Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

My filming and editing skills were much more developed than before due to the use of watching tutorials and practicing on iMovie. This enabled me to be more confident which helped me produce my final product quicker than expected. I wanted my trailer to be much better than my film opening so I tried much harder to make it more realistic. As I had full control over the editing, unlike with my film opening, I was able to style it how I wanted. I took advantage of technological features on the software such as adding text; which offered a variety of different style, also the recording ken burns effect. 

Another critical use of digital technology I had to use during my A2 portfolio was the internet. My internet knowledge was already quite complex as it is something I have been using everyday since I was six. I took this knowledge to my advantage, especially on social media to help me gain feedback on my products. By posting links on Facebook to surveymonkey.com with a specific questionnaire linked to my product which allowed me to see where I can improve, this being for the concept of Web 2.0 showing that I am a producer, in this specific case, a questionnaire. Social media also came into use when organising filming etc, especially when I needed to contact my actors about filming times. The use of social media made it more organised and easier to communicate. Blogger was a key part as it was what I used to present all of my research, planning, set backs, final pieces and evaluations. I also looked at exemplar blogs to help me get a feel for how to lay out my blog and good points to post about my filming processes etc. 

I used youtube a lot to obtain copyright free music to use over my trailers. It was difficult as most of the copyright free sounds didn't go well with my piece until I finally found one. I learnt how to legally convert the sound of the song using youtube-mp3.org into an mp3 file which can easily be uploaded from iTunes to iMovie by clicking the music icon. 

With my ancillary tasks where I had to create a film poster and a magazine to help market my film, I had limited knowledge of the softwares I had to use.  For my magazine cover, I used Adobe Photoshop to create it. I used features such as the opacity tool to give a contrast between the gloomy grey background and a forest. I also used the magic wand tool to crop the photo of my actor, Harry, out of the background. I took the pictures of him for my ancillary task with my iPhone 6 as it is a familiar device, it has an HD camera and is also easy to transfer to my computer, which I did via email. Using the photoshop tools I mentioned above, this has helped developed my understanding of how to create a professional outcome.