Media product evaluation, question 4.

1. Q4. What has been learnt
from media technologies
across all aspects of the unit?
Kris Thomas – Candidate no. 4883

2. Different
technologies used
throughout the
project...

3. Social
Technology

4. Throughout the project, various forms
of social media were used to interact
with others, generate feedback and aid
with planning and producing my final
product...

5. Most notable was the use of facebook, Twitter and
Blogger. Facebook allowed for us to connect with the
rest of our group to plan the script for the soap, the
same goes for twitter. The use of social media and
technologies allowed us as a group to easily organise our
product and make sure we were all involved in the
production.
Facebook used to
plan the script

6. I was able to keep track of mine, and others work, cross
promotion among other students work allowed my
magazine ancillary to be more realistic.
By using Blogger, I was able to keep all
of my work towards the product
(Planning, Ancillaries etc...) In one
easy to access and view place. Blogger
was also useful when generating
audience feedback for Q2, as peers
were able to leave comments and I
could base changes to my work
around these

7. By tweeting other students we were able to
generate feedback for our products to aid with
answering Q2 of the evaluation
Twitter allowed us to do the same,
connecting with other students to
plan and collaborate as well as
contacting our tutor to confirm work
and get feedback. Social media was a
large part in the development of my
final products.

8. Editing

9. The editing process of our trailer was done on Imovie on
Apple Macs. It is professionally used editing software which
made the process easy and fluent, resulting in a trailer that
looked professional and of a high quality. We used
conventional editing techniques and the technology
involved in the editing process and the use of industry
standard software made the final product more believable
as a piece of media.

10. Editing in Photoshop
Having Photoshop as a
technological resource allowed
me to create more believable and
higher quality pieces of work, the
front cover for example, was
removed of the scruffy looking
outline and the text neatened to
a standard that looks good on a
magazine cover.
Pixilation on photo removed through clone stamping on Photoshop, the
distortion was also fixed to a degree using this technique.

11. Technologies like Photoshop and
Publisher were combined when
making the ancillaries, Photoshop
was used here to remove green
screen and then add a background
image and text to promote the
show.
Edges of figures
neatened with clone
stamp

12. Keynote allows the user to create
customisable slides that can be imported
with animation and timed effects into
IMovie.
The title cards were made in keynote, a
programme on Macs that allows for slides with
animation to be imported into Imovie. Allowing
for movement on the title cards and timed
fades, adding to the quality of the work
The timed fades on these title cards allowed us to time
when the titles would appear, easier to use and more
professional than making slides in PowerPoint and
importing them as Jpegs.

13. Filming
Technologies.

14. Throughout the project I was able to learn
and develop on my knowledge of film
technologies. Most notably using lighting,
certain focus types and the Levelling of clips,
audio and visual. Precision editing and filming
also became a large part of the trailer as well
as music layering.

15. One of the main contributions the technologies gave
to my final product, and one of the most important
things I learnt technologically was the precision editing
and the changing of the different levels on the Imovie
timeline. By using the different colour filters I was able
to give the trailer a distinctive, grey look to mirror the
downbeat nature of the trailer.
This precision editing
allows me to change the
colour and contrast of
each frame, which gave
the trailer its unique grey
tone, which matched the I could also
downbeat and depressing change the
storylines.
exposure and
brightness of the
clips, this worked
well when
changing the
outdoor exposure
light to match the
tone of the trailer

16. Different light levels to As well as developing my technological knowledge during post-
symbolise good and bad, or production of the trailer, I also learned valuable technological
evil and innocent.
lessons during the filming of the trailer. The way light levels and
the way non-digetic sounds affect a trailers mood and help to
create genre.

17. Low lux level, achieves in making this character look villainous The slow zoom into the character that
by covering him in shadows. precedes this shot shows enigma and
mystery as it is shot from behind and
doesn't reveal his face straight away
This was a shot that I put careful technological
thought into, the light levels help create genre by Camera set at eye level and set slightly out of focus to
generating mystery around the character and denote distortion of character and the distance the
portray him as shady and dark, whilst the steady audience feels from him.
camera movement (As it was set on the tripod)
helps create tension by not moving and being
eerily still.

18. The music file automatically inserted itself at the right length of the trailer,
and added more sound if the trailer was lengthened in any way
The music used in the trailer is the song ‘Kiara’ By the
electronic artists Bonobo. It fitted the trailer well with its
minor keys and downbeat tone helping to create genre
and meaning. It was converted to MP3 And then layered
over the clips. The site www.clipconverter.com was used in
this process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4rVc0
cSQ6o (Original video)

19. Sound ducking allowed for the music level to automatically adjust
itself depending on the amount of noise and speech volume in the
clip
The music was layered onto
the trailer and the sound
levels ducked accordingly. By
doing this we could have the
music swell in certain points
of the trailer when the
dialogue stopped. And it
would lower when the
characters were talking so no
speech was overpowered by
the music.
I could also change the background noise levels for the outside scenes,
particularly useful when eliminating background noise such as cars and traffic.

20. Sharing the clip on YouTube not only allowed
easy access to the video, but also allowed for
relatively easy feedback on the product
which we could adjust accordingly.
Having a resource like YouTube, and being
able to upload to the internet so easily
allowed us to generate viewer feedback for
the product.

21. The technological difficulties in the process of making the three products
presented themselves mainly in the ancillaries. As we shot the pictures for
our magazine cover and billboard promotion on green screen, the green
background proved difficult to remove fully and resulted in distortion
along the edge of the pictures. Though this was resolved slightly in
Photoshop, the faults on the picture are still evident.
Distortion around
text and image
Banner button distorted due to
cropping on Jpeg.
White outline left by
lasso tool on Photoshop
being unable to fully
crop the picture

22. The technologies that helped me produce my
final products also helped plan them as well. I
used a scanner to scan in my storyboards and
shooting ideas to my blog, this way I was able
to keep track of my ideas and have them
present as planning evidence at the same time.
Various storyboards and shooting schedules
scanned into the blog.