Evaluation - Technology

• research and planning stages? - 

As a part of my research I have used various resources and modern technology to help me find information about the horror genre and its typical conventions. I begun by watching some of the best known horrors including The Shinning and Saw, After watching the films I used the Internet to find some more information about their production and other aspects such as production, music, ancillary texts and their use of the audience theory. For example I have used websites such as facebook , twitter and wikipedia to find information about different horror films and relevant audience feedback.  The most useful website in my research and planning stage was Youtube because it allowed me to watch various trailers and video tutorials about making a horror trailer such as "A trailer for every Oscar winning movie" ( for more information about research influence click here ). I have also used the Internet to research various topics including famous media theorists, narrative structures and information about pathological illnesses, unisex names and horror sound effects.

Moreover, I have also used The Internet and We media to research and plan the production of our magazine front cover and film poster. I researched similar ancillary texts using Google image search and the business websites of other magazines such as the Empire and Total Film. This helped me understand the conventions of magazines and horror film posters in order to enable me to produce my own ancillary texts. I have also used other technology to plan the production of the poster and magazine front cover such as Microsoft word which helped me plan the layout of the magazine .

• construction stage? -  

Technology was very important for the construction stages of my trailer and relevant ancillary texts because it helped me make my publications look more professional and of high quality. I have used a Canon EOS 30D professional camera to ensure that the quality of our taken pictures is high as well as their exposure and deth of field. The camera was essential for our project because we used it to take pictures for the book diary we have created, in the trailer where Kenny takes pictures of Ash, in the production of our ancillary texts where we used to to take pictures of Alex in his role as Kenny. 

We also used the camera throughout the whole project as a way of capturing the stages of our work and using the pictures in our blog to explain the stages of our work. Studying Photography was of a great advantage for me because I was able to apply my knowledge in media as well as to use other technological equipment from the photography studio and resources. For example we have used the Photography studio to take all the pictures as well as to film the Tent scene using the lycra frame in the photography room. This involved using a lot of artificial lighting and projectors which are hard to set up, as well as background sheet and stabilizers such as a tripod. Furthermore, we have used a special professional Macro lens to take photos of Alex's bleeding eye for the poster. The lens is very complicated to use because it's hard to adjust and focus it. However it was of a great benefit for us because the poster looks so effective and detailed. Throughout the project we have taken more than 200 pictures and only used about 10 of them in our publications. This shows how we have used technology to ensure that our work was recorded accurately and our media texts are of good quality.

For the production of our trailer we used Imovie - a proprietary video editing software used for the construction and continuation of video texts. By producing a chase sequence as a preliminary task we learned how to use Imovie and got used to it pretty quickly. When we edited our horror trailer we already knew how to do the basic things such as selecting the right footage, inserting text, image and sound and cutting and cropping the video image. However we spent a long time looking at Imovie tutorials on their webpage. This enabled us to use some advanced options of Imovie such as adding special effects and filters, and adjusting the colour levels and contrast. The video below shows how we have used Imovie to edit our footage and make it look continuous, effective and terrifying. 



For the construction of our ancillary texts we have mainly used Photoshop - an image editing software which enables professional image manipulation and adjustment. I am very familiar and confident with using Photoshop because most of my A levels require me to use this program a lot. This was very helpful to me because i knew how to achieve the desired effect and manipulate my images effectively to get good perspective shots of high quality and good exposure. 

For the magazine we used a single mid shot ,taken in the photography studio. We then used Photoshop to create an A3 document and insert the main image in it. After this we edited the image so that it's colours were contraster and well saturated. Some of the tools  we have used include Dodge and Burn, Colour curves, Layer Transformation and sharp etc. 

The film poster was designed using Photoshop to make it look scary and eye catching. We have used a landscape format because we thought that it would be better as the audiences' attention is drawn to the detailed eye in the center. We used various tools such as smudge, blur, burn, saturation , colour adjustment and selection to create all the visuals in the poster. The poster was harder to create compared to the magazine because its advertising purposes meant that the visual pictures were more important than the text content, whereas film magazines don't usually use strong powerful images but emotive language and lots of text. For the creation of the poster we also used dafont to get an eye catching, gothic font for the title our movie.

• evaluation stage? - 

In the Evaluation, I exploited through the use of images, video and links to on-line resources in order to show that I was aware of the huge potential of Blogspot. My evaluation is mainly in a written format, where I tried to address each key question as well as reflect my personal feelings about the whole project. I have used a lot of links by editing the HMTL and URL, so that the links allow the viewer to access relevant on-line material. As well as links to other websites i have also included links to some of my previous blogs which show relevant information. This has helped me because it improved my knowledge of HMTL and hyperlinks. Moreover, I have embedded videos from youtube to show how I have used youtube for research and planning as well as using pictures to make my evaluation more visual and interesting, so that the viewer is more concentrated and motivated to read it.

One of the aspects I evaluated was audience feedback. I have created an on-line questionnaire using surveymonkey and embeded it on my blog so that it was easier to collect responses. I asked my friends and some students at the Sixth form to fill in the questionnaire. I have then used surveymonkey to analyse and print screen some of the results charts and inserted these JPEGs in my blog. In addition I have also used Photoshop to create evaluation documents which consist of my ancillary texts and analysis of their construction. After analyzing each production, I increased the size of the document so that it would be more clear and visible, I then saved the doc a a JPEG and uploaded it onto the blog. This shows how I have used various technical aspects in my evaluation.

Furthermore, we created a video presentation which reflects the construction process of the horror trailer. To do this we have used Imovie voice-over option and recorded our evaluation over the actual trailer. We spoke about how we have reflected conventions of horror trailers in our own work and the ways in which we have challenged typical horror elements. I think that this was an effective and original method of presentation because it looks like a video extra for our film. After completing the task , I have uploaded the video on Youtube and then embeded it onto my blog. This shows how e have exploited through  the used of video in our evaluation.
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