Media Blog: Evaluation Questions and Final Product

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 texts?

Film Review - Ella Ponting (EP)

Our website 'Beyond The Vision' succeeds at emulating a typical film review website. Wix provided me with a strong platform to promote and distribute our film through my film review, the poster, and the final film product. Having a sleek compelling website to promote and distribute our film added a professional element to our film, making the film seem more relevant and compelling. On the presentation maker 'Emaze' I collected together succinct points to make about both our main product and my ancillary review task.

The full review of 'INCUBUS' and other reviews we have written throughout this year can be found here: http://ellaponting8.wix.com/beyondthevision

FILM POSTER- MONISHA ROY (MR) & SARA AVRAMOVSKA (SA)

Film Posters - Sara and Monisha (SA & MR)

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Video feedback of 'INCUBUS' - Ella and Sara (EP & SA)

Ella Ponting (EP)

Prior to shooting our video feedback to our film, we decided to construct 10 questions that fell under the categories of representation, editing, target audience and improvements. Rather than improvising, we decided to construct well-thought out questions to obtain informative and relevant responses. We researched both written and verbal questionnaires to gain more of an understanding of the types of questions an interviewer would ask their respondents. After showing them to our teacher, we realised the questions may not be understandable for someone who wasn't media literate, thus we decided to re-word some of the questions. By simplifying the questions, we are making the questions more coherent for a broad range of different audience members.

1. Representations (how well they conveyed the character, age, gender and ethnicity) - Sara Avramovska (SA)

2. Genre and plot-outline (SA)

3. Sound and age-rating (EP)

Our first subject Kaylum thought that the music enhanced tension within our film and that the film would be primarily targeted at people in their late teens/young adults. After watching the film, he believed the age rating to be approximately 12, however if it were a longer film and contained more explicitly horrific scenes it may be given a rating of 15. The next two subjects Ashton and Nawaz agreed with this; they especially liked how the music continued at different volume levels throughout which helped build suspense and gave our film more of 'an edge'. Nawaz compared our use of sound to that of a tense 'creepy' scene in Harry Potter, possibly mirroring the age range he believed our film to be targeted at. Ashton stated that our film could be targeted at a broad range of different people. He believe that our film would appeal to people between the ages of 14 or 15 to people in their mid-twenties. In contrast, Nawaz said he would recommend it to anyone between the ages of 13-20 and would give it a 12 for the age rating. This has taught us that to appeal to an even broader audience we would have to include more characters across a variety of different ages, genders and ethnicities. We would also potentially have to include more violent/scary scenes to draw in an older audience. Our third subject Thea liked the build up in tension as the protagonist moves towards the door and the music gradually reaches a crescendo. She liked the way it suddenly cut to the load roar of the thunder and rain too. She would aim our film at people of a similar age (12/15 age rating) to the protagonist who also have mental health concerns, as they will be able to connect more with the character and relate to her situation. Mohammed also liked this element of the film and thought that people who are a similar age to us would most likely want to watch it. He wouldn't recommend it to someone younger than 16 however, as they may find it too frightening. Similarly, Nikola agreed that the music helped enhance tension within our film. She would aim the film at teenagers, although possibly adults too and gave it a 12/15 age rating. Ms Atkinson also thought the music was well executed. She believed our film would appeal to a wide audience that wasn't necessarily specific to any age group. However, if she were to give it a rating it would be a 12+. Overall we had positive feedback on the sound, everyone was in agreement that our sound allowed tension to build during our film and most also categorized our film for young adults. The feedback reaffirmed that the target audience we had in mind, was very similar to the target audience out interviewees suggested. This tells us that our film was balanced with the amount of suspense, drama and action and is something positive we will take away for future film projects.

