Planning and Research:
During the planning and research stage, the internet has been the most important form of new media technologies that allowed me to do what I needed to do in order to create successful media texts.
This is a print screen of the website YouTube, which allows audiences to watch videos. I used YouTube to watch other soap opera trailers from popular soaps such as Eastenders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale and Neighbours. Being able to watch these videos allowed me to learn the conventions of popular soap opera trailers, and therefore I could transfer some of these into my own trailer to make it successful.
This is a print screen of the social networking site, Facebook. Being able to use Facebook meant that I could communicate easily and quickly with other members of my group. For example, I could write on their 'wall' to arrange meetings for filming or taking still photgraphs. It also meant that I could communicate with the actors that I used for my trailer and ancillary texts. The use of Facebook definately made the process of planning and production a lot more efficient because I could arrange specific times and places for everyone to meet.
The use of a still camera allowed me to take photographs of characters and settings. This was useful because I could then show the photos to other members of my group and get their opinion. I could also upload the photographs onto my computer and share them via email or Facebook. The photographs meant that I could visualise what my trailer was going to look like, because I had the photographs of settings and characters in front of me. This helped me to be more creative.
This is a screen grab of my email account, on MSN Hotmail. Because everyone else in my group also had email accounts, this meant that we could share information such as important website links, music tracks, photographs and even videos with each other. It also meant that if we took photographs as a group on one camera, we could share them through email and then upload them onto our own computers to use as we wished.
This is my folder on my personal account. By having my own personal account, I could create folders and files to keep all of my work organised. The things that are in my folder range from video files to music tracks and photographs. I created several folders such as 'Final Drafts of Everything' and 'Music for Trailer', so that I knew exactly where everything was. I found this extremely useful and time saving because I was very organised and could find what I was looking for quickly.
Here are some photographs other members of my group took of me whilst filming our soap opera trailer. We used the video camera Sony Zeiss:
This camera allowed us to film for up to an hour at a time, which was useful because sometimes it took that long just to get a couple of minutes of footage. The video camera also allowed us to zoom in and out, which was extremely useful because we wanted to have close ups as well as long shots, and so we were able to get a variety of different shots. To ensure that the camera was as still as possible, we used a tripod to keep it steady. As you can see in the photographs above, the tripod was adjustable, which meant that we could use a variety of different camera angles. This was useful because it allowed us to ensure that our trailer would have a variety of shots and angles, which would improve the quality of the trailer, as well as following the conventions of other soap opera trailers.
This is a photograph a member of my group took of me using the editing software Adobe Premier Pro. This is the software I used to edit my trailer once we had completed the filming process. Adobe Premier Pro allowed me to take around 4 minutes of footage and turn it into a 43 second long soap opera trailer. I learnt how to do things such as cut out all unecessary footage and put each sequence in the order that I wanted, unlink the sound, add in music tracks and a voiceover. I also learnt how to adjust the contrast and brightness in the 'drug dealing' scene, because we shot that in an alleyway and so it was very dark. I also used KeyNotes, which allowed me to have my music track fading in and out when I wanted it to. This was useful because I could make it fade out at the end so that the voiceover could be heard clearly. I could also add BBC1's logo in the bottom right hand corner, which meant that the audience would know immediately what channel my soap would be shown on. Adobe Premier Pro also allowed me to add in a title at the end of my trailer, which allowed me to provide information such as the start date and time, the channel, the name of the soap and the relevant website. This not only contributes to the realism of my trailer, but also provides information to my audience so that they know when and where to watch my trailer.
This is the website, http://www.freeplaymusic.com/, that I used to get my music for my soap opera trailer. I used this website because there is no copyright on the tracks, so I could choose from a huge variety of genres and use what I wanted from there on my trailer. Being able to do this ensured that my trailer followed the conventions of other soap opera trailers, as they all contain music. The website's homepage has a list of genres such as 'classic rock' and 'hip hop'. This was extremely useful because it categorised all of the tracks so that I could browse the site according to the genre that I wanted to use. After browsing the site for some time, I knew that it would probably be a beaty track that I wanted to use because it would make my trailer seem exciting. I had used a sample track for the first draft of my trailer, so that I could experience what my trailer would be like with music. After I recieved audience feedback that stated that the track wasn't suitable, I went back to http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ and chose another one, which didn't take long, because the website was so well organised.
