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

Initially when researching the trailer, TV listings magazine and the poster we focused on looking at mainstream soap operas that are well known, such as Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Using resources such as google and youtube we found images and videos that are real media versions of the material that we were creating. Researching these allowed us to compile together questions for our audience research questionnaire. In this we included details of what we had found on the internet to ascertain what our audience wanted from our productions. For the trailer the main aspect of planning was creating a storyboard, this is used commonly in real media to create each single shot within a moving image production. Creating a storyboard allowed us to plan every shot in a lot of detail; such as the setting, the length, sounds (whether they were diegetic or non-diegetic). Preparing this plan way in advance to actually shooting the trailer allowed us to be much more prepared. It saved a lot of time as all we had to do was follow the storyboard to know what clip we were filming next. The storyboard was very successful. Planning for the TV listings magazine and poster was based upon our audience research questionnaires. We used this information to plan how many characters were going to feature on them, what setting, whether they were in or out of character. After this we were able to draw plans which were a replica of how the final product would look like. After producing the sketch, I wanted to create a digital plan, just to finalise details such as the days down the side of the page. Constructing the trailer was the most challenging aspect of the project. We all had to familiarise ourselves with using the video camera and tri-pod. After we had filmed the scenes we needed to edit footage and add sound, this was all done via using a Mac computer post filming. We used the software called final cut pro and soundtrack pro to edit and organise our soap opera trailer and the soundtrack for it. The program final cut pro allowed us to add text to the trailer, add transitions and also let us transform the colour of clips, in our trailer we converted one scene to back and white to indicated in had happened in the past. Constructing the TV Listings magazine and the poster were both done using computers, for the listings magazine I used the program Photoshop. This program allowed me to layer images, edit images, create shapes, create text and delete the background behind the characters. Using this program I was able to create a product that resembles other TV listings magazines such as TV Now.