1. How did you use media technologies
in the construction and research,
planning and evaluation stages?
Beth Whitehead

2. Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is a
timeline-based video editing
software application. It is
part of the Adobe Creative
Suite, a suite of graphic
design, video editing and
web development programs.
We used this programme to
create the documentary and
also to put the radio
advertisement together,
when using the software we
used different techniques and tools to add variety to the ways in which we put the
documentary together. When creating the documentary we started out by taking all of the
clips we thought were successful and putting them into order on the timeline, once we put
them into an order to which we were happy with we then added the sound beds; a sound
bed is a recording of ambience which is played while another tape containing different audio
is being played at the same time, giving the illusion the prominent audio took place in the
environment of the ambience. After adding the sound beds we needed to get all of the sound
levels right, we wanted to make sure that you were able to hear the interviews clearly and
that the music we added wasn’t too loud and over powering.

3. When adding effects to the clips from the BBC we used different ones such as a cross dissolve
which is a transition in which a leaving scene fades out while the next scene fades up over the
same number of frames. We also used effects such as an additive dissolve, dip to black,
constant gain and fast motion. I think that the clips which we edited using fast motion really
worked well for our documentary and picked up the pace. The songs in which we used in the
documentary are really up beat so having clips which were edited using fast motion really
work well against the upbeat songs.
Once completing the editing of the clips we then needed to add the graphics to the footage,
the graphics are quite important as they indicate what the title of the documentary is, and
also it introduces the names and job roles of each person that we interviewed. Although they
are important we kept the graphics basic, using a simple font and we didn’t use a bright, bold
colour, we used white for the text but made sure that it was visible on every clip.
The graphics are one of the last things which we added to the documentary, once we finished
the graphics we spent time going over the documentary and perfecting it, cutting away areas
which we didn’t like and making sure that the timings were all accurate, we needed to make
sure that the clips and the narration fitted together and faded out at the same times etc.

4. Photoshop
We used Photoshop to
create the newspaper
advertisement, the
image which we used
was taken from a piece
of footage that we had
filmed at the BBC, the
image works really well
with the slogan as the
slogan for the
documentary is ‘See
what its like to sit on the
sofa’ and the image is
taken from the BBC sofa
in the studio. I think that the image and the slogan work well as the red sofa is quite iconic
and is easy to recognise from the BBC, we didn’t use a lot of tools on Photoshop when
editing the poster, we just added in text which was similar to the text used in the
documentary and we added black boxes behind the text but changed the opacity so that
they were only slightly visible, we also added in an image from the BBC One logo, the editing
process was pretty basic but we wanted a complex advertisement which got the message
across and displayed some information to what it was about.

5. Blogger
Blogger is a free weblog
publishing tool from Google
which is used for sharing
text, photos and video. I
have been using blogger for
the past two years to
document all of my media
work, it is an easy way of
keeping all of the documents
together in an order.
I have been able to upload word documents, photos, Prezi publications and Tagul documents.
It was also really easy to share the slideshare documents as it displays the publication just by
copying the embed code into the HTML option on the post.

6. HD Sony Camera
For all of the video clips which
we filmed we used the Sony HD
camera’s and also we used
tripods so that the footage was
to the best standard and good
quality. When filming our
interviews we had to make sure
that we framed them properly
and to do this we made sure that
we used the rule of thirds, this is
when the interview subject is
positioned in either the left or
right third of the shot. We also
used the clip mic when
conducting the interviews as it
was the better quality mic to use
and capture all the narration
from the interviewee.

7. Tagul
Tagul is a web service that enables
you to create tag clouds and place
it on your web page. We used Tagul
to create a cloud filled with
information about the BBC and the
locations to film and also to hold
some information about the staff in
which we were looking to interview
and also a few facts about the
things in which we included in the
documentary, we were able to
change the shape and the colours
of the cloud, we kept it basic but
with a range of bright and bold
colours which made the tag cloud
look appealing and interesting.

8. Prezi
Prezi is a cloud-based
presentation software and
storytelling tool for
presenting ideas on a
virtual canvas. The product
employs a Zooming User
Interface (ZUI), which
allows users to zoom in and
out of their presentation
media, and allows users to
display and navigate
through information.
I personally found Prezi quite confusing to use and I much prefer making presentations on
PowerPoint and then uploading them to slideshare, although I do believe that the
presentations created on Prezi look a lot more appealing and interesting to watch, I like
how the presentations move around on the virtual canvas and it is a much more interesting
way to display information.

9. Slide Share / PowerPoint
Slideshare is a Web 2.0 based slide
hosting service. Users can upload
files privately or publicly in the
following file formats: PowerPoint,
PDF, Keynote or OpenDocument
presentations. I used slideshare
quite a lot throughout the year
when creating PowerPoint
presentations to do with the
research of the BBC and also when
putting the evaluation question
and answers together. It is really
easy to upload documents and
also easy to publish them onto my
blog, just by copying the embed
code and pasting it onto the blog.
I used PowerPoint a lot throughout the year, firstly I used it to hold information on different
documentaries which I analysed and then I also used it to put together research about the
BBC and other relevant documents. It is really easy to lay out your work as you can put
information about different topics on different slides but all of the publication links together.

10. YouTube
YouTube was used to display our
documentary and radio
advertisement. YouTube is an
easy way to share our videos
online for everyone to watch,
although we did have some
problems with the documentary
being uploaded as the quality
went really bad as we used
different well known songs so
there were a few copyright
issues.
We also used YouTube to gather archive material for the documentary, I was able to find old
video footage of opening sequences of the BBC news and north west tonight. It was easy to
upload the YouTube clips to my blog as again all that I had to do was copy and paste the
embed code onto a post on the blog.