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

Above is an image I created including a collection of the main websites and programs I used in the process of making my trailer,poster and magazine cover. I featured some of the main websites such as 'da font' I also used 1001 free fonts, I used these sites to get the 'bold eagle' font which I used on my magazine cover for the 'total film' cover. Also, I used 'baby blocks' font for the 'Childminder' official logo which is featured on the trailer, magazine and poster. Another website I used is facebook, which is unusual, i posted it in order to get views from my views and further feedback on what people thought of it, similar to this I did the same on Tumblr, my own personal online blogging site. Flickr was a large component to this task as i used it to annotate things such as preexisting magazine covers, movie posters, stills from my own and other film trailers. This is simpler as the viewer simply clicks on the image on a block, the hyperlink takes them directly to flickr where they can hover the mouse over images and see the annotations. Google is a search engine used in almost any computing related project, it was important for research and to find images and trailers that were useful in my production. Youtube was important to look at other trailers online for films and older students work to see the standard I should be aiming for. It's also what the final trailer was uploaded to which allowed it to be shared online to friends for feedback. Blogger was the most important site to use for online blogging my entire project research through development and final productions for my peers to see, my teacher and to have all my work together online where I could easily access it.

One of the main programs used was final cut pro, this was the main editing program to make our trailer, we first shot our footage onto one tape using a camera, one uploaded to the Mac we used final cut pro to upload shots that we easily cut and saved under various names (eg. Matty CU) this made it easier to edit the order in which we wanted the shots to show up in the trailer. We got the shots into some sort of order and then used final cut pro to add effects and transitions (fades to black/white and bad TV for the POV shots) we then added our inter-tittles and credits at the beginning (dark doll productions) and myself and one of the other from my group (James) created the Childminder tittle for the end of the trailer. Final cut pro is an industrial level editing program used by professionals, it was the program with the largest learning curve as it was totally new software for myself. Importing the footage from camera to screen was complicated but soon was easy. I found this program particularly helpful as our shots were recorded onto one tape and final cut pro made it possible to cut the footage to the scenes we need and we could try the trailer in different sequences to see which had the better effect. I developed the skill for techniques such as transitions between shots and discovered the effects which we used on the inter-titles. At first i was almost intimidated by the software but soon came accustom to using the program for editing and have developed the skills to feel comfortable with using it.

We then uploaded the entire project into garage band which allowed up to do sound which we got from http://soundbible.com/, http://freeplaymusic.com/, http://www.freesound.org/searchText.php we also recorded some sound ourselves and added them into the trailer. Using garage band allowed up to easily match up the sounds to the correct shot or screen image (Zanzibar chords corresponded with the inter-tittles) we used this program to edit the sounds and have them louder when it was necessary and quiet if playing at all at others, we could also speed up the tempo of some sounds and the pitch to give eerie effects when they were needed.

Photoshop was largely used in this project as it was used to create the tittle for the childminder piece featured in the trailer, poster and magazine cover. For which we used the font 'baby blocks' and 'blood brushes' to use on different layers so the blood appeared on the letters one at a time rather than all at once, which corresponded with the ending music. I also used photoshop to create the post in which I showed stills from my trailer and other trailers, for the banner of programs and sites above, for screen prints from programs. Most importantly I used it for my poster and magazine cover to edit the images and make them more 'horror' like and used brushes to give the cracked, decaying feeling. I look the images with my own dslr camera I have for photography.

I believe blogging in itself is a much more useful way of presenting work, due to using this technique during my Photography course I was well used to blogs and how they are useful. A blog can easily be linked with other websites for example with the images in this post some have links connected to them which take you to the Flickr website where I have made small annotations on the images to show I understand how to work them and show how they were useful to the production. Online blogging helps to create an online record which is easily accessible as it is saved to the website and can be viewed by myself and overs. My teacher/peers are able to leave feedback on my work which helps myself make improvements to help my grade. Essay format doesn't allow such a vivid demonstration of all the programs and a visual showing helps to explain. I Personally find blogging work more productive and accessible, I find myself more inclined to try harder and the work can be edited at a later date.