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

I used Final Cut on the Apple Mac to help construct my trailer, as the frames were used together to help construct my narrative sequence. This is because I placed the frames in order to construct the narrative, I also used the transitions of a straight cut because I wanted the sequence to have a flow without being interrupted by a wipe or a dissolve as it would be as well unnecessary for my trailer. Also, Final Cut allowed me to have a good pace throughout my trailer, as I sped the actions up sometimes and slowed it down as this would interest my audience more. With the combination of Soundtrack Pro, I was able to have sound with my trailer, this helped make my trailer more effective as the audience could associate the sound with future episodes as it gives a feel of what is to come. A camcorder was used also to help construct our trailer because it allowed us to film the sequences in various angles for our narrative. This is particularly useful because it allowed us to have moving image which the trailer needed to have. As well as the trailer, we constructed our poster and TV listings magazine using media technologies, Microsoft Publisher was used for both as it would enable me to create a successful poster and front cover. Within this programme, I used cropping to resize the images so they were right for the print publication, also I used the lighting tools to try and get the most realistic photos for my print publication.

I mainly used the internet in terms of planning, so we could research other trailers and print productions online, via youtube, google etc. This enabled me to look at other trailers and see which ones would be most effective for my trailer, and most suitable for my target audience. Some inspired me to decide what to put into the trailer as there were certain storylines such as relationships which I found was popular. I also used the internet to look at the variety of posters and TV listings magazines. However, for posters there was a lack of posters because everyone knows about soaps and it’s not entirely necessary to promote the soap unless a big storyline comes up, so we looked at a variety of posters such as music and film, to give me ideas. There were a lot of TV listings magazines available which helped as then I was more aware of what to put into my TV listings magazine, as there was a variety to choose from. TV Choice, and TV Quick seemed like popular options for TV listings magazines, so I adopted the codes and conventions from them.

In the evaluation stages, it was important we got as much feedback as possible in order to make our coursework stronger, for this to happen we uploaded our video to YouTube and asked our friends/family and anyone else willing to do it for their opinions. We also uploaded our video on Facebook so our friends had easy access to our coursework, as well as our TV listings and poster because then we could get as much feedback as possible.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

My combination of my trailer and ancillary texts is effective because they have a consistent house style, of a similar colour, similar informal language and similar characters on each of the media texts. Also what is consistent about the texts is that they are wearing the same clothes, so all the texts have a similar familiar feel to them. IPC media would promote our TV listings magazine because they also produce a few others and of the same genre, and the BBC would produce our soap. Although they are not of the same institution they are both similar in the sense that they both produce entertainment media texts.