Directors Chair Interview Q4: 'How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages'?

For all stages of the overall project we had relied heavily on new and old media technologies to help us make our media products as good as possible. The research stage involved us looking at numerous teaser trailers and we had used websites such as ‘YouTube’ and ‘Trailer addict’ which allowed us to search and find almost any trailer we wanted. This was especially useful when looking for trailers that matched our targeted genre such as Taken, The Town etc. Another part of the research stage was finding good locations for us to film. There were numerous occasions when we weren’t physically able to get to certain locations, so websites like ‘Google Earth’ and ‘Google Maps’ had helped us tremendously. The use of these new websites had made things a lot easier so we were able to conduct more research as a result of this. When researching the preferences of our target audience we used a new website called ‘Survey Monkey’ which allowed us to post questionnaires which asked a number of questions that had ultimately helped us when we started the production phase of the project. ‘Blogger’ was a website that we had used constantly which enabled us to record our planning, development and we could also make the necessary changes to improve our overall products. Organization tools such as storyboards, shot lists and plot ideas were all recorded onto our personal blogs and were easily accessible.

Last year we were given fairly average camcorders so the quality of our overall product had lacked as a result of this. This year we were given brand new ‘Panasonic HDC’ camcorders which enabled us to get more definition and higher quality shots. The camera also was much easier to use, primarily due to the responsive touch screen and simple layout. Another form of technology we used again was ‘I-movie 09’ which we had experience in due to last year’s project. We were familiar with the programs capabilities so we were able to edit much faster and add in new editing techniques that made the teaser trailer look more professional. These techniques included changing the colour and saturation of certain shots.

This year we had two ancillary tasks on top of the teaser trailer which included a poster and magazine cover. We had used ‘Photoshop CS5’ during the production phase of these products and it allowed us to use a wide variety of visual effects which had made our products look a lot more interesting. ‘Paintbrush’ was another program new program and was used to create the gun shot effect in our teaser trailer. This program was very similar to ‘Paint’ which made it quick and easy to use.