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

All the way throughout the production of my media texts, technology has had a huge impact. Without, the production would have been near impossible to do. The most important piece of technology I have used in the production is my camera. To film the trailer, I used a Nikon D5000 Digital SLR Camera. This particular camera, unlike others like it, had the option to film 720p High Definition video, which meant that the quality of our finished trailer would be very impressive. The camera’s wide angle and zoom lens allowed me to experiment with a variety of shots. The lens allowed me to film extreme long shots, wide establishing shots, and zoom shots to create extreme close ups . I used a DIY aluminium handle in order to hold the camera steady when filming. This worked well and allowed me to film looking down at the screen rather than holding it at eye level. I used a sturdy tripod with my camera, allowing me to have very still shots, and it also let me create stunning panning shots. The camera had a pop out screen, which could be viewed from above, like the viewfinder from a professional camcorder. This meant i could get steady shots by resting the camera against my thigh and look down at the screen. 

Before starting the production of my media texts, I had to research into film trailers and their codes and conventions. For this I used the internet to view real movie trailers and analyse them. To watch the movie trailers I used the popular video sharing website ‘Youtube’. It is very useful as it has so many videos, not just of trailers, but also other video presentation made my students talking about the codes and conventions of trailers. Watching horror film trailers gave me some ideas on what to base my film on. After watching many film trailers, I began to take notice of similar codes and conventions in other trailers of the same genre. I started to notice that almost all horror film trailers contain dark atmospheric music. The trailers tend to start slow at first with gentle transitions, and then fast paced at the end with more sound effects such as screaming and louder music. After finishing the production of my film trailer, I used YouTube to upload the final trailer. This was i could display it on Facebook and obtain feedback from my audience.


I created a presentation that i could show to the class and pitch my idea for the film trailer. To produce this, i used Microsoft Powerpoint, an excellent piece of software which makes it simple to create presentations. 

Once I began filming and I started to have enough footage, I could start editing. I used my own laptop, which has a copy of Adobe Premier Pro installed on it. This software is a professional grade editing suite, with multi track timeline, allowing me to overlap footage and add more than one soundtrack or sounds over each other. I cut the clips I had filmed so that only the necessary footage was in the project timeline. I used a stock sound effect website to download the soundtrack I had used. The website contained a free collection of music which contained dark, horror ambient music. This software also had a lot of effects, typically relating to colour. I had researched online into Colour correction for my trailer. Colour correction is used in every movie production, even in trailers. Editing the colour of a film can add to the atmosphere and the mood it creates. War films tend to be high contrast and de-saturated. A fine example of this is Steven Spielberg’s ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Horror films tend to do similar things, often adding a tint to the video. I wanted my trailer to have a blue-ish tint to it. The colour correction option on Adobe Premier Pro made it very easy for me to do this.


To display the final trailer to the class, I used an interactive whiteboard to show it on a big screen. The high Definition really stood out on the big screen, and my teacher and my peers were very impressed with the quality. 
When producing the film poster, i researched existing ones using the internet. I analysed all of the codes and conventions of posters and thought how i would include them in my own media text. I had looked a few horror posters where the main image was simple and was over a dark background. I wanted my poster to be simple like this one, but still effective as a form of advertising the movie. Before starting to produce the poster, I went out with my group and took some photos that i could use for both my magazine front cover and my poster. For this I used my Digital SLR camera. The location for the photoshoot was a wooded area. This was suitable for the film as the abandoned house where we filmed was in a woods. http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/magazine-photoshoot-some-photo-edits.html
I edited some of these photos using Adobe Photoshop Pro. I could change the colour slightly to enhance the horror feel of the movie. Photoshop Pro is so useful for creating professional looking edits such as blending photos together.

Photoshop works in layers. When editing photos, you can create different layers, so that you can work with each photo separately, this is so if you make a mistake, you don't destroy the whole project. It also makes it easier to re-arrange the text, images and the effects applied to the image. I downloaded some brush tools from internet and applied it to the main title of the film. The brushes created realistic looking blood splatters, which goes well with the genre of horror. When making a big change, i saved the poster as a draft. This meant i could get feedback on each one and easily make changes to it after.
The magazine front cover went through the same process as the Film poster. I used my Digital SLR to take the photos, and then i produced it using Photoshop. I saved several drafts of the magazine and uploaded it to the blog in order to get feedback from my audience. This worked really as they gave me ways of improving it, such as moving the main image down a little bit, or change the font of the text.
http://miguelpilgrima2media.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/magazine-4th-draft.html

To obtain Audience feedback, I used Facebook, a popular social networking site, which came in really useful as all of my friends use it on a daily basis. I could upload my work on there and ask them to comment on what they thought of it. To the left is an example from when i uploaded my film trailer and asked my friends for feedback.








To upload all of my work, I used the service called Blogger.com owned by Google. The service is free and easy to sign up. I continued with my previous account i made for my AS Foundation Coursework. The blog service is very good for displaying my work. I could select different themes and color schemes. I used a simple layout which had different Labels on the top, each linking to a different aspect of my media product production.

Technology played the most important role in my production of the media products, without it even, none of this would have been possible. In Hollywood movies, technology is rapidly improving in the use of special effects, filming such as highly expensive, high definition, 3d cameras and incredible editing. Due to my love of photography, i was familiar with every piece of technology i used, so i could use it to every potential.