This is my magazine front cover in the picture editing software, Adobe Photoshop. I used Photoshop to create both my magazine front cover and my poster. Photoshop allowed me to take the photographs I had taken of my characters and create them into a magazine front cover. I started out with a blank A4 sized file, and made the background blue, because that was the colour that seemed to be the most popular when it came to tv listings magazines. From there, I created a title by making a red square in the Shapes tool, and adding text to it. From there I uploaded the three 'affairs' characters photographs that I took, and used the Magic Lassoo Tool to cut around them. I then used the Eraser tool to erase and parts that I may have missed, or did not want. I then transfered them onto the blue background and layered them up so that they were all the same size and looked good. I used the Shapes tool again for the star shape that shows the price, and for the coloured boxes at the bottom that features the other programs. I also used the image of a barcode from the internet, so that my magazine cover looked realistic.
This shows the Blending Options in Adobe Photoshop, which were extremely useful when it came to editing the text. During the planning and research process of my coursework, I noticed that a lot of magazine covers used an outer glow on their text to make it stand out. I learnt how to do this in Photoshop in the Blending Options, along with lots of other tools such as 'Texturise' and 'Inner Glow'. I found this useful because I could edit my text to exactly how I wanted it to look.
This is my poster that I created, also in Adobe Photoshop. Again, I started out with the photgraphs that I took of the characters in my soap opera trailer, and I was able to create an entire poster from scratch. This time I used a landscape background because most posters would go on a billboard. I had already planned to have my characters at the bottom so I chose a background. I knew that I didn't want to just simply use a colour for the background as this wouldn't look realistic or effective, and so I chose to keep it simple and have the sky as the main background, with the characters line up against a fence. This way, the poster looked realistic because it seems as though the characters are all standing together, rather than it being separate photographs.
This is just a photograph that I found on the internet of a fence, and in Adobe Photoshop I was able to crop it, change the size and postion of it until I felt that it was in the right place.
This is a screen grab of some of the tools that Adobe Photoshop has to offer. As you can see, I was able to alter the colour of the text that I used, which was extremely useful because I could make it as eye-catching as I wanted. Photoshop layers up all of the images and text, so by having them listed in order like this saved me a lot of time and effort of trying to work out what was supposed to go where.
Evaluation Stage:
This is a screengrab of my blog, on www.blogger.com . Throughout the entire process of my media studies coursework, I was able to document everything I have done, from the planning and research to the evaluation. This was useful because I could always go back and look at what I had done so far, and I could check to see if I had left anything out. I had never used blogger before this coursework, so I learnt how to do simple things, such as create a post, and upload photos and videos into them.
For Evaluation Activity 2, we had to record a voiceover explaining how our main and ancillary texts worked well together. I then unlinked the audio from my final soap opera trailer, and added in the voiceover.
This is the Sony voice recorder that I used. It was simple to use, and picked up sound well so I was able to record my voiceover easily. If I made a mistake, I was able to delete what I had done, and start again. When I had finished recording, I connected the voice recorder to my computer via USB, and uploaded the file.
Because the voiceover was 1min 20secs longer than my trailer, I cut the trailer at certain points, and added in my magazine cover and poster so that they appeared on screen when I was discussing them. I then imported the file so that it played on Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player allowed me to view my final trailer and voiceover clip properly, which I found useful because then I could see clearly what the final product looked like. Also, because the video files were able to be played in Windows Media Player, this meant that they were the right format to be added to my blog, where I could then analyse them.
This is the program called Paint. It could be argued that Paint is a simplified version of Adobe Photoshop. I used paint to crop photographs, so that they would fit in on my blog. I also used it to paste print screens of websites and programs that I used so that I could document them on my blog as well. Without Paint, I would have struggled to put photographs and print screens onto my blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment