Evaluation

Evaluation Questions

Question1.

 In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

Question 2
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

 


  Question 3
What have you learnt from audience feedback?



Question 4

Evaluation question4 from megoreilly

 In terms of the use of digital technologies in my A2 production work, my skills since AS have progressed dramatically.  Below I will detail how my skills have improved over the course of my A2 production:

Photoshop – working at a very proficient level to create TV news logo.  Skills included cropping and lassoing images, magic wand tool, creating background gradients, removing blemishes enhancing colours, brightness and contrast, rasterising and compressing images.  Also learned about saving pictures in the correct format for blogs for detailing research and evaluation commentary   

Camera Skills – prior to AS/A2 course only limited experience using cameras e.g. on phone, snapshots of friends.  AS/A2 had opportunity to work with a professional photographer who taught us how to use digital SLR cameras properly e.g. consider background in shot, think more carefully about composition, use a tripod to minimise camera shake.  Worked in the studio and on location.  Learned about camera shutter speed and aperture training and studio lighting set ups

Construction of blogs using blogger to record work/journey of production – understand how to use blogger, create email accounts, upload work and images (ensure all images saved in the right format). Evaluation of work – creative use of digital technology – use of video and audio to record learning journey

IMovie and Corel - used video editing software, ‘IMovie’ and ‘Corel’ during A2 research, planning and construction.  Prior to this only used Serif editing package to trim clips for use in evaluation stage of preliminary task in AS

Filmed TV news programme in sections e.g. main story, weather report, vox pops etc. and uploaded them to ‘IMovie’ and ‘Corel’ in order to edit the clips and add the appropriate ‘newsy’ filters that are part of the recognised rhetoric of presentation that the target audience would be expecting.  Here, we progressed from the simple functions such as ‘trimming’ to make clips shorter in length, to using more advanced functions in order to make our production elements realistic. 

Title sequences - had to place images and text into the correct channels, begin programme from a black/white/coloured square and include this between moving image clips to assist with smooth transition between clips.  Used colour melt, cross fade, cross zoom and video pan and zoom as main transitions as they are commonly used in title sequences.  Also used well planned transitions, mixed still and moving image, used Green Screen 

Also used the FX filter as it rectifies colour/brightness (auto exposure, brightness and contrast.  However, we learned that if you apply these, these must be applied on all images and footage to keep levels constant. 

Looked at applying lens flare (on title sequence) as this is also a common convention seen during research

Had to ensure that we did not apply too many ‘whizzy’ transitions as it is not in keeping with the codes and conventions of the media text which was very important.  To encourage ‘house style’ used the same transitions throughout title sequence and within news programme.  Also learned not to stretch a moving image clip.  Applied text but limited font types to two at the most.  The font types must remain constant through programme as should the colour on the text background and the colour of the text itself

News Programme - Dropped in programme logo at the beginning of the programme and stretched it across entirety of programme length so that it remained as a constant bug throughout programme to remind the audience of the channel/programme that they are watching (a common convention)

Recorded TV news programme over two days using two DSLR video cameras on tripods, one positioned in front of the news reader, the other to the right to allow filming from two angles for increased interest when editing.  This was drawing on our skills of studio work at AS

Weather reports – used green screen backdrop and lighting to film weather updates using conventions of local weather on TV news.  Added original images of stills and moving image behind presenter in Corel

Used a boom mic to capture good quality sound.  Did not use this for Vox Pops as we wanted these to have synchronous sound to match the conventions of an actual news programme

Used 4 softbox lighting kits and white back drops to reduce glare and create bright lighting and a conventional studio feel.  Used touch screen TV behind presenters to show original images of Birmingham to recreate studio feel.

Able to use new digital technologies to a more professional standard in A2, as we were able to progress and work upon skills that were taught to us in AS.  Able to use the technologies creatively to create a conventional product, which our target audience would accept and recognise.