1. Question 4: How did you use media
technologies in the Construction?
By Tanya McDonald

2. Wordpress
Like for my Research and Planning, Wordpress has proved to be
incredibly useful for posting the stages of my construction and for
getting feedback on various parts of making my trailer, poster and
magazine cover. The blog makes it easy to edit posts even when they
have been posted a while ago and also makes it easy to present work
by embedding videos, images and presentations from other
websites.

3. YouTube
YouTube has provided a fantastic way to share the videos showing the
stages of my trailer - it is easy to upload the videos and easy to them
embed them on other websites.
Pros: Easy to upload, easy to share and even easy to edit the
information on each video while uploading.
Cons: I had a lot of trouble with YouTube at the beginning as YouTube
stretched and narrowed the videos and even lessened the quality
because the files were too big. To solve this I had to look through
various websites giving advice on which formats and sizes of videos to
use.

4. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is a timeline-based video editing software
application for Windows or for the mac.
My entire trailer has been pieced together and edited on Premiere Pro CS5
so, needless to say, it has been an irreplaceable software for my project.
Pros: The software, after some exploring, is easy to use and well set out.
The video effects and transitions included in the software help to create a
professional looking video.
Cons: Some of the features of Premiere Pro can seem overly complicated
(e.g. if you want to zoom in you need to use effects to select the image/clip
and scale it to each point, however, this also allows for more precision).

5. Toshiba Camelio X100
The Camcorder which I have used to film all my footage is the
Toshiba Camelio X100. It has been a great advantage to have my
own camcorder in this project as I haven’t been limited to having
to book out a camcorder when I need to film and I’ve been
able to leave footage on it without worrying that it will be
deleted. I also used a lot of the tripod (which I borrowed
from school) to film still shots, to film the ink in water and
also to take the stills for the skittles animation for my
ident.

6. Handbrake / MPEG Streamclip
HandBrake is a general-purpose, open-source, cross-platform, multithreaded
video transcoder software application. MPEG Streamclip is a freeware video
editor/converter for MPEG-1/MPEG-2, and transport streams.
I used both of these programmes to convert the clips from my Toshiba
Camcorder from AVI to m4v with Handbrake and from m4v to mp4 with
Mpeg Streamclip. The reason I did this was because the
Pros: By using both of these programmes the clips were able to maintain some
of their quality.
Cons: It can take a while for each converter to convert - and to have to convert
from one programme to the next take up a lot of time.

7. Traditional Animation
In my trailer - in the ident and the titles, I used much
more traditional methods in order to get good
effects.
For my ident I animated skittles to form the
‘production company’ name Studio Kuuki. It took
about 5-6 hours of moving the skittles and taking a
photo of each movement to then piece together the
12 second animation.
For my titles there was less ‘animation’ involved but
instead I used ink dropping in water and filmed it to
create what looked like an animated effect.

8. iMovie
I used this software to piece together the stills for my animation. It was
useful because I could easily enter the exact time I wanted each still to
be and then shorten them until the animation was smooth. Even in
exporting the animation this software was good as I was able to export it
into a format which could then be imported straight into Premiere Pro.
Pros: I was able to import all the photos in one go and drag them into the
timeline in the right order.
Cons: You cannot drag the clips to shorten them - they must each be
edited one by one (which could be considered more precise but also
takes a lot of time).

9. Adobe Soundbooth CS5
Adobe Soundbooth is a digital audio editor by Adobe Systems Incorporated
for Mac OS X, Windows Vista and 7.
I used Soundbooth constantly to clean up the audio in my trailer using
‘Audio Noise Reduction’, to edit out bits of audio which weren’t needed and
to slow down/speed up parts.
Pros: Easy to use as it connects with Premiere Pro, allowing you to take
audio between the two easily.
Cons: The audio noise reduction sometimes
makes voices sound robotic.

10. Adobe Photoshop CS5
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published
by Adobe systems incorporated for Windows and mac.
I used Photoshop in the creation of my Poster and Magazine Cover, the
ancillary texts to accompany my trailer.
Pros: The software, after you get used to the layout and remember where
things are, is easy to use. The various effects on Photoshop make it easy to
create a professional looking poster or magazine cover.
Cons: The use of layers on Photoshop can be a pro and a con as they allow
work to be well organised, however, having up to a hundred layers in one
project can get confusing and things can end up on the wrong layers.