4. Improvements (EP)

Whilst our first subject enjoyed the majority of our film, he pointed out that basic continuity errors could be faulted in our film. He used the example of the fairy lights being switched on at the start of our film, however when she re-enters her room the lights are switched off. This was a very useful constructive comment as it wasn't something we had noticed when watching it back. This proves that others watching something you have created are more likely to pick up on things we may not have even realised were there. Our next two interviewees Ashton and Nawaz gave constructive comments throughout the interview, making very relevant interesting comments on aspects of our film such as representation and the portrayal of the characters. Unlike a lot of our respondents, Nawaz didn't believe the counsellor was completely believable, he thought she seemed disinterested and was backing off too much when Hayle was trying to open up to her. This just shows that many people can have completely different interpretations of films and that it is useful to interview as many people as possible, because not everyone will agree on the same thing. Ashton believed the counsellor was convincing, however he felt that the portrayal of Hayle wasn't always consistent. He thought that some moments were significantly more intense than others, providing too much of a contrast. Nawaz similarly thought that possibly it was 'overdone at times' and that the build in anxiety for the protagonist needs to be more gradual. The last constructive comment Nawaz made was about the editing, he would have liked to see more shots that were less stagnant and include more of a range of different editing techniques such as obtrusive editing to make the scenes more dramatic. Several of our respondents didn't have any comments on improvements that could be made, however the next interviewee who gave us some constructive feedback was Mohammed. He pointed out that the music was too loud during the counsellor's scene at the start of the film which meant he couldn't clearly hear what was going on. Next time we would need to watch our film through, specifically focusing on the sound and seeing where the volume needs to be adjusted. This will be taken into consideration for any future filming projects and we will possibly upload a version with the volume lower for that scene. Next, Nikola thought that we needed to elaborate on the condition of 'Sleep Paralysis', whilst she understood that the protagonist was having sleep troubles and became paralysed, she thought it was unclear about it specifically is and what this entails for the protagonist. Finally, Mrs Atkinson pointed out we only used two females and suggested this may imply the underlying nature of being female; for example, the nurturing, caring role of the counsellor matches her job description and gender identity. Whilst we wanted to use a male counsellor in our film, we knew Ms Beech (Mrs Audrey, The Counsellor) better as she is our English teacher therefore it was easier to communicate the ideas for her character with her. Despite this, for future films with a larger cast we will definitely try to include characters with a variety of different genders.

Poster Feedback - Sara and Monisha (SA & MR)

(written by SA) It was vital for myself and Monisha Roy to get feedback on our film poster from different age groups in order to achieve a proportionay representative data. We have also taken into account a range of ethinities, classes and genders as variety assures a broader spectrum of opinions and perspectives. Older, more mature individuals are typically considered as wiser however younger audiences are familiarised with modern day technology therefore they are able to give us reliable as well as creatively extensive feedback. Due to this within our video feedback for our film poster we have decided to interview several of our school pupils around our age group was well as amongst mature observers. This meant that our feedback is more reliable and unbias as we did not have a personal connection with many of the participants. Furthermore, the feedback we have recieved has consisted of positive as well as of constructed criticism. Our first participant, Andrea Pinedo has had a very positive overview of the poster; she has stated that the poster 'serves its purpose' and that the disturbing theme is projected clearly in terms of the Psychologcila Thriller codes and conventions. Thus, one of our our participants Mike Loftus has interpreted our film as more leaning towards the horror genre, although he has stated that an mysterious atmosphere has been established. He has also suspected that the film may even lean towards a very dark thriller. By this contrast of feedback, we have learned that the perception provide a parallel to Richard Dyer's theory. He states that the film and the film posters are dependant on the cultural factor of participants. This suggests that different viewers may decode the initial themes we aimed to project within our film poster.

…. (SA) Furthermore, according to our first participant, an improvement that can take place is by adding the protagonists portrait in a faded out effect, dissolved into the background of our ''forest'', mysterious photograph. Although, we have now completed our ancillary tasks and the film, the improvement stated by this participant can be influential in future references. Audience feedback is the key to a successful film promotion, therefore through constructive criticism is essential to the process of improvement in any aspect of media. In many cases, leaders have problems with receiving constructive criticism as you are displaying a dissaproval of their product. However, through audience feedback we have recognise the valuable contribution it has to our promotion. The criticism we have receiver from our participants in not in any means motivated by self-interest and harm towards our credibility as leaders; the critical claims has expanded our knowledge in audience perception and different theoretical views based on this, therefore we are rather thankful and appreciative rather then offended. Hence, without criticism, improvement is unable to occur.

