Evaluation Question Four

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

There is a range of different technologies that we used that allowed me to be able to create and publish my promotional package.

Firstly, blogger, this was great for me to be able to use as it gave a free online platform meaning I could upload research and planning whilst being able to upload my poster, magazine and trailer.

I used google to research the different methods there are within an action, thriller and crime trailer. This helped me gain an understanding to what the audience would want to see. When researching it was important for me to find other trailers related to my genre. I soon found that I was able to identify the key conventions of a trailer and was able to link them to our film idea.

We also used YouTube. This was very helpful as it helped me study existing trailers for the matching genre. When researching I looked into big name trailer to help gain a further understanding, however, I looked at some independent films. We also found that there were good videos showing how to make an affective trailer. We realised that once we started putting together our trailer that looking back over the soundtrack made a huge effect on how effective it was. We started to add suspense music to our trailer and it gave a huge change. Without the use of YouTube it would be very hard to enhance my knowledge of how to effectively make trailer.

Throughout the process of making our promotional package I used Prezi to show a different form of media. Prezi is effective as it allows you to add different images and effects to it. It is also easy to embed videos such as our trailer. By having Prezi I felt it enhanced my understanding of media.

Additionally, to take the videos we took we used a Cannon 760D with a 18-200mm lens. We found this camera was useful as it had high quality and was easy to carry when we were filming in locations such as the abandoned warehouse. The sound quality within it is very good but sometimes we opted to use an additional microphone especially when we were outside. Due to the camera being a photography camera as well, I also used this to take the photos of my magazine and poster. This gave the perfect picture quality and made the pictures look professional enough to go on my magazine. With the extra lens it allowed us to take some extreme shots whilst still being in focus.

To edit our film footage, we used iMovie. This software was very familiar as we used it in previous years to create a short film. We have used iMovie as the main video editing software for our trailer. The school offers a Serif video editing software, but we opted not to use it, so we can edit out of school time and weekends. To add, I had previous experience of using iMovie prior to editing the trailer, so it seemed the best option. iMovie is an Apple product, so we used a MacBook Pro which we used to store and back-up all of our video footage. Using a MacBook meant we could edit on the go wherever we were. iMovie is packed with lots of features, which helped to produce the trailer we imagined, and give it a professional feel. The software allowed us to drag clips onto the timeline and cut them down to get the perfect timings and select the best parts of a clip. From here we could reorder the clips to get the look we wanted. Another useful feature of iMovie is the ability to detach the audio of a clip and extend it under other clips so that the audio runs smoother, and so the sound dosen't change  even though the camera angle does. This is particularly useful when filming dialogue, and was used in the opening scene with the Chief Inspector on the phone. iMovie allows you to layer audio, so you can have more than one sound/sound effect playing at one given time, which was particularly useful for the montage of camera flashes of the murder victims. You can also use built in sound effects from the iMovie library, and add in titles and transitions such as fade to black. For one part in our trailer, we actually turned to using Final Cut Pro to edit part of the audio to sound like the chief was on the phone line. Final cut pro provided more professional features for fine tuning the graphic equaliser levels on the audio. iMovie was also used throughout the year for editing Vlogs.


The search engine Google has been one of the main websites which I have used in the early research stages of producing my trailer. Google was used to research the codes and conventions of trailers. This was a really important stage of research so we knew what to include in the trailer we produce. Once our group established the genre of the film, we researched conventions using Google, so we could make sure our trailer had the same feel of a crime thriller. Google allowed me access to thousands of different sites to help me with the research of trailers. I simply typed in simple key terms, and questions in the search bar and could instantly find the answers and information I was looking for. Google Images was also useful when I was researching film posters and magazines for the ancillary tasks, so I could see the conventions real media products used, and what existing material looked like. Google was also used to research what goes into a film pitch, which helped with the planning stages when we produced our own pitch. Moreover, Google allowed me to research promotional campaigns of existing films. All-in-all google played an important role, and was used as the main basis for my research.

All in all by using these different pieces of technology we were able to construct the most affective trailer, poster and magazine for our selected target audience.