and cast members. The reason we did was to communicate with everyone about information and updates about the creation of the trailer. This was particularly efficient as we were able to send one message to all the people listed in the group. This was a better way unlike text messaging each person which would be a time waste and you can sometimes forget who to send it to.

I used Blogger.com which is a website where content can upload and also share. I was able to embed my  YouTube trailer  to my posts  , this  was easy and simple to use , without the use of this i was not able to carry on with my task. You can customize your own blog, for example i was able to put horror related background so that my blog would be more attractive.

I have used Microsoft Power point for the planning stage of the coursework to construct my templates. This was easy to use as i was familiar with it , and i had no problems using it. I decided not to use Microsoft word instead i used Microsoft publisher as i had more freedom moving titles , cropping images , changing background colour, add text without any trouble and also it is meant for design publication rather than Microsoft word is used to write e.g. evaluations.

I created my poster and magazine front cover using Photoshop,I did not use Microsoft publisher simply because it not have as many features as adobe Photoshop has. Using adobe Photoshop was very easy to use for the construction for my magazine and film poster. However there few technical parts to learn such as clone tool but once you learn it become very easy.Photoshop allows you add several layers so editing different parts is much easier to manage, it also allows you add several effects on photos, furthermore you can change the effects e.g.Contrast, which gives it a professional look.

Looking for the typography for our film title “Results Day” was important as it would depend on portraying the genre well which is why we chose this typography on dafont.com, We found this typography on the horror category. We found a resembling the  ‘Friday the 13’  typography, which is successful horror slasher film, this is an example of intextual reference as the audience will understand that it is reference to another text.

Due to development of technology over the years, modern media technology has become easier to edit and film than ever before. We used a digital Sony camcorder to film our trailer, the camera was old and was quite used up alot however it had enough features for us to use at our best of ability, since this wasn’t a Hollywood blockbuster but an independent we had no budget so we could not get industry standard cameras. The quality of the camera was not good from the feedback we collected from the audience when they watched the trailer.  The camera was portable and easy to carry, after filming we all we needed to do was download the footage we’ve taken into a hard drive, then import our clips to ‘Serif Movie Plus’.

To edit our trailer, we used a software called ‘Serif Movie Plus’ It was easy to use and the interface was easy to control which they let us import our film clips and edit them. Features such as the crop tool were beneficial for us we wanted to cut unnecessary parts we don’t want to show in the trailer. The software let us play around with the clips and move them around to view where they looked best in terms of the trailer. Transition effects were very helpful like fading the shots out and in and making them lighter or darker were appropriate. The disadvantage of editing was that we did our editing on school computers which, because of the old hardware,made things difficult when changing certain effects - like colour balance and adding text - because the hardware was to old making the process slower, particularly also when speeding up shots as the computer’s hardware was affecting speed so we were not sure if we were speeding shots right.              

After most of the editing was completed, we worked with a sound engineer to create soundtracks for our trailer.  We used a recording studio in school to create diegetic and non-diegetic sounds such as voiceovers and dialogues for our trailer.We used a software Cubase to edit sounds , non diegetic sounds were added to the trailer.  this software defined some parts of the trailer where you could hear what the actors are saying.