Evaluation 4: Use of media technologies

We used the following media technologies: Facebook messenger, school email, Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, Premier Pro and Photoshop. All of these media technologies helped us organise, communicate, research and above all create our trailer, posters and magazine covers. Without them we could not have accomplished completing all the work that we have now and we have all realised how essential they have all been to `us for all aspects of our A2 project.

Facebook messenger: We had to use this app everyday to communicate amongst the group outside of school to schedule, plan and share ideas pictures etc. I also had to use it to arrange days to film with other actors and inform them where they need to be, what time, what to wear, what to bring and what we needed to film that day. It was essential that we had something to help us communicate with the team and the actors; none of the filming would have been done at all, especially since one of our actors lived in Huntingdon, another in Buckden, one in Hail Weston and one in Loves Farm. So all four of our main actors lived so far apart from one another, which made scheduling extremely difficult but only achievable by using Facebook messenger. School email was primarily used to send links to music, images and communicate with teachers which was important for those particular purposes. We used Gmail in order to create our Blogger accounts and I used Gmail to communicate with the St Neots museum to arrange an initial visit to have a look around, speak to the managers and take pictures to show the group. After the initial visit, I used Gmail to communicate further with the manager to arrange the day I wanted to film with one of my actors so that they can be informed in advance to set up the prison. Blogger is the social media platform that we use to upload all of our coursework, it has been helpful to use to see other students blogs for comparison, and it gave us easy access to our own work, whilst keeping ourselves updated and on track.


One of the first tasks we were assigned was to research non copyright music, I had spent hours searching for three different tracks for the beginning, middle and end. This was a difficult task because it was hard to match three tracks that made a good combination, set the tone, suited the genre and stood out as individual tracks. A couple of times we ended up changing the soundtrack due to it not fitting with a trailer, or not blending with the other tracks and trying to find better soundtracks that sounded more professional and modern. YouTube Audio Library was an important part of the trailer as a soundtrack can be powerful and make the audience feel a certain way and create a certain atmosphere for them. We wanted to captivate our audience by having soundtracks that made them feel uncomfortable, intrigued and excited. So without YouTube Audio Library, we could not have found a soundtrack so quickly and would have had to compose it ourselves which would have been time consuming.


Premier pro has been used for the entire trailer, although it has been difficult to learn how to use it has been very useful to our entire team. Not only have we used it to edit the final cut of our trailer, we have used it for our first draft of the trailer and individual interviews with all the actors and my group. So Premier Pro has been helpful in creating other tasks and not just the final version of our trailer, We have made use of the visual effects such as: speed duration, saturation, contrast, transitions, lighting and framing. We also made use of what we could do and experiment with for sound effects and the soundtrack e.g. fades, cutting, looping, overlapping, volume, tempo, voice recordings and sourcing SFX. Photoshop was used to create our magazine covers and film posters, we had to use this program so that we could develop our technical skills and abilities further than just Premier Pro. By using this program we gained an understanding for the importance of advertising and promotion, with things such as synergy as there has to be some form off continuity through both the magazine cover and poster. In comparison to my previous years magazine cover for MUTATION, I have now developed my technical ability and independence with the program significantly as my A2 film poster looks more filmic, simplistic, and has a nicely balanced colour scheme.