Question 6 What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Stages of production… In order to make my media product I went through 3 stages: -Planning and research -Construction -Evaluation Within this presentation I am going to talk about the different technologies I used when constructing my media product in each of the stages and what I have learned from using them.

Technologies During Planning and Research During our research and planning we used a variety of technologies to get an insight in to our chosen genre (Zombie). For example we used IDMB and ‘The Numbers.com’ to find out statistics and film information on our genre to help show that our film had an audience and to find out past numbers from past films e.g. ticket sales. It also helped us find out who our target audience was which we finally decided was year old males and females in middle class. We also used BBFC to establish what age rating our film should be. All of these websites were easy to use and clear to understand so this made researching very easy to do! We also used websites such as YouTube in order to look at other film openings from our genre. This helped us find generic conventions in film openings and therefore helped make our film opening look better an d attract the audience more. YouTube was easy to use as I have used this before but the school filtering system stopped us accessing some videos so this was frustrating as we couldn’t watch some of the videos that we wanted to. In all of our research and planning we recorded our findings on blogger. We did this in a range of ways.e.g. blog posts, Prezi's or essays on Microsoft word. I found blogger easy to use and I think it makes my work look neat and professional, although for some reason blogger wouldn’t always let me put photos on my blog so I haven’t got as many photos as t what id would’ve liked to have.

Technologies Used During Construction At the very start of making my film opening I had a lot to learn. I had to learn how to use the cameras and tripods and the editing software (Movie Studio Platinum and Photoshop). I found the camera very hard to get used to as there was so many different buttons and I kept pressing the wrong ones, although I had used the camera in my preliminary task it still took a while for me to get used to it. The editing software was easy to use once I got taught, I found that with a bit of practice I could edit easily and effectively. Movie Studio Platinum- This is the software we used to edit our film opening. We did things such as fade in/outs, added sound and sound effects and video effects to add filters to the film, we also added in slow motion scenes. I ended up having to do most of the editing alone so this meant I got quite good at it in the end. Photoshop- We used Photoshop for many things, for example we used it to make our studio logo, our titles and also the overlay for the news report scene. At first I found Photoshop very hard to use as it was new to me. It also lost a lot of our text and titles and we couldn’t get them back so we had to spend more time making these which was very frustrating. After I got used to using it, it was easy and I think it looks very effective in my film opening.

Music Sound Effects Overlays

Layer one Layer two Making the film title

Technologies Used During Evaluation During the evaluation of my film opening I used a variety of websites foe example Prezi, Powtoon, Slide share and blogger. I used all of these for the evaluation questions and each of them helps make the evaluations look professional and stylish. I also used YouTube to find videos to put in my evaluation e.g. target audience interviews, and this helped make my evaluations look and read better. I then put my evaluation questions onto my blog, but sometimes used slide share to do this. Slide share was very difficult to do as the school filtering system wouldn’t let slide share work so I had to upload all of my work at home which I found very frustrating and time consuming. From adding to my blog it made it look effective and blogger has a comment section so this meant I could receive comments from my teacher on how to improve my work and to find out what grade I got. I like this feature as it meant I could make my work the highest standard possible.

Lighting and sound…. In order to make my film opening effective I changed the lighting and added sound. To do this I had to use different technologies. Lighting- To make the lighting effective I used artificial lights to create high key lighting and I think this contrasted well with the low key lighting. The lights were easy and simple to set up and use and I am glad we used them! Sound- There is a lot of non diegetic sound used in my film opening, most of which is music or sound effects. To get the music and sound effects I used a website called freefx.com. This website was very easy to use and had a range of music and sound effects and I'm glad I found this website as I believe without the non diegetic sound my film opening wouldn’t be as good. I also added in a voice over and to do this I had to use a voice recorder and microphone. This was easy to use however the first time we used it we forgot to turn it on so we had to go back and record the voice over again! Nevertheless it sounds good and adds to the enigma in my film opening.

Low Key lighting Tension Building Music

Overall…… In conclusion, I used a variety of technologies in the process of constructing my film opening, for example; YouTube, blogger, Prezi, Powtoon, slide share, movie studio platinum, photoshop, cameras, tripods etc…… From planning and researching, constructing and evaluating my film opening I have used new technologies and learnt all about them, some I found very temperamental but some were easy to use but everything has helped me make my film opening and I think it looks professional and very effective.