Sambell's Blog

Let’s Try Again.

dsambell — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:44:50 +0000

A2 Media Coursework……..DONE

Evaluation – Forms and Conventions.

dsambell — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:43:24 +0000

I’ve just been informed that I actually forgot to put up part of my evaluation, which is kind of embarassing but at least it’s here now.

Conventions PP

A2 Media Coursework.

dsambell — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:10:12 +0000

In the words of Gordon Ramsey. A2 Media Coursework………………..DONE.

Evaluation – New Media Technologies.

dsambell — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:14:05 +0000

Just realised I didn’t actually finish talking in my last technologies post, so here’s the follow on. The software I used for my magazine cover and poster was Adobe Photoshop. I regularly use this software for media and have used it before when doing my music magazine cover last year for my foundation portfolio. In AS Level I was discovering the wonders of Photoshop and getting to grips with the basics but this year for the poster and magazine cover, I was learning the potential of the programme and felt that I did a lot better in using the effects within the programme to create a better product.

This time round I was very familiar with the use of layers and building up a product from the bottom so could walk right into it Photoshop with the idea in my head and execute it, hopefully to a high standard. One thing I explored more this time round was the effects drop down menu. For my music magazine last year, I tended to stick to what I was taught and not really venture away into the foreign toolbars, but this year I tried to do that. For example, for my poster, I began with the full colour picture of my main actor. However, I decided to alter the colour of the picture to match the colour scheme of my font and background. For this I altered the hue, saturation and lightness of the picture. By adjusting these slightly, I came out with what you can see on my final poster design on a post I made on March 31^st 2010 named ‘The Hunter Film Poster’.

Another effect I tried specifically with my magazine cover was adding noise to the font. I wanted make it more rugged and less reformed and clean so I tried different effects and by adding noise seemed to create the best look. It was hard to get the balance right because too much created a grainy effect on the writing which I didn’t want.

Evaluation – Main Product and Ancillary Texts.

dsambell — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:45:38 +0000

Ancillary Texts PP

Powerpoint describing the realtionship and development of my main product and ancillary texts over the course.

Evaluation – New Media Technologies.

dsambell — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:36:36 +0000

During the production of my various texts, I encountered many different types of new technologies but two of the most influential was the use of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premier Elements. Both of these are editing software’s (Photoshop for photos and Elements for video) which allowed me too adjust and obviously edit my texts they way I wanted. Premier Elements was new software too me because I’d never used it before but was vey easy to get a hold of. It allowed me to bring my video clips and audio clips which I had recorded together and create my trailer with the greatest of ease. Simply combining video and audio together wasn’t hard but getting to grips with techniques on how to create effects and alter the look of the video did get tricky sometimes.

This is the basic start up screen for Premier Elements.

I’m not going to go into the specific techniques I used because 1. I can’t remember how long it took to edit my trailer but it was a very long time and can’t remember all the techniques I used and 2. Even if I could remember it would probably fill my entire blog. However, I’ll share with you some significant points during the editing of my trailer which I can remember and hopefully it will help you understand why my trailer came out looking like it did.

So one of the major edits I made was changing practically the entire first half of my trailer into black and white. You can see the original in the post ‘Final Edit. On February 12^th 2010’ In order to change it to black and white all I had to do was change the saturation of the clips and adjust them to the darkness level that I wanted. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get any screen shots of the work I did which I’m regretting not getting but I’m sure you know how it’s all done.

The other main editing problem I had was trying to match the audio I had with my video clips. There were specific points in the song I chose I wanted to match with parts of my video. I began by editing the song I had using Nero WaveEditor 9. I managed to cut down the song from around 2.13 minutes to 1.50 minutes by removing parts of the song I found were not relevant.

I felt that by editing the music first I could specifically match my video with crucial parts in the song. However in order to get the timing perfect I had to take of small parts of different parts of my video clips which was hard but did get rather repetitive after a while.

I know that’s only a few things I have described there but all the other techniques were pretty simple and quite self explanatory when it comes to using elements so I shared the ones I felt necessary and relevant to my trailer.

Evaluation – New Media Technologies.

dsambell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:21:11 +0000

In order to get the most out of my coursework I tried to use as many different types of media available to me for all sections of my course. I’ll begin with research, where I spent a lot of time on youtube looking at current film trailers that were relevant to my idea and looking at reviews and comments given on those videos to see the reaction of other people towards them. Search engines such as Google and Ask helped me to easily find anything I wanted to do with film magazines, trailers or posters and allowed me to complete my research for my magazine cover and poster faster due to the ease of getting ideas from sites like Google images.

I went back to old school techniques for parts of my research as well by using the television and cinema to view any new trailers that happened to be in advert breaks. This used to be the only way of viewing new film trailers but through the use of youtube, you can do it at any time. Whenever a trailer came on to the TV I found myself analyzing it and picking out parts of it that I could potentially use in my own trailer and although it’s not a new media technology, it helped me out a lot during planning.

Without the use of one piece of new media, none of you would have seen any of this so give it up for the wordpress blog. As a class we began using edublogs but due to a lack of memory, our blogs filled up very quickly so we moved to wordpress, which up to now has been easy and simple to work with. Fingers crossed, I finish smoothly.

Audience Feedback Analysis.

dsambell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:44:50 +0000

A video interview between me and mike discussing the feedback I received for my teaser trailer

Feedback Poll.

dsambell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:37:39 +0000

View This Poll

Evaluation is Coming.

dsambell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:28:40 +0000

I have got a few pieces of evaluation for my teaser which i have had done for a few days now but haven’t actually uploaded so they will be on here soon.