Evaluation Activity 4

Evaluation Activity 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

  Sony HD Camera

Within the planning stage and the filming stage of our soap trailer coursework, we had to take pictures of the characters that were played within our soap opera trailer. The reason we had to take pictures of the characters within the trailer is because within another section of our coursework, we had to create two texts as well as the trailer, which were a TV listings magazine and also a billboard poster. Therefore, during the filming stage, we decided to captures some images of the characters to put on our texts. Doing this earlier was more beneficial as the characters would be wearing the same clothing within all three texts. The pictures that were gathered together were taken on a Sony HD Camera (Image on the right). The Sony HD camera allowed us to take clear shots of the character, and also worked really well with close up and mid shots.

Tripod

Within our planning of the soap opera trailer, looking through the shot list that we created, there was a lot of panning that we had planned to do within our soap trailer of characters walking. Therefore because of all the panning, using a tripod would be more beneficial as it allowed us to capture better and steadier shots. Also within our soap trailer, within most scenes of the soap we used mid shots. Again, using the tripod was more beneficial as it allowed us to capture characters in the same shot, steady, as well as getting a perfect frame for the shot.

Apple Mac

Once we had collected all of our footage for the soap opera trailer, we used the MAC to edit all of our footage. Within the MAC, there is editing software, which is called Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro allowed us to cut all footage that was not needed within our trailer, and also allowed us re-arranges all of our footage. From this editing software, we also found a good soundtrack that we believed fit with our soap trailer.

YouTube

Throughout the course, YouTube has been a big help, especially throughout the planning a researching stages of our coursework. From looking back through my blog, you will see soap trailers from the biggest soaps, such as Eastenders, Hollyoaks and also Emmerdale. Throughout the planning stage, these trailers were taken from YouTube to give myself and the group ideas on what to use within a soap trailer, as well as what makes a good soap trailer, and being able to capture an audience’s attention. When sharing our final copy of our text, we had issues with sharing our soap trailer with people to gain feedback, due to problems with the MAC. YouTube allowed us to overcome this issue as we were able to copy it to YouTube to receive the feedback we needed. Having these issues with the MAC, evaluation activity 1 was more difficult to complete as we could not get the footage onto a computer, therefore we had to print screen parts of the trailer we needed from YouTube in order to complete this evaluation.

Adobe Photoshop

After completing the soap trailer, we had to complete another part of the coursework, which was to create a TV listing magazine and a billboard poster. Photoshop enabled me to edit images that we had previously captured, which would then be added to the two texts.