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

http://shadkayf.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/no-description.html

We used an online programme called prezi to present our ideas, such as our brainstorm, to present it in an interesting and interactive way.

It allowed us to experiment and use different technologies to present our ideas/evaluation in different ways, rather than in the standard format that Blogger uses.

Youtube was very helpful in the pre-production of our trailer. Before creating our trailer, we

used Youtube to look at various trailers of British Gangster films, as well as a few American Gangster films, to get a general idea of what themes run in both of them.

Moreover, we were able to identify what conventions we need to put into our trailer, as the genre we were working in is very niche.

We used Apple Mac software such as, iMovie HD and Garageband to edit shots we filmed on the camera for our trailer and our soundtrack. Garageband was tricky to use, as we had to create our own sounds, unlike our production work from last year where we allowed to use un copyrighted soundtracks. It was difficult at first to work out how to use this programme, but in the end we were able to create a successful soundtrack that fits the genre of our trailer and one that connotes action and fast pace. iMovie HD was simple and easy to use, from our previous production work in Year 12. It was just a matter of recalling on prior knowledge to edit all our filmed clips.

Photoshop also played an important role in the construction of our film poster and magazine front cover. In my case, it was simple and quick to use due to prior experiences working with this programme from GCSE and A level Graphics Design. It really helped in bringing our ideas to life and making them look more visually stunning. This allowed our ancillary texts to look like the media forms we were creating and brought it to level where it almost looked like professional magazine front covers and film posters. It was essential that every detail was linked together and made correctly, as it was marketed at our audience and had to communicate the British Gangster genre across to them.