How did you use media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages? By Amy Anderson

In this question I will illustrate what technologies I used throughout my OCR A2 Media Studies Portfolio and how they helped or hindered me. I will do this by going through each section of my portfolio and discussing what technology I used and how.

Research (Films, Posters and Articles) In this section I aim to describe and illustrate the use of media technology in the research area of my G324: Advanced Portfolio in Media. I will do this by visually portraying and explaining the technologies used in the research into films, posters and articles.

Research (Films, Posters and Articles) For this section of pre production I used the blogging website Weebly. This is a free "drag and drop website builder" (source Mike Johnston July 'Weebly Review- The Website Builder that makes Web Design Fun'). Using this website allowed me to create multiple pages and sections for my research into my three film analysis and poster analysis. This made the process much more organised and helpful, in the sense that one could go back and edit any section after feedback.

Research (Films, Posters and Articles) YouTube, the video sharing website created in 2005 became a valuable resource. The ability to use cross media convergence with Weebly and YouTube was made simple. I could easily embed a YouTube clip and begin evaluating the media language or I could reinforce a point with an example from the film itself. Google Images, a section of the Google search engine which specifically focuses on pictures, also became another helpful asset to have. The capability to incorporate photographs to illustrate my points and ideas for institutions, genres, representations, audiences, ideologies and narratives and have the examples of my posters next to all my writing made the process simpler and far more fluid.

Research (Films, Posters and Articles) However it would have been helpful to have more options when embedding video clips as my research into the short film Shifter by Ben Parker was only available on the more independent video sharing website Vimeo made in As Weebly did not have an option to embed this clip in the same way one could with YouTube I felt stunted especially when illustrating my research into the media language of Shifter.

Research (Films, Posters and Articles) For my research into articles I used two double page spreads from the film magazines EMPIRE and Sight&Sound. Both print media, and double page spreads are not available on their online site so I bought both these magazines. I used the HP Photo-smart Printer and Scanner released in 2011 to scan my chosen double page spreads.

Research (Films, Posters and Articles) Once again Weebly was used as the platform for my analysis. As it allowed me to add pictures illustrating my point clearly and simply It was difficult to insert the double page spread as pictures could not go side by side so I had to use columns and then insert them. Once that had been done however it was simple enough to begin my analysis into the double page spreads.

Development (Film, Posters and Articles) In this section I aim to describe and illustrate the use of media technology in the development area of my G324: Advanced Portfolio in Media. I will do this by visually portraying and explaining the technologies used in the research into films, posters and articles.

Development Film Narrative Once again the blogging website Weebly was used for the presentation of this section of production. Once again it was very useful to be able to embed photographs and files within the pages. I used the external programme LibreOffice, a free open source office software, descended from OpenOffice created in It was thought that for the creation of the script we may use the software of Celtex, a programme specifically used for the development of scripts and media products. However I personally learnt more from creating the script from scracht, learning all the fonts and particular layouts that one must learn if you ever produce a script for production.

Development Film Visual I did run into problems however, in the visual development as I preferred to do that physically on paper instead of online. Thus making the presentation of it, such as my storyboard, more difficult as I had to take photographs and/or scan in the work. I used the HP Photo-smart Printer and Scanner released in I felt my personal choice of creating the visual development without the software of Weebly or any other external programme may have made it look less appealing as it seemed separate from the theme of the website.

Development I used the Canon EOS 600D, this model includes- 18-megapixel CMOS sensor Scene Intelligent Auto mode Full-HD EOS Movie Up to 3.7fps continuous shooting Wide-area 9-point AF 1,040k-dot vari-angle 7.7cm (3.0”) screen Basic+ and Creative Filters I set the camera to auto without any effects or filters. It was incredibly helpful to have a built in microphone on this model as I could leave the room once I had set up the shot, so my shadow was never shown in the corner of a shot.

Development I used two kinds of editing software in the development of my five minute film. The first was the video editing software Final Cut Express, created by Apple Inc and released in This was an incredibly uncomplicated programme to use as I found the layout easy to understand and edit. However as a PC user I was only able to edit my film on the school computers with the programme installed. Obviously this created timing difficulties as I could only edit in lessons and would have preferred to have a completely synergistic programme that I could work at home and at school with.

Development The second editing programme I used was for the sound in my five minute film, specifically the music 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' by The Beach Boys. I ran into a great deal of trouble when I uploaded my first draft to YouTube. Despite the fact that I had ed the record company for permission to use their song for non commercial reasons when uploaded to YouTube my entire video was muted for 'third party copyright'. Clearly this was a large problem for me, even though I within correct copyright grounds YouTube still marked this as an infringement I was extremely upset as the song, I felt, not only tied comedy in the film, I had extracted one of the lyrics of the song as the title of my film. Therefore I had to use the digital audio workstation developed by Apple Inc, Logic Pro. I used this audio software to slightly alter the pitch of the song. This would mean that YouTube would not recognise the slightly changed version of the original song by The Beach Boys, whilst maintaining the comedy effect of the well known piece of music at the end of the five minute film.

Development Poster Making When creating my poster I used my iPhone 4S to take the photograph. This is hardware is a touch screen supported smartphone developed by Apple Inc in I found it incredibly useful to have a 8 MP back-side illuminated sensor, HD video (1080p) at 24/30 frame/s, IR filter, Aperture f/2.4, 5 element lens, Image signal processor (built-in A5), Facial recognition (stills only), image stabilization (source Wikipedia) at quick disposal. It meant that I could instantly snap a photograph of a stance I liked, and didn’t have to worry about setting up a proper camera.

Development Once I had taken the film I used the photo editing app Pixlromatic created in This app allows you to edit photographs, with many different filter options. I used the effect 'Fern' and 'Enhance', both of these effects suited the photographs excellently and I felt the simplicity of cross media convergence through the iPhone and editing apps extremely useful as I could complete the edit quickly and simply. I also used the photo editing programme Adobe Photoshop created in 2003 when developing the photograph into a full film poster that reflected the genre of my film.

Development Article Making Using the word processor Microsoft Word desgined by Microsoft in I used the latest software, created in This was an easy familiar piece of software that allowed to me to change certain aspects so the page set up would look more like a film magazine article. I had to change the format and layout of the page so it was landscape and fit the double page requirements.

Development Using Microsoft Word I inserted two pictures that I had screen shot from my film itself. Along with adding text boxes to create a column like layout. I centred each piece of text as that is exactly how the column is formatted in Sight&Sound. Along with using the font Helvetica for the same reason. This was easy a fluid to do as I was prepared with photographs and article content which I had written out earlier already.Below is a screen shot of the process I went through to do all this.

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