First of all, one of the most obvious technologies I used was Blogger. It is a website that I have become very much accustomed to over the past two years, using it for both my AS and A2 work. 

Blogger is very useful in that it allows you to embed any form of presentation that allows it. This allowed me to use a wide range of presentation sites in order to present my work in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, instead of having a blog full of links. 

The presentation technologies I used for my research were Prezi and Padlet. These were the two that I was most familiar with from AS, and I enjoy using them as they are easy to use, and have a wide range of themes and templates available to use. I used Prezi for my documentary conventions post and Padlet for my five shot analysis post. 

During my research, I also used YouTube a lot. This was to watch and analyse pre-existing documentaries to gather research about the conventions and as a way of sourcing some of my own ideas during the planning. 

Another technology I used was Survey Monkey, which I used to source some of my audience research. I was familiar with Survey Monkey from AS, but I had only ever used it once, so it was useful to refamiliarise myself with the platform, as well as gathering valuable information to use towards my research and planning.

The use of Survey Monkey led me on to the use of social media as a way of sourcing respondents to my survey. Without social media, I would not have been able to gather any information from Survey Monkey as nobody would have seen my survey, so I used it as a way of promoting my survey in order to get people to complete it.

The technology that I used the most in the production phase was by far Final Cut Pro (FCP). I had acquired the basic knowledge on how to use the application at AS, but there were still some things that I had to experiment with along the way in order to further familiarise myself with the platform. The end result of using FCP for a second year is that I learned many shortcuts and new features that I had not yet discovered in the making of my AS production. This included things such as learning how to use the colour correction feature when trying to fix the coroner talking heads footage. 

Another piece of technology that I used this year that I did not use in the making of my AS production is my Rode microphone. Last year, as I did not use a voiceover in the making of my production, I had no need for my microphone, as it is designed to pick up sounds within close proximity to it so it could not be used during filming. This year, however, since there was a need for voiceover I was able to use my microphone, and figure out how to make it compatible with Final Cut Pro, as I was using it on a Windows computer.

I did this by recording the audio on the 'Voice Record' feature on my Windows laptop and then converting the file from a .m4p file to a Mac-compatible .mp3 file. This was something that I was unsure of how to do, but I took a shot in the dark and changed the file name manually, and this worked perfectly fine when uploading the footage to FCP.

Since after the production of my final cut I felt very comfortable using Final Cut Pro and could navigate it easily, I decided to make two extra videos - the outtakes and bloopers video and the behind the scenes video. This was mainly as a way of exploring the technology further, as well as creating something that myself and my friends would enjoy watching. I also decided to use FCP in the making of my radio trailer, as it was an easy way of putting all the audio together and making it fit, and I could just add an image in for visual effect when uploading it to YouTube. 

In addition to these technologies, I used Photoshop for the first time to make my newspaper advert. I had an image in my head of what I wanted my newspaper advert to look like before I started making it, but I was unsure of how to transfer that image from my head and into a digital form. I experimented a bit with 'Paint', before deciding that it was not going to work, so I had a look online and found that Photoshop does a free 7-day trial. I downloaded it and set to work. 

Photoshop is a very complex platform, so becoming accustomed to it was very difficult, however, I was able to grasp the basics after watching a few tutorials on YouTube, and I was very pleased with the outcome of it for a first attempt at using the technology.

In making my storyboard and animatic, I decided to draw the images and annotate them by hand as it is much easier than trying to create virtual images on a pc. This is because I do not have the right technology or knowledge on how to do this effectively using a digital platform (i.e. I don't have a digital drawing pad or platform at my disposal. This wasn't an issue, however, as I was able to use scanning technology to transfer the images that I drew by hand onto my PC and upload it to my blog. It was useful to learn how to do this and is something that I am sure I will need to use in the future. 

I then used another technology, Windows Movie Maker (WMM), to make my animatic. I did this by taking the images that I scanned in from my storyboard, and I then cropped out the images by using the Windows Photos application. After cropping all the images, I then uploaded them all to WMM and placed them in a sequence. I then changed the duration of each image, and once I was done, I uploaded it to YouTube.

I used YouTube a lot throughout both my research and planning. I used it to upload my pitch and my animatic, and also throughout my research again to develop an idea of the kinds of media products that already exist, and the conventions that exist within them.

During my planning, I also used Microsoft Excel to upload my production schedule, location scouting sheet, and location recce. It is a technology that I am somewhat familiar with, but not one that I have used for a long time. I was able to get around this, however, by experimenting and using a combination of different technologies - e.g. I transferred a table from Excel into a Publisher document so that I could save it and upload it to my blog.