Evaluation Question 4

Question 4: how did you use media technologies in the construction and

research, planning and evaluation stages?

We used many different forms of technology. To start with we viewed documentaries on youtube.com which we made notes about. Next I created a blogging site on Blogspot.com to record all my work, this was very simple. Next we uploaded our notes on the documentaries and published them, after this we created a Codes and Conventions list for documentaries.

We then began using Microsoft Word where we created some possible idea’s for our documentary, after this was done we used Word and the Internet(for research) to decide what our documentary should include, when it should be on, what channel it should be on etc.

After this I began come up with ideas for my own documentary, so I created another new word file and began constructing a Brainstorm of Content, which (when completed) was also uploaded onto my blog.

The next piece of equipment we used was the Kodak scanner, which we used to scan our hand-drawn location sheets and two storyboards.

Next we interviewed four people from our demographic(two boys and two girls), we did this using a XM2 Canon Camera, tripod and a microphone, which recorded onto tape which we put onto a computer with the help of a Sr-dvm700 tape recorder, the program we used to capture export and edit our recordings was Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. We then uploaded these onto a youtube account and embedded the code onto our blogs; altogether this was a quite quick and easy process.

We then used Google to complete some of our research, we looked for takeaways in our local area with telephone numbers so we could arrange an interview.

We then gave out a questionnaire we had completed on Microsoft Word, after we gathered the results we used Microsoft Excel to tally up the totals and to produce pie charts which we then uploaded to our blogs.

Next we typed up our formal proposal and uploaded it onto our Blogs. We then went back to Google to find some statistics and facts which we could use in our documentary, we made notes of all our sources so we could refer back to them at any point.

We then began to draw single frames for all the interviews, so we would have an idea of what we were going to do, we then scanned these in and uploaded them to our blogs.

We then began to start filming still using the XM2 Canon Camera and the tripod, we used tape as it could hold more video footage.

To prove that we were actually filming we had to take pictures of ourselves, we used a Sanyo Xacti HD1 camera and also sometimes used the Blackberry phone camera. We planned to take photo’s so we could include them in our filming diary’s

For the interviews we used a mobile phone to ring the takeaways owners(or managerial staff), we also used the internet and emails, to contact them.

After this we went to the editing suite, were we began importing all of the footage off our tape, we used Adobe Premiere Pro again. We captured all the footage onto the program so that it was saved and so we could re-use the type for more filming.

After capturing the footage we then set about organising the clips into a correct order, this gave us an insight into what our documentary will look like, we then carefully selected which shots we were going to keep and which shots we would bin, we also added a few transitions and effects.

We carried on editing our documentary, using some of the tools on Adobe Premiere, we cut down the clips with the ‘razor tool’ and using the zoom in tool to cut them down precisely where we wanted it. This gave us a precise and clean finish.

We then began adding music to our documentary, we first used it whilst creating the montage at the beginning of the documentary, trying to synchronise the clips as best as we could. We then added titles to the interviewee clips introducing them and their relation to the documentary.

Next we moved onto the issue of the sound. We started by making a riff from the song loop, we carefully cut the song down in Adobe Premiere, we tried to keep the sound smooth and consistent with an effect called the ‘constant power’. We lowered the sound in interviews, so the interviewee could be heard, we sometimes even faded the whole song out.

We used a blue screen during interviews to enhance the interview. We did this by first applying a ‘chroma key’ in the menu of ‘video effects’ to the interviewee. Then we put the image that we chose on the layer underneath it on the timeline. We then smoothed out the rough edges and changed the opacity to make it look as professional as possible. This enhanced our interviews and made them a lot more exciting to the audience.

We used a decent amount of archive footage in the documentary. We used several from restaurants after checking to see whether we could use them we downloaded them and imported them into Adobe Premiere. In one aspect we recorded ourselves on the JustEat.com website. We did this with a program called Daniusoft and then imported it like any other type of media.

For the voice over we had to create a script, this was later typed up onto Word, we asked a friend to read it and recorded him in the radio room, using a program called Audacity, we also used radio equipment, headphones and microphones. We then recorded each bit of narration separately and when we finished we saved both files as MP3 files.

Before we could start on our print advert we had to look at other adverts so we could have an idea of what the channel and age group desire’s in their adverts, we used a channel 4 website called www.4creative.co.uk to look at other print adverts.

We then began by drawing a draft of out print advert which we then scanned onto the computer. We then constructed the final piece for this we used Adobe Photoshop. Using the lassoo tool to cut out the image of the meal.

For the Audience feedback we decied to access a bigger audience, we did this by using Facebook I posted my video as a status asking my friends to comment. We also used a questionnaire to get a more positive and more deep answers.