Q4) How Did You Use New Media Technologies In The Construction And Research, Planning And Evaluation Stages?

New media technologies have been a massive influence in the ways in which the desired audience consume products in today’s world. Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years, but today it is just as easy- and definitely cheaper to consume this product over the Internet.

Almost everything done throughout the production of this piece of coursework I have used the relative new media technology of a computer.

In my planning stages for the subsidiary task of creating a film poster, I decided to find some existing film posters from the same genre that my trailer is going to be for. Once I had discovered one with an iconic image, I decided to replicate it. This gave me the opportunity to familiarise myself with some of the hardware and software I will be expected to use throughout the three tasks. For taking the picture, I used a simple Sony digital camera, once it was uploaded onto my computer I then edited the image using Paintshop Pro.

Also in the planning stages of my production I created a storyboard. Unless you class a pen and pencil under it, this initial stage was not created using any new media technologies- simply because we felt it would be easier to draw the images by hand. Once it was finished however, we used a scanner to upload it onto the computer so we could use it as evidence in our planning stages on our blog (will come back to later).

Whilst conducting my audience research, I discovered that my audience regularly view social networking pages; with the majority being Facebook now that the use of MySpace is becoming ‘out of fashion’. So I entered further research into how I could use a social networking page in order to help me advertise my product. So I have decided that I would use this social networking site as a method of making my product become more known across the World Wide Web.

In the construction stage of my piece I have use the new media technology of a handheld video camcorder. I assumed that the use of this would be easy; however it was much harder than we would have liked. The particular one we used did not upload to a computer easily, instead we had to put it on a DVD compact disk through the television and then editing could commence on a computer.

From the research stages, I have used the Internet in order to view existing products, from the analysis of trailers on YouTube to the still images searched and found on Google Images. The use of the Internet is one widely used by basically everyone that has access to it as it is easy to use, yet can sometimes bring in an idea of bias. This problem of bias has to be overcome, as explained in the section entitled ‘Audience Research’ from my blog.

This brings me onto another new media technology that I have used throughout the planning stages of this piece of coursework- blogging on eBlogger. Through this I have managed to document my every move in terms of everything I have done in order to make my main task and subsidiary tasks. Blogger’s simplistic layout makes it easy to use, organise and publish your work onto the Internet making it easy for a potential audience (or you, the examiners) to access and view. I chose to use this site because I had previously heard good feedback about the site, and upon just messing around with it, I realised for myself that this was in fact so.

Linking back to the use of the new media technology of the usage of a computer in order to construct my coursework piece, I have used this in several stages. As stated earlier, by researching, but then once this has been found via the Internet I have chosen to analyse and annotate this on the software package of Microsoft Word 2007. This is a simplistic package to use which is why I chose to use it. I also used this software in order to create my subsidiary task of the film poster, to advertise the film. I learned from my AS piece last year, that this was the easiest package to use, which influenced my decision into using it again.

I also used the Windows Movie Maker package throughout the construction stage, on both the computers available to me at school and at home. I discovered that this was a fairly easy package to use; it has a very basic layout and does not delve into too much technical jargon which could confuse easily.