The above image displays the various different types of media I used.
Adobe Photoshop - using Photoshop allowed me the most useful and simplistic gateway to create my ancillary tasks, as well as allowing me to branch my answers to the evaluation questions further than just a block of text. Adobe Photoshop is used by a various range of people, both professionally and by amateurs. My experience and knowledge of Photoshop is greater than the majority of other media technologies used in this project, as it was used last year whilst making my main product (magazine cover, contents page and double page spread) on my AS media course. My skills with Photoshop are at a similar level as to completing my main product last year, however I do feel as though they have enhanced slightly, certainly the time it takes me to create a media product has decreased massively as I have become more familiar with Photoshop.
Apple Final Cut Pro - using Final Cut Pro was a first-time experience for myself. As I had never used this application before, I learned, both from my teacher and other group members, useful techniques and how to use it. This was the key piece of editing software we used to construct our trailer. Final Cut Pro enabled us to edit both the sound and video, using effects and transitions to create the trailer exactly how we desired; allowing us to give it the professional appearance we wanted.
Twitter & Facebook - we used these two incredibly popular pieces of social media to promote and advertise our finished product. We also used it to ask the thousands of people, accumulated by the total amount of friends & followers between all 4 of our group, to complete our survey to understand our target audience. As they are social media, our entire group had an existing understanding of these and found no difficulties operating them.
Blogger - having used Blogger last year, as well as this, I already mostly understood how the site operated. As I have used other blog sites, I could contrast how well and easy Blogger was to use in comparison to others. Blogger gave me a platform on which I could present my entire AS and A2 coursework. The flexibility of Web 2.0 allowed multi-media convergence on blogging sites such as Blogger, meaning you can include many different types of media, e.g. photos, videos, hyperlinks etc, within a post; the basics of which are understood by myself. Not many difficulties were encountered during this user-friendly site.
Apple Garageband - yet another application supplied by Apple on their Mac's, Garageband was used to create our music throughout the trailer. Our groups unfamiliarity with Garageband was evident judging by the audience feedback and the comments about the music. However, it did allow us to create fitting music for our genre, thus we made a "spooky", eerie piece of music. Garageband provides pre-recorded audio clips and allows you to maneuver and rearrange different clips, much like Final Cup Pro, to create your own piece of music.
Flickr - Flickr is very handy when analysing. It was used for analysing posters and magazine covers during research for my ancillary tasks. The way Flickr operates with 'notes' allows your to pin-point certain areas of a media text and comment on them. It also provides an option to share a Flickr analysation straight onto a Blogger site, thus making it very useful and fitting for us. However, as this was a fairly new site to me, it did take me a few goes to fully understand it.
Survey Monkey - this site was very useful when doing our audience research. It allowed us to create a questionnaire and, through the answers, understand the key conventions and ideas we needed to include in our own trailer. After advertising through the social medias of Twitter and Facebook, we received a high number of responses, widening our knowledge of our target audience and increasing our chances of creating a successful trailer. It then allowed us to present both the qualitative and quantitative data in graph formats.
Youtube - this popular piece of media is another example of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. We used it to research other trailers, to understand conventions and gain ideas and techniques, and to finally present our final media product, which can be viewed from anyone all over the world; which is one of the reasons Youtube is so popular, it creates a portal of which you can present anything you like to the whole world. It also provided an embedding code which allows Youtube videos to be linked directly onto a Blogger site. It also allows the audience to like, share and comment on the media products; thus creating more audience feedback and allowing us to understand how successful our trailer was.
Fujifilm Finepix S200HD Camera - we used this camera/camcorder to shoot all our footage on. With our footage going onto a SD memory card to allow us to transfer it onto the Mac's to edit it, this camera come camcorder is an example of a multi-application camera that not only shoots stills, but video footage as well. These pieces of media technology are becoming more accessible to regular people, rather than professionals, but are still producing the same level of quality media. The high quality footage, along with our creative thinking and a tripod allowed us to create professional looking shots, like a slow zoom over the protagonists shoulder and using the Z axis to perform focus shifts allowed us to create the conventions we desired for our horror trailer. As directing and shooting the footage was an area of interest of mine, I enjoyed using the camera, from different angles, to shoot our trailer.
Adobe After Effects - we used After Effects mainly to create our inter-titles. This was possible the application I struggled to understand and operate most, as it was a completely new experience for myself and required more understanding and knowledge than any of the other resources. This technology is used, not only by amateurs who eventually understand the operations of it, but by genuine professionals to create amazing special effects. This software is capable of performing a huge range of different tasks involving seemingly impossible effects. However, with our trailer, we kept the usage of After Effects to a minimum; using basic effects to create inter-titles containing plenty of conventions of horror, e.g. the colours used and smoke floating in the background to maintain the atmosphere and tone of the trailer.
I really like the fact that you have chosen screenshots of your own projects in Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Photoshop, but I don't think you'd make best use of them. To do well on this question you really have to give some specific examples of tools and techniques that you use to generate the particular effects that worked in your trailer. The best way to do this is to take those screenshots into Flickr and do an analysis, or to crop them to point out particular tools you used. Also this would be better if you organised it so that you began with the technologies used for research and planning, then moved on to the construction technologies, and finally thought about the evaluation technologies such as blogger. And a really good answer to this question actually explores the advantages and disadvantages of this sort of technology compared to more traditional ways of doing things, particularly in the evaluation stage, where you might have simply written an essay about it to submit the examiner. What the strengths and weaknesses of each approach? You don't have to fall entirely on the side of web 2.0 technologies when you answer this - the crucial thing is to be reflective and evaluative.
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