[Monisha Roy] Furthermore, according to one of our participants, Hansan she has stated during the audience feedback that the portrait layout was attractive and the constructive criticism she gave us is that we should have included more than one social media networks in our film poster, as we only had our Facebook, as she suggested we could have included our Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube links etc. she has also stated that she would have preferred to see an image of an house or a window in the background faded instead of a forest as it would have been more related to the narrative plot line of film. /moreover, pour participants Nassra thought the film poster was "It's really cool", as she also believed that the direct model of address from the demon is triggering as it makes it very "creepy", this shows that the purpose of our film poster is successful as it makes the audience evoke terror and creeped out. furthermore, the direct mode of address and the demonised eyes of the demon focused directly on to the individual who is looking at it created the effect of the eyes moving and following the individual as they move.

Furthermore, as to achieve a broader range of participants we have decided to visit some populated and touristic locations around Oxford. These included Oxford City Centre and Cowley Road. Although we were unable to video the feedback, we have recorded the feedback in a bullet point list form. Once we arrived at our locations, we simply asked random strangers two question:

1. What do you think about the film poster?
2. What could be improved?

(MR and SA) We have printed a hardware copy of our film poster which we have presented to a range or different people belong to different class, ethnicity, genders etc. Our city is populated with a range of ethnicities, including Black, Asian, White, Indian etc. Below is the feedback we received:

(many of the opinions were rather similar, therefore we included the key points that sum up our audience feedback)

"Title is truly intriguing and triggers the attention of the audience. I was truly captivated by the effect it excludes."
" The eyes look amazing."
"the colour scheme is rather captivating. It feels as if the character is being haunted..or perhaps she is haunting someone else? I guess the only way to find our is if I watch the film, so I ..I think its very effective for a promotional purpose"
" The title is not easy to understand in my opinion. I think it could be improved by font size or the font itself… I personally find it kind of hard to read, but that might just be me might not"
"It looks so professional. The black and white effect worked well with the genre, which I believe it to be a Thriller, possibly psychological?"
"The eyes capture a supernatural feel which…like…triggers my interest. However, it does kinda creep me out a lot.."
"Improvements…umm.. maybe you could make the logo of the age rating bigger."
"I love the positioning of the three images. I think It is very creepy and terrifying"
"I like the language used within the quotes at the top. Kinda makes me want to go and watch the movie."

Through this rather different form of feedback, we were enabled to conclude that the overall people have enjoyed our film poster and therefore we too believe it collaborated effectively with our short film. Thus, we will take the constructive criticism into account and in furtehr construction we may come across in the further, we will improve the critical claims we have received.

Film Review Feedback - Ella Ponting (EP)

1. Age of respondents

1.It was vital for me to get feedback from a range of different ages, to make my data proportionally representative of different social groups. Using a variety of different ages guarantees a broader spectrum of ideas, perspectives and opinions. Typically we would assume an older age bracket to have a more extensive vocabulary and breadth of knowledge and a younger audience to be more technologically savvy and have a more modern interpretation. Regardless of these stereotypes, including a range of different ages proves that the survey is inclusive and not specifically targeted for one type of audience.

2. Gender of respondents

2. It was important for me to gain responses from more than one gender. Whilst I could not monitor which genders responded I asked the same amount of women and men to respond to my questionnaire. Despite this, most females that I knew were more likely to respond than the men, as indicated by the pie chart above. However, I did manage to obtain a response from one male which was coherent and gave good constructive criticism on the review. Although I had hoped to gain more than 4 responses, these responses have been reasonably thorough in feedback and have provided new insights into the positive and negative aspects of the review.

3. Ethnicity of respondents

3. It was also crucial for my study to include a broad range of people who identified with a variety of different ethnicities. Whilst half of the respondents identified themselves as white, we also had two respondents who fed-back as being Asian and Black. This is indicative of the white dominated culture of the UK, however other smaller, yet not any less significant ethnicities are equally as valid for my piece of research.

4. Did you find the review's website engaging?

If not, what could be improved?

4. Overall, most respondents were in agreement that the website was compelling and professional looking. They enjoyed the modern-twist the website had and the simple yet impressive layout. Despite this, one respondent was in disagreement believing that whilst the website had a professional appeal, there could have been more colours included in the layout to make it stand out even more and make it more eye-catching. This is something I will take into consideration next time I build a website. Although I wanted to use a classic black and white colour scheme, I also need to take into consideration what layout and colour choices would be most appealing to my audience. However, most people who viewed the website were very complimentary on it’s layout, therefore I would most likely not change an overwhelming amount of the website.

5. Did the review weigh up both positive and negative aspects

of the film?

(It is worth noting that the respondents who ticked ‘other’ wrote that the positive and negative aspects could have been illustrated clearer by separating the points coherently by having a paragraph for each positive and negative point.)

5. All respondents gave excellent feedback on this question, illustrating one of the main flaws of the piece. Whilst most respondents agreed that the review did include both positive and negative aspects of the film, it was too heavily embedded into the actual review, rather than being laid out in a comprehensible format. The positive and negative aspects needed to be separated into two clear paragraphs, thus making the review more consistent and making the readers more likely to read on, and potentially watch the film too. One respondent did wholeheartedly agree that the positive and negative aspects were weighed up sufficiently, however most of the responses from this question were constructive.

6. Did the use of images and quotes make the review more

compelling? If not, how could this be rectified?

6. Most of the respondents liked my use of images and quotes, and believed they drew the readers into the review that a page simply full of text wouldn’t have done. They believe the images and quotes corresponded with our chosen genre (which is a psychological thriller) and were well embedded into the review. Despite this, one respondent was more critical and believed that I included a few too many images, distracting away from the substance of the review. This allowed me to gain an insight into the various different perspectives individuals have on film reviews. This constructive criticism has led me to make sure that future reviews either contain fewer images and quotes, or make them slightly smaller, as I do want the core focus to be on the write-up of the review itself.

7. Overall, How did you feel about the review?

What improvements could be made?

7. Overall, the opinions on my review were very positive, giving constructive criticisms and advice on how my review could be further improved. The first respondent believed it could have been more detailed; the third respondent similarly stated this, adding that the condition of sleep-paralysis could have been discussed more in-depth. A few of the respondents believed that the plot-line could have been talked through more, before delving into the positive and negative aspects of the review. A few of the respondents also mentioned to me that the inclusion of critics and other films isn’t something that would be conventionally included in a review. However, this is something my teacher advised me to include as it demonstrates a broader breadth of knowledge and understanding of the film, genre and sleep paralysis. Several grammatical mistakes were spotted by respondent 4; next time I write a film review I will ensure that my review has been read several times by myself, a teacher and a parent to double check that the final product is ready to be distributed. The main criticism has been the structure of the review, my problem was possibly over-complicating the review. After reading several film reviews online, most of the reviews embedded the positive and negative aspects among with the plot-line, however after reading the responses I believe it would have been better to separate the points, rather than trying to embed everything together. This would have made it more structured and made the ideas seem less chaotic and confusing.

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

Prezi - Ella Ponting (EP)

Prezi has been a presentation tool I have used frequently for approximately four years, thus I had experience navigating the site and designing it. This allowed me to understand how to insert new frames and pathways. This, in turn, creates a more engaging presentation as it includes more variety and is a very different layout to the 'PowerPoint' software most of us are used to working with. Prezi's appeal, stems mainly from the use of zoom, to swiftly transition between slides in a unique and compelling way. I organised the different slides so that they were all interlinking and followed on from one another continuously. Each circular bubble also includes the names of the person/people from our group who contributed to the slide. We did this to make it clear to the examiner that everyone from our group contributed. For some of the slides we all made a group contribution, however others we wrote individually. Due to one of our group members 'Monisha' being absent due to personal reasons, a lot of her work may not be able to be uploaded by the deadline. Despite this, she has made a sufficient contribution to our film and will shortly be arriving back at school to help us with the remanding tasks.

Prezi - Sara Avramovska (SA)

“Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software based on a software as a service model” (Wikipedia) Prezi was created in 2008 by Kitchen Budapest (media lab in Budapest) and Magyar Telekom (largest telecommunications company located in Hungary) in order to provide an alternative to ordinary PowerPoint Presentations. I have considered using online presentations such as Haiku Deck, Google Sites, Emaze, PowTown, Reveal.js etc. but I found them almost as a PowerPoint clone! Due to this, I believed that Prezi.com best served our purpose. Prezi.com offered myself and Monisha Roy (MR) the ability to create dynamic, non-linear and fluid presentations for example for our Photoshop CS6 Tools analysis, hence it is completely free to sign up. With the fantastic animations and motion effects we were able to lend energy into our presentation, which is difficult to achieve with static series of slides compacted with information. Furthermore this hopefully triggered an increase of interest within the viewer as well as the examiner. We found this programme highly intuitive and straightforward and easy to use as it is fantastic for a variety of topics while allowing the user to even develop their own template. Moreover, we were enabled to insert customised videos, pictures, sound clips and other multimedia sources which was a necessity for displaying our research/ construction phases of our ancinerlly tasks in an effective and clarified manner. Most importantly we found this programme extremely useful as we were enabled to insert YouTube videos by straightforwardly selecting the sidebar/ dropdown menu. This technological convergence (Prezi and YouTube) allowed myself and my fellow group member to display the videos we have visited in order to exhibit our progression, the learning curve to the examiner, including the improvement in our creative skills on Photoshop CS6 as well as QuarkXPress prior to constructing our film poster. Furthermore, Prezi.com allows a parallax 3D on the Z-axis and employs a unique and intriguing zooming user interface (ZUI) which further allowed us to zoom in and out of our presentations, allowing a much clearer display and navigation through the research steps we took. I believe this effect is unique and strongly engaging bringing the viewer to action. The panning transitions from frame to frame portrayed a cinematic aspect advantaging the observer’s compelled interest to take place. I believe that this is extremely important as we do not only want to exhibit the work to the examiner, but other online users who require help with Photoshop CS6 tools including many other Media Studies students. Moreover the single canvas presentation format was suitable for collaborative group work, which is one of the main reasons I have chosen to use Prezi. The presentation software allows multiple viewers to access and edit the same presentation (with the password and account provided) which was fantastic for myself (SA) and Monisha Roy(MR) to collaborate effectively by adding graphics and text. We also organised the slides therefore they interlink, and as we have separated each Photoshop Tool, each circular bubble also includes the name of the person who has contributed to the slide in order to make it apparent to the examiner as well as displaying our teamwork.

Prezi.com is a compatible with most modern media technologies (computers and web browsers). However, the only obstacle I personally faced was the difficulty with accessing this site at the start as it is necessary to install Adobe Flash by only using Javasript. However, with a lot of patience due to the condition of my laptop I was able to fix this problem.

SlideShare - Ella Ponting (EP)

'SlideShare' was a useful tool during both our research and construction stages. This website provided a useful platform for easily accessing our group and individual media PowerPoints and Word Documents. It was vital to use SlideShare so we could embed various different pieces of work into our blog, without it appearing cluttered and disorganised. SlideShare allows us to create easy to read slides with visual images and diagrams. We found uploading images straight to Blogger didn't always work as we would wish - the images would often be difficult to move and place. Thus, SlideShare also allowed us to upload many images in a PowerPoint form such as my presentation on the demon's costumes. I found that this tool was useful for displaying large amounts of information in a less overwhelming format. It was important to use a variety of different media platforms and presentation makers so as to obtain a compelling, engaging blog. SlideShare is also a good platform for providing access to a range of different PowerPoints and Documents from users. This helped my whilst I was creating my PowerPoints on camera shots, camera angles and camera techniques. It allowed me to discover how different media creators interpreted different media techniques. This creates a safe place for users to learn from one another and gain insights into different interpretations and perspectives. Adding a 'tag', gripping title and description on the presentation makes it more accessible to a wider audience. For example, most of our presentations were placed under the 'social media' category, making those interested in similar topics more likely to discover us.

Celtx - Everyone (EP, SA & MR)

Adobe Photoshop CS6 - Sara Avramovska (SA)

Released in May 2012, Adobe Photoshop CS is a raster graphics editor was published and develop by Adobe Systems which are a part of Windows and OS X. We found this software straightforward and easy to use as we had developed a basic understanding and knowledge of it within the construction of our As Media Coursework. Due to this we believe it is an excellent and appropriate programme that has aided us to improve our technical and creative skills from our AS coursework, however we did face some obsticles. One of the obsticles included accessabilty, as we were only able to access the programme within school facilities and only the media room, and it was difficult to arrange timings where the room was free to use outside of our lesson time disrupting the consistancy of our construction. Due to this we had to stay in after school and during breaktimes which helped us solve this problem. Furthermore, although Adobe Photoshop CS6 allows users to save final products in a PNG file format, we faced many difficulties in regards to this as for no apparent reason we were unable to save out final product. Our final image deleted on several occasions and our fifth attempt of constructing and saving out poster finally worked. This enabled us upload the poster on Quark X Press (Monisha Roy will adress this software) allowing us to distribute the poster online as well as in a hardware printed copy.Thus, Photoshop entitled us to digitally menipulate and enhance the quality of our film poster image as well as to compose the raster image and menipulate its layers, The CS6 has presented a powerful suite of tools such as colour balcance and exposure adjustments, cropping tool, colour replacment etc. For example, myself and Monisha Roy (MR) have used the cropping tool to disregard portions outside the chosen section () which has guided us to remove excess and uneccessary space, enabling a focal point of the film still we have used within out poster . this helped us enhance the composition of the image. Alternatively, we also used the cropping tool therefore we can extend the the canvas in a desired size by clicking and dragging outside the exsisting imagine boarders. This therefore enabling technological convergence with another contemproary media technology, Quark X Press, loowing us to further develop skill of presentation requered for further studies of Media and a media based workplace.

QuarkXpress - Monisha Roy (MR)

QuarkXPress is a computer software that enables users to create and edit complicated layouts. QuarkXPress is mostly used for mixed media projects such as magazines, catalogues and newspapers etc. During the construction stage of our movie poster, we used QuarkXPress. It was easy to use, as I have used this software before for my AS project to create Magazine page layouts although we had experience with the software from previous project however using the software again allowed us gain more knowledge about the application. Me and my fellow group member Sara Avramovska (SA) have used QuarkXPress for our movie posters as it is an excellent software as it provided us to be able to construct the layout, placement of the title and the composition of the pictures the way we needed it to be and also fit the codes and conventions of a movie poster. The text tool allowed us to be able see and test different fonts in order to find the one we preferred it to be on the poster as it also had the option of what colour we wanted the text to be which was a good thing as we could choose different colours for the text that would not only stand out but fit conventions as well. For the page orientation of the film poster we chose to do a portrait orientation as it fits the conventions. QuarkXPress allowed us to save the poster in a format which was easier for us to distribute the poster in order to promote our film on social medias such as twitter and Facebook etc. We have used the text to follow the conventional movie poster appearance of a psychological thriller film. The text we used for our film title is Lucida blackletter we used this type of typeface in the size 110pt. and to get the effect we wanted we had two layers of the title in white (faded) to have this 3D effect.

Thesaurus - Sara Avramovska (SA)

To quote the best known architect of the thesaurus in the English language, Peter Mark Rogert stated that the thesaurus is used to "find the word, or words, by which an idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed" Personally as a nonnative speaker, I have found the thesaurus extremely helpful in terms of exploring a broader range of vocabulary and phrasing, however despite this I found it difficult to understand that many synonyms are valid, however they may contain a different connotation/meaning. In spite of this, the thesaurus has been a helpful online website that not only myself, but my fellow group members throughout our Research, Planning and construction. The website helped us communicate our ideas in an effective and articulate manner while avoiding potential monotonous repetition (over-usage of terms). As a result, we were enabled to communicate with a greater confidence in pursuance of achieving interest within our blog viewers.

Wix - Ella Ponting (EP)

I used the website 'wix.com' to present my film review of our movie 'INCUBUS' as well as displaying reviews myself and other group members had constructed. I decided to use 'wix.com' because I knew I wanted to present my review in the format of a post on a website. After researching codes and conventions of film reviews I found that places film reviews are most commonly found are in aggregate sites, film magazines and in the film section of a newspaper. A growing number of people are using social media and presenting reviews in new formats. This is especially applicable to young people, who our film is largely targeted at. Over the past few years there has been a dramatic increase in young creators, video watchers and readers. Our film would also be distributed as part of a 'short film' review section of a print film magazine and be distributed across film festivals such as 'Sundance'. Wix is used across all professions to create a smart, professional website, often for businesses and entrepreneurs. I decided to pick a very simplistic black background with white dots scattered around it. This adds a polka dot effect, adding a personal informal touch to the website. I also added the title in bold lettering in a rectangular box to incorporate a more professional look into the website. This blend of a friendly, inviting looking background and understated professional title adds a unique edge to our website. Whilst this was my first time using wix, the toolbar and preview button were both helpful at indicating where the basic buttons were e.g whether an image should be shown on all pages or just one specifically. Originally, I did encounter problems navigating the menu, however after several attempts I managed to understand it. Another problem was uploading my 'INCUBUS' review to two pages. I decided I wanted to make a separate page from the 'HOME' and 'ABOUT' pages, yet I was unsure how I could upload the review on two pages (I only knew how to upload it on either one page or all pages). Whenever I visited the 'INCUBUS' page it would fail to load - this problem still hasn't been solved but it is something I will be discussing with my media teacher to see how it can be fixed. I also made an 'ABOUT' page to exemplify the sort of reviews we would publish as well as an enquiry box for those who would want us to post a review on one of their films.

