Evaluation planning

Following the production work of A2 media studies a set of 4 evaluative questions must be answered, which are as followed:


1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task? 
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback? 
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?


In this post I will be planning my response and describing which media I will use to portray my answers.




1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
Technology used: 

• MiniDVD camera (Sony)- I used this camera as I had no others available. However, I almost had to re-do my entire production in terms of filming as the format in which it saved the shots in (.vob) would not be accepted into any major editing software. I averted this disaster by using an open source program to rip the contents of the MiniDVD into a raw file. From this I then had to convert to .mov format in order to allow it to be accepted into the editing software. By doing so and then editing, I lost a lot of good quality and have learnt from this experience considerably. The film doesn't look particularly bad up scaled to 720p but a HD camera would of made certain shots a lot nicer to look at. The on board microphone wasn't particularly useful so I had to record in absolute silence in order to collect the audio successfully. By using a non-HD camera, I achieved a slightly different look to my film, a more gritty style, which only emphasises the 'eerie-ness' of the piece. I often find that particularly media studies students using HD cameras often make terrible films and the awfulness is only heightened by the quality of the picture. 
• iMac- I used my own computer to edit a rough cut following the filming as I am lucky enough to own a good computer. I used the built in software iMovie initially and created a few opening sequences using other software. The 'iLife' software pack was very useful as it came preloaded with some sounds, however for a majority I had to record the sounds myself using the MiniDVD camera and the detach the audio from the said clips. By editing at home, I have challenged the convention of most editing taking place in huge editing suites following a production. This new generation of editing at home and the popularity of websites such as YouTube as Vimeo have given people of all ages the ability to share and create films of any style, length and subject. 
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