Evaluation: Question 4 - How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Sources
https://www.google.co.uk/?safe=active&ssui=on#safe=vss&q=what+is+web+2.0
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Web-20-or-Web-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Transcript:
Web 2.0 is the second stage of development of the Internet, characterized especially by the change from static web pages to dynamic or user-generated content, self-publishing platforms, and the growth of social media. Websites enable community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Types of social media sites and applications include forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis.
We have gone from consumers to producers due to the cheap or free sites such as YouTube which allow us to upload our work online and for no or little cost. Viewers are then able to like and share videos which gives us a wider audience and allows us to reach more people. We no longer have to rely on producing companies or other people to make things for us because it all at our fingertips.
The advantages of Web 2.0 are that it is much easier to find information, which has enhanced working life. We have the ability to find information only in a few seconds on sites such as Google and Wikipedia, simply from a phone, computer or laptop, therefore it is easily accessible for everyone that can afford a communicational device. Otherwise we would have to spend hours searching in books in a public library.
The main disadvantage of Web 2.0 is that in order to use it, it requires technology devises and internet connection. Another disadvantage is that there are security and privacy issues because users and their private information is open to hackers. The content quality of Web 2.0 is low since sources are not always reliable and cannot always be trusted or verified. This is particularly the case on websites such as Wikipedia, because anyone can post their knowledge on there, whether it be true or not. The internet has no expiration date which means once content is posted it is ‘out there’ for anyone to view and cannot ever be completely taken down.
Throughout my course blogger has played a large part in the technologies I have used. Blogger is a blog storage service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time stamped entries. The service is located at www.blogger.com. A blog is a webpage that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal. I used my online A2 media blog to organise my planning, and continually update my blog entries throughout the planning and production stages of my project, so that I could easily make changes and evaluations. Blogger has also been used for the examiner to view the work we have created and finalized. Blogger is very user friendly and pretty self-explanatory, all we really needed to know was how to create a new post and select a tag for it, which we all got the hang of very quickly after being shown by our teacher. Due to the simplicity of the site we have also been able to customize the template, background and layout to make our blogs look like horror blogs.
Microsoft Office has also played a large part during the production of our coursework. I have used Microsoft Office to save all my research and planning in different documents before either copying and pasting it into a blogpost on blogger, or putting it onto a different technology medium before embedding. I have had no problems with Microsoft Word what so ever because it is so simple to use.
Photoshop is a photographic image editing software program which I have been using in my coursework to create my magazine front cover and horror poster. Photoshop is generally for professional image editing which is why it is so expensive to buy, however we have had the use of it in college. And because Photoshop is designed for professional use it makes it hard to use, I have had to watch tutorials to understand it further.
SurveyMonkey is an online survey development cloud-based company. SurveyMonkey provides free, customizable surveys, as well as a suite of paid back-end programs that include data analysis, sample selection, bias elimination, and data representation tools. In addition to providing free and paid plans for individual users, SurveyMonkey offers more large-scale enterprise options for companies interested in data analysis, brand management, and consumer-focused marketing. I have used SurveyMonkey in my research for our horror trailer to get a greater understanding of my audience and whether they liked the idea of our trailer. It was really helpful to get this feedback before beginning to make it as there were a few changes we had to make. SurveyMonkey was easy to use and the fact that it was a free site was another advantage.
FlipSnack is a page flip software that enabled me to create stylish digital flipbooks out of my PDF documents ready to embed onto my blog. I used flipbooks throughout my coursework during the planning and the evaluation. It makes my blog more interesting by using different media platforms to display my information. You can also share the flipbooks to reach a bigger audience which means there’s more room for feedback.
Prezi is another media platform I have used to display my work on my blog. Prezi is a presentation tool that can be used as an alternative to traditional slide making programs such as PowerPoint. Instead of slides, Prezi makes use of one large canvas that allows you to pan and zoom to various parts of the canvas and emphasize the ideas presented there. Prezi is easy to use once you’ve got the hang of it but a disadvantage is that it is very time consuming.
I used DaFont.com to find a suitable font for the Masthead and titles on my horror poster and magazine front cover. I did this by picking the font I wanted to use under the ‘horror’ genre and writing the titles in the given box. I then print screened it and saved it as a JPEG ready to use in Photoshop. I did it this way because in order to download a font of DaFont you would normally have to pay.
YouTube is a video sharing website. The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share, and comment on videos, and it makes use of WebM, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. Available content includes video clips, TV clips, music videos, movie trailers, and other content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload videos to their channels. Videos considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old. I have used YouTube to upload our class feedback on our draft trailers in order to reach another audience, not necessarily our target age group but any feedback is useful for improvement. I have also used YouTube to upload evaluation question 4 for the same reasons. During my pre-production planning and research, I also used YouTube to view other horror trailers to gain ideas for our own.
Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based video editing software application. It is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes video editing, graphic design, and web development programs. I have used this application to upload videos onto and complete my trailer. I personally found Premier Pro easy to use when uploading videos, but I found the editing side of it difficult because it was hard to find the controls. The only problem we had with it was that you could only use it on the Apple Macs in class and it had to be the exact same computer in order to save our work. I am also using Premier Pro for this evaluation question to display a timeline of software logos and equipment I have used.
We used a Nikon video camera to shoot the scenes for our trailer. This camera was easy to use and gave us a good quality picture to work with. We also used a Canon DSLR when we shot at The Marsh for photographs for the magazine front cover and poster.
This is a tripod which was used to stabilize and elevate our camera when filming some of our scenes. All photographic tripods have three legs and a mounting head to couple with a camera.
This is a Dolly. A camera dolly is a specialized piece of filmmaking and television production equipment designed to create smooth camera movements (cinematic techniques). The camera is mounted to the dolly and the camera operator and focus puller or camera assistant usually ride on the dolly to operate the camera. We used the Dolly when filming scenes in college where the camera was required to move.
Finally, this is the voice recorder we used for the voiceover at the beginning of the trailer to tell the story. It was easy to use with a start and stop button.
After using all these different technologies, I have developed my knowledge of software and believe my work is of a professional and conventional standard.