Question 6

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the previous year I have used a wide variety of technologies in order to produce our media product, including programs and hardware which was both relatively familiar and unknown to me.

Firstly, the use of Blogger in order to record our progression through the year was a learning experience for me personally, having never used the website before. However, having used it throughout the year I believe that I have become proficient at preparing, editing, and uploading blog posts so as to mark my progress through the course. As well as this, using Blogger over the year has helped me better understand the process of integrating a number of separate technologies with Blogger, including; Youtube, Prezi, and SlideShare, further expanding my understanding my understanding of Blogger and other similar blogging sites, as well as the use of HTML.

Moreover, during the process of recording my work on Blogger I also explored a number of ways of producing my content outside of the text post which is normally used. One of these 'outside' ways of producing my content- which i used for a number of posts- was Prezi. Having used Prezi only once prior to the creation of our blogs it was initially quite challenging to format presentations on the site. However, with time I have gained a better understanding of the site and its potential for presentations such as mine to the point which I now prefer to use Prezi over alternatives such as PowerPoint- which I used for my 'Investigating Thrillers' presentation in conjunction with SlideShare to upload the file to my blog- due to the fact that, although I had knowledge of both prior to using them, Prezi allowed my to present a better visualisation of my ideas.

I also used YouTube to present a number of my productions on my blog, including but not exclusive to: some of my evaluation questions as video essays, my questionnaires, and any practical films produced. Much like Prezi I had rarely used YouTube as a content producer prior to the creation of my blog and with use have found it to vastly more useful than other video uploading sites which were available. YouTube was also a useful in researching the techniques used in the opening sequence of our genre, specifically watching productions such as; Seven and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

For the actual production of any practical films which I was involved in I made use of the DSLR camera- the Canon EOS 1100D- which, although I had previously used on a number of occasions, I believe I have become far more experienced with this camera in particular over the past year due to the large amount of time I have spent using it. This enabled me to better demonstrate my knowledge of media and camerawork techniques as a whole in my final piece due to the use of the camera over the year as I gained a better understanding of both the mechanical side of the camera- in both the manual focus and the zoom of the lens- as well as the digital uses in controlling the exposure and auto focus of the camera.

Also, during post production of some of our films I have been able to expand my knowledge of two different types of editing software; Lightworks and iMovie. On the one hand, I was already fairly knowledgeable in the use of the iMovie, having used it through GCSE editing, yet I have still been able to become more confident in using the software after using it to edit most of my practical pieces including my 'Day in the Life', as well as in order to present my audience interviews. Lightworks, on the other hand, I had only used once prior to editing my evaluation questions in the creation of a short film outside of school and as  result it was initially more challenging to use than iMovie, having a greater amount of depth to the program. But, with time, I believe that overall I was able to understand the possibilities offered by using a more complicated program -compared to iMovie- as it enabled more precise editing and flexibility of effects which were not available in iMovie, and therefore despite the learning curve I believe was a better editing software to use.

Finally, we were able to use social media sites such as Facebook in order to make arrangements for meeting and filming our final piece. This was infact a vital part of our production process as we were able to coordinate days for filming on the moors in order to provide not only the most available time for each member of the group, but also allowed us to predict weather conditions for filming and thereby insuring that the misc-en-scene of each shots was not entirely out of place.