Evaluation Question 4

The main technology I used was a blogging website called Blogger, which I used to organise my work. I used it to create pages which were used to organise links to my blog posts to make them easy to find and navigate. This function was very useful as it will allow people to find their way around my blog in the simplest fashion. Another feature which I liked was the customisation. I created a colour scheme which was easy to read off, but also appropriate for my video (orange and white), and changed the background to a suitable image. Although I like the creative freedom this allowed, I found that many of my images were too large, which, while not a big issue, forced me to choose an image I felt was less appropriate. Another slight issue with Blogger was when I had to upload them to the video sharing site YouTube, which could take over an hour, because Blogger could not handle large videos.

I also used many Web 2.0 technologies, such as Prezi and SlideShare to organise my research and evaluation. Prezi allowed my to create text boxes of different shape (Circle, Bracket, Rectangle) and change the layout and design. I added appropriate images and used appropriate colour schemes, but I still feel as if the creative side of Prezi is lacking. SlideShare is pretty similar, as it has few customisation features. It is essentially a stripped down, online PowerPoint, which means making it unique can be difficult. However, I feel both technologies work well for their purpose and are not too difficult to use.

To construct my video and animatic, I used the video editing software Final Cut Pro X.  I used tools such as cut, speed, effects and transitions to edit my raw footage. I really like the effects and transitions it had to offer as they were all unique and can be used together to create different moods. This really helped when I was creating my video, as it gave a new layer to the narrative. Changing speeds also allowed my to come up with creative ideas, such as having the barrel fly over the camera, which would have been impossible to see it I had not slowed it down. The keyer effect was very useful, I used it on textured surfaces to give a grainy, burned, broken style to images, as well as to layer images up to disorientate the viewer. However, I think that a problem wit the effects  is that they cannot be edited in subtle ways. Changing the direction or colour of some effects cannot be done, and editing the transitions is difficult. Transitions also bind clips together, making it more difficult to edit them individually.

To create a place to organise my evaluation questions, I created a website (based of the 1977 Records label I created for this task) with the online website creator Wix. It allowed a very in depth creation of a website using various templates. I added images, text, links to pages, other media (Popplet, SlideShare and other technologies I used in my evaluation) and animation to make my website feel real. I liked how it gave you website information at the bottom of the page, which helped in heightening the realism of the website. However, once I chose template, I could not add elements from others (such as different animations) which limited my creative ability.