YouTube - Ella and Sara (EP, SA)

YouTube has been a useful, yet slightly problematic media programme to upload both our 'INCUBUS' final film and Part '1' and '2' of audience feedback. This popular website allows creators to distribute videos to a wide audience, thus it was essential to promote our film by these means. Due to the evolution of 'YouTubers' on the internet, the site has become increasingly popular, with lots of young people creating, sharing and watching videos. The likelihood of our film receiving views, subscriptions and feedback is more likely to occur than if we were to use a less well-known site such as 'Vimeo'.

One problem we encountered we found difficult was using 'Adobe Flash' due to it being out of date. The internet connection provided an obstacle for us, thus we had to attempt to upload our videos several times before it was successful. Unfortunately the whole of our school experienced internet difficulties due to a power cut, thus many of the computers were still recovering. After talking to the 'IT' people in our school they informed us that updating Adobe Flash and fixing the internet problems would take a long while. Therefore an alternate solution was to use sites such as YouTube once we had gotten home.

Images - Sara Avramovska (SA)

I believe that it has been a vital aspect to upload images throughout our blog in order to support our research,planning, construction and evaluation stages of our coursework. This provided a great addition to our blog as graphics aid the viewer to a greater understanding of our work allowing an instant frame of reference. Therefore, I believe this helped myself and my fellow group members to coherently present our work to the examiner, but not only that, images also provide a higher drive of engagement and interest within the general, public viewers of our blog. Visitors automatically gravitate towards images before content, therefore throughout our blog we have used for example screenshots of websites and apps such as Final Cut Pro, Prezi, Photoshop CS6 etc. to enhance the communication barrier between our selves as the website builders, and our audiences. I believe this may also be helpful towards other students visiting A2 Media blogs for guidance and inspiration in the future. Although, we faced many obstacles with uploading images onto Blogger due to unfriendly-web sized images causing numerous problems and issues on our blog such as disruption in processing and uploading the image, and disadvantaging our desired layout on multiple occasions. Thus, we were able to easily and successfully fix this problem by using YouTube and Google researched guidance. Furtermore, the images has helped msyelf and my group to enhance the color and vibrancy of our blog and hopefully add an attractive appeal to the audiences, meanwhile conveying a professional and conventional outlook of online websites/blogs. Uploading images has also helped us project our personally visually.

Final Cut Pro X - Ella and Sara (EP & SA)

'Final Cut Pro X' was used to edit Part '1' and '2' of our video audience feedback. This software was used to gather together all our responses, in a seamless cohesive way. Due to prior experience editing our final piece 'INCUBUS' this was relatively simple to use. Despite this, we encountered several issues transferring the products into a 'Master File' and uploading it to YouTube, as Adobe Flash was out of date. However, assistance from our teaching assistant Iona led to us finally being able to spot the problems. We needed to make the file size as small as possible, so it was more likely to be able to upload onto YouTube quickly. This made it easier for uploading 'Part 2' of our video feedback, because we had a greater depth of understanding about file size, uploading speed and background tasks. Furthermore, we used the effect 'Cross Dissolve' between takes to clearly separate the different pieces of feedback. This also helped provide a smooth transition between scenes. This effect helps both the visuals and sound fade out, so it appears more professional. We also used found a 'fade' effect to introduce the respondents and also at the start of our second feedback video. We found this in the drop down 'Build-in/out' menu that had a range of different effects for displaying different ways of text appearing and disappearing on-screen. This allowed us to mention the interviewees names and age. This emphasised the age ranges and genders that would be most likely to watch our . The track 'Elysium long' was used briefly at the start and end of our video, to indicate where the the video feedback commences and finished.