In all stages of my coursework I used many forms of
media. The three main resources were the internet, editing software and
Microsoft which were all easily accessible to me. This helped me complete my
coursework efficiently and professionally.
Throughout the research stages, search engines such
as Google aided me in searching for information easily, offering me an endless
amount of sites, relevant to me develop my understanding of horror film history
and its influences. I was also able to find existing magazines and posters for
me to analyse, and in turn influence my own construction of my poster and
magazine. Seeing these codes and conventions all in line together on the internet
really made it clear how similar and restrictive the structure of these
ancillary tasks would be to help me make an informed decision on whether I
wanted to use, develop of break these conventions. I was also able to find
existing horror trailers on Youtube which helped me compare conventional texts
with less conventional texts, such as ‘The Shining’ trailer. QuestionPro was
also available to me through the internet and was another media technology that
was extremely beneficial to me in my research stages. This site enabled me to
make a survey quickly and easily and then distribute it online by simply
copying and pasting the URL onto social networking sites such as Facebook and
Twitter. This gained a much larger audience and as it was online, people were
much more likely to fill it out as it would only take a few moments. The bigger
the audience I reached, the more reliable my results would be and gave me more
of an idea of what to include in my trailer and ancillary tasks. After gaining
all the information I needed from QuestionPro, I then used Microsoft PowerPoint
to create a slideshow and present my research clearly. The graphs I used in
this slideshow were created on Excel, another Microsoft programme which helped
me create the graphs to complement the data I had gathered.
For the planning stages of my coursework, Microsoft
Word was used to create the call sheets and many other documents that would be
used on set. I also wrote the synopsis on Microsoft Word as it would have been
spell checked automatically and easy to copy and paste straight on to my blog.
I was able to create tables, useful when creating call sheets, and was able to
move text about freely. This was much more time effective that hand writing all
of these documents.
During the construction of my ancillary tasks, I
used many media forms. When working at school I had access to Microsoft
Publisher which is an extremely used friendly programme to create publications
(such as my magazine cover and poster) in. However, I did not have access to
this at home but found that PowerPoint allowed me to move items about just as
freely as Publisher so this was extremely convenient. I also used Adobe
Photoshop to edit the images for my ancillary tasks. This included cropping,
adding filters (such as the grained effect on my poster) and using tools to
remove blemishes etc, giving me the desired image for my final
constructions.
The typography I used for ‘Reprisal’ was found on
dafont.com. This is a website with a broad selection of fonts in many
categories such as ‘horror’. I knew the type of typography I wanted and looked
under the ‘typewriter’ category and found the most appropriate one. Without
dafont I would have either had to go with a boring Microsoft font that would
not have fitted my brand identity, or start completely from scratch which would
have taken a lot of time and skill which I have not yet acquired on Photoshop.
Serif Movie Plus was the main programme we used to
edit the footage we had captured on set. This programme was difficult to get
your head around at first and was extremely tedious when it came to the small
details but if you know your way around the programme then it is a good tool to
use in the post-production process of a small film. We also worked closely with
a sound engineer to create the perfect soundtrack for our trailer using Cubase
Software. Both diegetic and non-diegetic sound was used to accompany the events
within our trailer as we did not have control over the sound produced on
location (e.g. passing cars, crowds etc).
One of the most important, if not the most
important media technology in the construction of our trailer was the camera.
The development in technology over the last decade has enabled us to film on
cameras which are portable and create footage which is easily downloadable on
to a hard-drive, making the whole process a lot smoother and easier. If it were
not for this advancement in technology, we would still be using film and
editing the trailer by cutting the reel and sticking it back down in the
desired place.
Lastly, the evaluation stage of my coursework was
largely done on Microsoft Word for accurate spelling and grammar checking.
Conclusively, the use of media technologies in
order to carry out my coursework was vital. Had it not been for the internet
each step would have meant doing individual research to find physical copies of
the magazines and posters and that is just a small section of the coursework
project. These media technologies have been used in every step of my
coursework, even to the last point of presenting it on a blog using
blogger.com. Having it all on one place to view is extremely helpful in terms
of comparing and seeing my brand identity as a whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment