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Adobe Photoshop is advanced level image manipulation software which was used sparely in year 13. This was due to the cluttered and sophisticated interface which pushed me away from using it more than Sketch. It did however have more features and did allow me to add many after effects to my final print products to make them look unique and relatable to my narrative. For example, in the construction of my movie poster, I decided to superimpose two images into one to make them link and this would not have been possible on Sketch due to its limited features. Photoshop had many more shortcuts than other image manipulation programs and I took advantage of this once again. The magic wand tool in Sketch was good but sometimes deleted some part of the image I wanted to keep or didn’t delete what I wanted it to. However in Photoshop there were 3 types of the magic wand tool and were much more efficient in what I wanted them to do. Overall, Photoshop is a great piece of software but takes a lot of time to learn how to use it effectively.

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The iMac computer was the primary piece of hardware that I used to complete this coursework.  The MacOS operating system meant that I was able to use both Sketch and iMovie as they are exclusive to this operating system. The one thing that I really liked about the iMac was the performance of the system,  as I was able to have many applications open at the same time and could work on all of them without any crashes or input lag. This was due to specifications of the hardware, such as the 8GB of RAM and the Core i5 processor; this meant I was more productive due to no delays in the hardware, which was a problem in Year 12 as I was using a Windows Computer which was slower in performance. All of my research and planning occurred as well as the editing of my final products. The iMac’ power was also useful when I was attempting to use more advanced programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects, as if I used an entry level pc, it would not have been powerful enough to handle the requirements on those programs . Without the iMac I would not have been able to use the desired applications that I would have wanted and this would affect every stage of the coursework, which I think would have made all of my products worse. Before the advanced portfolio, I was never able to use an iMac, but in year 13 it was a crucial piece of technology that had to be used. The iMac gave me the confidence to use all of the applications I have never used such as iMovie, Sketch and the Adobe products.  The only downside of the iMac is the different buttons it has compared to Windows and because of me having little experience of the operating system; this would waste my time when I wanted to enter shortcut keys for things such as copying and pasting. I was very pleased with the iMac as it was especially great for editing due to the Full HD retina display, which allowed for me to pick up on inconsistencies in images that I have taken for the print products.

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The course in year 12 meant that YouTube did not have to be utilised as the project was about making music magazine print products. This meant that only still images were used. However, the primary product that needed to be created this year was a theatrical trailer. This ultimately meant that I needed to use YouTube to witness and analyse trailers from large production companies such as Warner Bros and Disney and identify the common conventions they use, such as the Rise and the Button. Due to audience feedback, YouTube seemed to be the most popular platform in which trailers would first be witnessed and this meant that it was the best platform for me to upload my final trailer as this would allow for the trailer to be easily shareable and would expose the brand the most. It was also free to upload whereas showcasing a trailer in cinemas and in TV adverts would cost millions of pounds which we did not have a budget for.  YouTube allowed me to use a video analysis website called VideoAnt (research and planning). VideoAnt enabled me to analyse trailers from YouTube by time stamping certain moments in the trailer and created a text box at the timestamp so that I could write my analysis in. I then embedded this analysis into Blogger. Without YouTube, I would not have been able to analyse trailers, which meant I wouldn’t have been able to gain knowledge and pick up on the conventions of a trailer, which would have led to me not having those conventions in my trailer which would have degraded my final product. I also used YouTube to learn about how to perform certain tasks on the more advanced programs, programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. I did this because I had no prior experience of using those programs and they were tough programs to use for a beginner due to the various features. If I didn’t have YouTube, I wouldn’t have been able to use those programs effectively.

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In Year 12 I unfortunately did not use Google Drive and had to complete all of my coursework during school, which oblivious to me meant that I was giving myself less time to complete my coursework to a better standard. The great things about these programs are that they work in conjunction with Google Drive. This meant that as I was updating information on these files, they would be automatically being saved onto the cloud. This meant that I could start an evaluation question in Google Slides at school and it would be saved on the drive and ready for me to carry on with at home and no USB was needed.  Google Docs is a word processing application, Google Sheets is a spreadsheet application and Google Slides is a presentation application. Google Docs allowed me create a detailed synopsis of my narrative, while in Google Sheets I formed a detailed risk assessment as well as a production schedule for my trailer. The great thing about these applications is that they were shareable to my partner, Joe. This meant that we could both work on these files at the same time, which allowed us to complete these tasks at a much faster rate, which saved us time and ensured that we were both being productive.

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This was a key part of my A2 coursework as it was the storage hub of many of my images, videos and presentations. Due to the large storage capacity (15GB) I was confident that I could use this website to collate all of my resources and not have to worry about keeping a USB Storage device or logging onto a specific computer, which meant that I had more freedom and availability to do my work. Another positive of Google Drive is that it means I can be at home, in school or abroad and still be able to work on my media coursework, which is something I took advantage of. This meant that Google Drive had allowed me to constantly update my work at any time or place, whereas without it, I would have not been able to work outside of school. Another great thing about Google Drive is that it can store and view any file type, this meant that I could view files such as, .psd(Photoshop), .mp4 (video) and .pdf files, while other cloud storage devices cannot.

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Dafont was the main provider to me of the fonts I have used in all of my final products. The website has thousands of free downloadable fonts that vary from being Serif to Sans Serif, as well as featuring Graffiti font and company logos.  The reason I decided to use Dafont for my final print products is because both Sketch and iMovie did not have suitable fonts in their arsenal for me to make a professional trailer, music magazine front cover and movie poster. Dafont also offered fonts in many styles such as Bold, Italics, Default and others that would yet again allow me to experiment with my products to see what would fit best. The process of downloading the fonts was efficient as they would automatically be installed onto the other programs such as Sketch and iMovie as soon as they were downloaded on to the iMac.

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In the 2 year course, I have luckily come across many online presentation software’ which have allowed for me to showcase my research and planning in the course. There are however, 3 websites that I have really enjoyed using for different reasons. I discovered Prezi in Year 12 and immediately liked how in one presentation, bigger topics could be split into smaller sub topics; this was especially useful in Media Studies. For example, Prezi was used twice when I was researching about media theories. Due to the theories being detailed and featuring many theorists’ opinions, it was important for me to divide the information into smaller manageable chunks so that it was easier to learn and comprehend. Prezi also allowed me to customise the entire design of the presentation, which meant the background and house style could be changed to link to the topic I was presenting information on. I utilised this feature when I was researching about genre theory and the various stages of genre evolution. I felt that a blueprint background would represent the different stages perfectly. Prezi was easy to embed into Blogger which meant that other students could go through my presentation at their own speed. Images and Video could also be embedded in each presentation box which increases the interactivity and user engagement of the software which in turn, makes the presentation more fun to watch. A downside to Prezi is that due to the size of the presentation boxes, the amount of text that can be inputted is limited and means that a lot of resizing needs to be done to ensure text is legible. But the transitions and other features of Prezi, make it a good software to use for presenting information. The next presentation software I enjoyed using was Padlet. Padlet was great to use as it was unique to other presentation software’ due to the layouts I was provided with. It allowed me to create as many text boxes as I wanted to and gave me the choice of having them structured underneath each other or in free form. The text boxes had no limiter on how much text could be entered into them and this was good for tasks as such as when I was conducting my audience profiling. I had to perform in depth analysis on my target audience and had to define what there trends, hobbies and ages were, as well as scaling them on the socio – economic JICNAR scale. This meant that I was writing a lot of information that needed to be collated for it to make sense and was, due to the no limit text boxes.  The text boxes also had designated space for a title, the main body of text and space for images and video to be embedded.  These features made it perfect to use in an evaluation question and that is why I have. The final presentation software which I have found very useful is, Emaze. This is my favourite piece of presentation software for many reasons. There are many pre-set designs that fit with certain topics I could present about, which makes the presentation look more professional. The website also has licensing to a vast amount of fonts which are much better than the default MacOS fonts, due to the fonts all being different styles. The interactivity in Emaze works in conjunction with the theme you make, so this means transitions look and relate to the topic you are talking about. For example, a segment of my audience feedback on my ideas is in an Emaze presentation and the background of the presentation is the clouds and the sky, signifying that I am reaching the steepest heights of feedback and instead of the transition from slide to slide going horizontally, it instead transitions vertically. Emaze’ great optimisation also means that embedding images and video is lag free, whereas other software’ struggle. Overall all 3 softwares were of a high standard and without online presentation software, my research and planning would be boring to look at and read as they would of have had to been blog posts on blogger, which meant that the information provided would be in long paragraphs that would be tiresome and difficult to read.  Presentations on the other hand, allow for information to be provided in a more efficient way in small manageable chunks.

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SurveyMonkey was the main source that allowed me to gain audience feedback in the 2 year course. I was first introduced to it in Year 12, when I was recommended to use the website to gain feedback form my fellow peers and others. Straightaway, I liked the simplistic design and friendly user interface of the website and these factors tempted me to use it again in Year 13. The first time I used SurveyMonkey in Year 13 was to gain feedback on the narrative of my trailer, this would allow my target audience to give me constructive feedback on how I could improve my narrative to meet the needs of the audience. I realised that the website had various methods of how users could give feedback. This ranged from being to rate a suggestion out of 5 stars, allowing them to right a paragraph in a text box to give their entire opinion or giving them multiple choice options to choose from. This not only kept the questions differentiated but also allowed me gain feedback for particular topics in the exact way I wanted. For example, Me and Joe had already decided that the film title would be called “The Live Wire”, so I asked in a question “What would you rate this film title out of 5?” This meant that the audience could relay back to me how much they like the title without having to write anything, this made the feedback process quicker and more fun as there was a variety of answering methods. I was also asking questions such as “What is your favourite crime thriller film?” “What platform do you watch movies on the most?” and “What is best part of watching a film trailer?” The responses to these questions were crucial for me to get an idea on how and what I should focus on when constructing the trailer and print products, so that I can meet the needs of the target audience.  Another great feature of the SurveyMonkey is that I was able to embed the surveys into a blog post on my blog. This meant that fellow students could simply go onto my blow and complete the questionnaire without having the hassle to make a survey monkey account or me having to send them a link. This meant that I could get replies faster which meant I could start developing my products earlier. For gaining feedback on what people like to see in a poster, I was able to embed multiple images into a question and this meant that people could make a decision without having to be redirected to other websites and meant they would remain on the survey, which makes it more convenient for them as and would make them more willing to do the survey. As a result of this I was able to get 20+ responses which greatly increased on my knowledge on what I needed to make products that would catch the target audiences’ attention. One downside to SurveyMonkey is that it only allows for questionnaire to have 10 questions. This is annoying for me as I would like to have asked more important questions to gain extra opinions on certain things , but a positive of this is that the questionnaire isn’t so long that people stop answering some questions and submit and incomplete survey. Overall, SurveyMonkey has greatly helped with getting audiences opinions and their responses have definitely influenced my products.

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In both year 12 and 13, Blogger has arguably been the most important and effective website I have used to showcase my research and planning, as well my development in production in this course. It has a simplistic interface which allowed me to upload posts on all relevant tasks. By the end of Year 12, I had gained a full understanding od how to embed images, video and online presentations into blogger so that fellow pupils and others could witness my work. So in Year 13, with this knowledge of Blogger, I was able to upload posts at a much faster rate. I also edited the house style of the design of the blog to have a black background and red text to represent the danger and mysteriousness of the Crime Thriller genre, which was what my narrative was based on. This made the blog look more meaningful to my project, thus making it look more professional, as it conformed to the genre. Blogger also played a key part in getting crucial audience feedback, which allowed me to change and adapt my products based on feedback, which would please my target audience. Overall, Blogger has been fantastic for me as it keeps all of my work in a structured manner, as well as being a reliable website which caters for all of my external work (online presentations, surveys, video analysis) to be shared onto its platform. This simply makes the entire coursework much easier due to the connectivity Blogger has to many other software’s and websites.  Without Blogger, I would not have a platform that allowed every piece of my work to be presentable on one website

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In Year 12, for my print products, I took all of my pictures of the music artists with an iPhone 6. At the time I felt that the camera quality of the phone (8 megapixels) was good enough for me to create a high quality products, however, in the post production stage while editing the photos, I found that the quality of the images were not to a great standard, thus hindering my ability to make a music magazine product that was similar to the industry’s best (Vibe, Rolling Stones) etc… This year I was able to use 2 Digital Cameras, the Canon Legria and the Canon E0S100 DSLR. The Sony Legria was a very useful camera as it had a long battery life which allowed for me and my partner to film in between various locations without having to charge or switch batteries for long periods of time. This meant that our production process was more efficient as less time was wasted worrying about battery life of the camera. It was also small and compact, which meant it was easy to transport while we were filming, which in fact allowed us to bring essential props and significant objects with us to various locations of filming. The Canon DLSR was predominantly used for taking pictures that would be used in the print products but was also used to film crucial scenes inside the school, which was the main location of the film. Due to its native 1080p resolution recording capability, the shots inside the school visually look to be of a very high standard. In a crucial scene for the trailer, where Jonathan (Protagonist) receives a message, we show an extreme close up shot which we struggled to film with the Auto Focus mode on the DLSR; however it also had a Manual Focus mode that enabled us to film the shot we intended to. This shows that the camera was equipped with technology that could fit all of our production needs.  This could not have been done by the iPhone or even the Legria, which shows the importance of both cameras. The Legria was very good to use for tracking shots as it was light and enabled me to suddenly move the camera when there were chase scenes occurring to catch crucial footage. We aimed to give the impression that Jonathan was being chased on-foot and the shaky footage would show that to the audience. The Canon excelled in the filming also due to it having great default colour corrections for all locations along with a microphone that for better sound quality. This would make the scenes that are darker and have more dialogue, easier to film and more enjoyable to watch. A great accessory to the cameras was the tripod attached with a dolly. The tripod combined with the cameras allowed me to have more stable panning shots, which created less out of focus wasted shots that would be inacceptable to use, thus saving us time, but it also meant that I could film shots at consistent heights for characters so that the trailer would feel more natural and professional. The process of exporting these image and video files was very easy due to the cameras having SD cards. The SD cards were just inserted into the iMac’s and are then quickly imported into iMovie and Sketch. In the end these cameras have allowed me to make high quality print products as well as trailer that would not have been possible with only a smartphone.

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Previously, In Year 12, I was using Adobe Fireworks CS3. Adobe Fireworks was image manipulation software which I used to create 3 music magazine products to a decent standard. The problem I found with Fireworks is that it was an out-dated piece of software with a dull interface which did not engage my motivation to use it to its full potential. However, this year I was able to use Sketch, an exclusive piece of software that is on Apple’s macOS that also allowed me to perform image manipulation to various images. This software had a much simpler interface with just as many tools, which made it a much more pleasant and fun experience of trying to learn about the features of the software. The first feature that helped the development of my print products is the magic wand tool which enabled me to have a photo of Joe, with only him in the foreground, while the tool removed the background. The magic wand can be used by double clicking on the image, this then allows for you to scale how much of the image you want to remove. This now allowed me to have this picture of only Joe (no background), which I could then merge with a new background that could provide some symbolism towards the narrative, which Rick Altman says can entice viewers by picking up on the symbolism and tempts them to watch the trailer. This meant that the tool allowed me to have more control of what this image could represent. For one movie magazine front cover mock-up, I merged the image with a subtle blue background representing that the character is the protagonist in the film and that he is a good honest character. The colour blue gives off connotations of peace and tranquillity and this was the aim of having a blue background for that mock-up. A problem with Fireworks is that if an image is resized, the quality can suffer dramatically, but Sketch did not do this when transforming an image which made the aesthetics of the image much more appealing and overall, made the print products look better.  One of the key designs that was created on Sketch, was a CCTV Template that I overlaid onto video clips on iMovie, to show the audience that Joe (Protagonist) was being watched by the antagonist from CCTV footage.  The template was created using the pre-set shapes that were in a drop down menu, alongside text that could be inserted into the shape. Sketch enabled me to make a realistic CCTV template which was used in the final trailer. The shapes and text also allowed me to make multiple pugs that are placed in magazine front covers to entice customers to buy the magazine. Pugs are a common convention in magazine front covers and by implementing them into my magazine cover makes the cover look skilfully designed, as well as more appealing. A useful feature that Sketch had to ensure that text, images and shapes were placed in a structured format, was the ability to add gridlines and rulers. These gridlines were placed by me both horizontally and vertically. This ensured the magazine was in a methodised manner, so that it could be compared to companies such as Empire and Total Film. I also used Sketch to make Inter Titles (common movie trailer convention) that were then imported into iMovie, as I was not satisfied with the titles in iMovie. The production logo was also created in Sketch and the software allowed me to use downloadable fonts from Dafont, to then be implemented in conjunction with an image. This helped create the sense of realism and professionalism in the project once again. The final feature that I felt was really useful in Sketch, was the ability to use the pipette tool to detect a colour from any picture on the internet and for that colour to be saved on Sketch and then I could use that colour whenever I want when creating my print products. This meant that a clear house style could be created with the exact colours I wanted, for example, each cover line on the movie magazine front cover, had the same font, font type and font colour. Overall, I feel that Sketch has drastically improved the quality of all my products due to its friendly interface and vast features. I feel my print products are much better than my previous print products that I created in Fireworks and if I had used Fireworks again, the quality of the products would suffer.

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iMovie has been the primary video editing software I have used, to create a theatrical movie trailer. Prior to the A2 coursework, I had never used this software and was unaware of its capabilities. However being tasked to film and edit preliminary trailers early on in the process, meant that I was able to learn about some of the simple features that iMovie was equipped with. Firstly, I learnt that the process of importing video files from a storage device such as an SD card was very easy and fast process. Also, due to the optimisation of the iMovie software in line with  macOS (iMac Operating System) , all downloaded files (soundtracks, images) were easily imported onto iMovie by simply dragging the file from the desktop onto the timeline. This made the process of editing much faster. The interface of iMovie also ensured that video clips that were being used in the trailer were separated from unused clips which made the screen less cluttered and made the editing process more efficient. The most useful feature of this software is the simple way clips can be dragged onto a timeline to create a fluid narrative to the viewer; clips can also be trimmed in length to ensure the most important pieces of dialogue and visuals are presented. This can easily be done by dragging either side of the video clip to cut which parts you do not want to be shown. Another feature iMovie has, is that it allows for the audio of video clips to be reduced or completely muted, this means that I could include soundtrack all the way throughout the trailer but could decrease the volume when dialogue is said by an actor/actress. This was also useful due to the trailer being shot in numerous locations with different sound conditions alongside being recorded by a range of video cameras, which meant that volume had to be adjusted to enhance the dialogue but decrease background noise. This enhanced my trailer as the sound quality was greatly improved. This meant that Dialogue is clearly audible throughout the trailer, alongside the soundtrack being detectable as well. iMovie also had a lot of pre-set technological resources such as audio files, title pages and transitions, which were used to great effect in my trailer. Transitions such as “Fade to Black” allowed for the trailer to flow smoother, while title pages were used to create inter titles, that described the narrative. Inter titles are a common convention used in trailers. An audio file that I had used from iMovie was a “Telephone Ring” sound which was used as the build up to my turn line in the trailer and greatly added suspense. My trailer was based off a narrative that would fit into the crime thriller genre. Crime Thrillers are intense movies with semantic elements such as guns, detective rooms, derelict buildings and horrendous weather. These elements present those films in a dark undertone and I was able to use the colour correction features in iMovie, to make shots appear to be more dark and gloomy. This meant that I was meeting more of the conventions of the genre, thus making my production more professional. In my production, we decided to use multiple tracking and panning shots to stray away from the generic camera shots often used such as medium close up shots. Due to uneven surfaces, the shots would sometimes appear to be shaky and ruin the viewing experience. Luckily, iMovie had a feature that stabilises video footage and this greatly helped in making the tracking shoots luck much more visually appealing. Overall, iMovie was the best editing software for me due to my lack of knowledge and experience in video editing software. It is far more supportive and well equipped in comparison to Windows Movie Maker, which meant the quality of my trailer is at a high standard and is much easier to learn and adapt to when compared with Adobe Premiere Pro. I felt that Premiere Pro was very difficult to use and would take far too much time to learn

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New media technologies are accustomed to computer technology. They  have characteristics such as being portable, networkable through modern smart devices and online cloud storage services , as well as being interactive so that the user has more freedom and resources  to complete a variety of tasks as efficiently as possible. Some new media technology would be Google Drive(Cloud Storage) , Emaze (Online Presentation Software) and Twitter (Social Media)